“Re-Reading Steve Biko in the Archive:

The Epistemology of the Interview”

Tendayi Sithole | University of South Africa

Monday, March 5, 2018 | 2:00 pm

10383 Bunche Hall

Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Scholar/Critic/Poet Tendayi Sithole:

“The archive and the interview assume the place of the original because they are considered primary if not authentic texts.  Both are, of course, very important textual forms and more so if they are about important figures.  In this paper, I want to re-read the archive and also the interview as important sites in understanding the knowledge practices of Biko under the context of the apartheid regime.  This will be done by engaging the interview that Gail Gerhart conducted with Biko in 1972 as the site of examination of the conception of the archive and the interview in re-reading the subjectivity of Biko.”

Tendayi Sithole is an associate professor in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa.  He is the author of Steve Biko: Decolonial Meditations of Black Consciousness (2016). Professor Sithole teaches holds a doctorate in African Politics which was based on Achille Mbembe’s political thought.  Thematic areas of his research are black radical thought, decolonial critical theory, Africana existential phenomenology, public intellectuals, and literary studies.

This lecture is part of the African Studies Center Speaker Series and is cosponsored by Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, UCLA Department of African American Studies and the African Activist Association.

For questions/more information, contact:

UCLA African Studies Center | 10244 Bunche Hall | Los Angeles, CA 90095-1310 | Telephone: 310-825-3686

Website: http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa | email: africa@international.ucla.edu