Talk

Rethinking Humanism

Paul Gilroy and Ayça Çubukçu, with Lola Olufemi

Josef Nassy, *In the Shadow of the Tower: The Mood in the Courtyard*, 1942—45. Pen and ink drawing.

Date and Time:: Thursday 24 Sep, 6–8pm
Location:: Majlis

What can we make of humanism’s complex legacies in the face of critiques that centre its complicity with racism, sexism, colonialism, and anthropocentrism? Can – and should – any variety of humanism be salvaged in the struggle for a just world? This conversation will explore how humanism might be reimagined and reworked for the present while taking stock of its eugenic past. Join us for a thought-provoking evening with writer Paul Gilroy and anthropologist Ayça Çubukçu – moderated by Lola Olufemi – that moves beyond easy answers.

Image credit: Josef Nassy, In the Shadow of the Tower: The Mood in the Courtyard, 1942—45. Pen and ink drawing. Courtesy Douglas F. Colley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College.

Paul Gilroy is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at University College London. Born in London, he has taught at several universities and written widely on matters of culture, politics, history, music and art. Gilroy received Norway's Holberg Prize in 2019.

Ayça Çubukçu is an author, anthropologist, and Associate Professor of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. Her scholarship explores the boundaries of humanity and the politics of internationalism, anti-imperialism, and solidarity. She has written for the Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Red Pepper Magazine among many other public outlets.

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and researcher from London. She is a lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at Goldsmiths University and an associate lecturer in the Design School at University of the Arts London. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in materialist resistance and collective conceptualisations of futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021), the forthcoming Against Literature (Peninsula Press, 2026), and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.