African Studies Annual Lecture 2025: ‘The Becoming Technical of the Human: Race After Apartheid’, Premesh Lalu
African Studies Annual Lecture 2025: ‘The Becoming Technical of the Human: Race After Apartheid’, Premesh Lalu
The CHR’s Premesh Lalu will be giving the annual African Studies Lecture at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University, on Monday 12 May.
Venue: Investcorp Lecture Theatre, St Antony’s College
Date and time: Monday 12 May, 3:00 – 5:00pm
Convener: Rebekah Lee, Director, African Studies Centre
Speaker: Premesh Lalu, University of the Western Cape
‘The Becoming Technical of the Human: Race After Apartheid’, takes its cue from Stuart Hall’s “Floating Signifier”, arguing that shifts in the co-evolution of the human and technology beginning with the abolition of slavery and passing through the rise of experimental psychology (later psychotechnics) and cybernetics may better explain the rise of biopolitical projects such as apartheid.
These shifts significantly altered and constituted the meaning of race as a site of stasis, or permanent civil war. In this lecture Lalu revisits three theatrical works by William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company – Faustus in Africa, Woyzeck on the Highveld, and Ubu and the Truth Commission – to explore the fate of the subject caught in the double binds of race and technology. Rather than seeking reprieve in a politics of transcendence, a perspective of the technical becoming of the human locates apartheid in a global conjuncture where the work of its undoing may proceed.
