In Order to Find Our Way, We Must Become Lost
A Community Gathering with Bayo Akomolafe facilitated by Vera de Chalambert
In this interview hosted by SAND co-founder Vera de Chalambert, Bayo Akomolafe conjures a strange portal that opens up to the forgotten but insurgent continent lying somewhere “between the elite text of the social” – the world of the nonhuman/more-than-human. Comprising of myriad bodies and agencies, this continent has always been part of our everyday life. However, we live with the legacies of its denial. Now we are stressed by what we’ve repressed. Touching this ‘realm’ and accounting for the human by counting this ‘realm’ in seems like the way to go. But this comes with risks: we would have to let go of categories of thought with which we have imagined the world. This is what Bayo Akomolafe calls postactivism–the heart of his upcoming webinar series with SAND and an invitation to you.
Bayo shared answers to these questions and more:
- What is your story, and how did you come to say what you say today?
- What do you mean when you say, “the times are urgent; let us slow down”?
- What is postactivism and what impasses and dilemmas does it address in its emergence, and how does it relate with nondualist perspectives?
- How does postactivism help us address matters of injustice today? Is it a strategy for better results, a spiritual bypass, or just another heady concept without much relevance to our real and felt pains?
- What practices would you describe as postactivist? What do we do with this?
- What can we expect from Bayo’s upcoming webinar series? How would participating impact my understanding of our contemporary global challenges and my potential in effecting desired changes?
Presenter
Báyò Akómoláfé
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022.