Madina Tlostanova

Madina Tlostanova

Linköping University

Madina Tlostanova is a decolonial feminist verbal artist and professor of postcolonial feminisms at the Department of Thematic Studies (gender studies) at Linköping University, Sweden.

Talk Information:

The Age of Unsettlement and the Decolonial Ways to Refuturing
March 18, 2022 | 9:00 AM
Associated Edited Volumes: 10  6

The current global culture and human condition can be defined through the concept of unsettlement which humans experience differently depending on our trajectories, privileges, and disadvantages. Unsettlement is a condition marked by a constant negotiation between belonging and non-belonging, rootedness and displacement, by a chronophobic fear of changes and a fear to realize the finiteness of the kind of existence humanity built for itself and other species and inability to imagine a different world. Unsettlement links to defuturing as a predominant sensibility of our times. Learning to regard unsettlement not as something to overcome via settlement (or settling down), not as a negative condition of restrain and exclusion but potentially as an open, positive, and creatively rich state widening the horizons, and to learn to live the unsettled lives as fulfilling, is an important task that has not been even properly defined yet. After touching upon the key elements of the age of unsettlement I will focus on decolonial potential for refuturing, transcending academic thinking and going in the direction of agency and bottom-up activism (political, social and artistic). Can the unsettlement actually generate new transversal relational solidarity beyond the bankrupt institutions and power structures? Can it launch new communities of change that would also change ourselves and let us imagine and make otherwise?