Manthia Diawara, University Professor, New York University, speaks as part of New Public Forum, a student-led series of lectures and demonstrations aimed at instituting public dialogue between various fields as they evolve and adapt to a changing world. 

For Édouard Glissant, the poetics of trembling connects us with an intuitive knowledge of things hidden from the naked eye, and buried deep underneath. Glissant argues that there is something embedded in both geomorphism and anthropomorphism that makes trembling possible; it is that which enables a planetary and ecological solidarity between the beings and non-beings. In addition to the poetics of trembling, Glissant adds other essential elements to our reconnection to the knowledge of geomorphism, like the search for traces of things lost or invisible, and the consent to the opacity of the self and the other. The poetics of opacity and trace help to keep the arts alive and preserve the "tout-monde" in its intuitive search for equilibrium and paths to geomorphic ways of knowing. For example, the maroons and other fugitive slaves knew how to read the geography and geology of the environment, in order to escape captivity and survive. Professor Diawara's talk will explore the questions of identity, identification through this Glissantian poetics of geomorphism, trace, opacity and trembling.

Manthia Diawara's essays on art, cinema and politics have appeared in The New Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Libération, Mediapart, and Artforum. He is the author of two acclaimed memoirs: In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 2000) and We Won’t Budge: An African in the World (Basic Books, 2008). He has published several books on African and African American cinema. Diawara’s notable films include An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2016), Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008), Rouch In Reverse (1995), AI: African Intelligence (2023), and Angela Davis: A World of Wider Freedom (2024).

Learn more about the New Public Forum, which is supported by The Cooper Union Grant Program and The Cooper Union School of Art, here. Lectures will be broadcast by the Cooper Radio Collective.