event
02
Jun '26
On Tuesday 02.06.2026 at 17:00 – 19:00, the Critical Studies department of the Sandberg Instituut welcomes Dr. Jackqueline Frost for a seminar entitled 'Sylvia Wynter’s New World Poetics'. The seminar will take place at the gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Benthem Crouwel Building, Room 422 (4th floor), and is open to all students. No preparation or prior reading required.
Sylvia Wynter reminds us that “human beings are magical. Bios and Logos. Words made flesh, muscle and bone animated by hope and desire, belief materialized in deeds, deeds which crystallize our actualities.” (Wynter, 1995: 35)
Wynter’s literary and scholarly work consistently grapples with the biocentric paradigm of Englightenment-era humanism, while equally proposing novel forms of social existence, relationality, and being. Accordingly, the seminar will examine an array of concepts from Wynter’s theoretical repertoire, prioritizing her conception of poetics and autopoiesis, and how these might orient us towards political action in our modern context; collectively imagining other possibilities and formulations of sociality. The seminar will draw on two essays, “1492: A New World View” (1995) and “The Ceremony Found: Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn, its Autonomy of Human Agency and Extraterritoriality of (Self-)Cognition” (2015).
Dr. Jackqueline Frost is a cultural and political theorist, and Lecturer in International Politics at the University of London Institute in Paris. She is also a writer working experimentally across the genres of lyric, prose poetry and essay. Her first research monograph, “The Past of Future Life: Anticolonialism, Antifascism and the Poetics of Historical Time” is forthcoming next year with Columbia University Press.
N.B. This presentation will not be live-streamed. The BC building and seminar room are wheelchair accessible.
Poster design by @naomiamandas.
With thanks to the Lectoraat Art & Spatial Praxis for their help in co-organising.
Wynter’s literary and scholarly work consistently grapples with the biocentric paradigm of Englightenment-era humanism, while equally proposing novel forms of social existence, relationality, and being. Accordingly, the seminar will examine an array of concepts from Wynter’s theoretical repertoire, prioritizing her conception of poetics and autopoiesis, and how these might orient us towards political action in our modern context; collectively imagining other possibilities and formulations of sociality. The seminar will draw on two essays, “1492: A New World View” (1995) and “The Ceremony Found: Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn, its Autonomy of Human Agency and Extraterritoriality of (Self-)Cognition” (2015).
Dr. Jackqueline Frost is a cultural and political theorist, and Lecturer in International Politics at the University of London Institute in Paris. She is also a writer working experimentally across the genres of lyric, prose poetry and essay. Her first research monograph, “The Past of Future Life: Anticolonialism, Antifascism and the Poetics of Historical Time” is forthcoming next year with Columbia University Press.
N.B. This presentation will not be live-streamed. The BC building and seminar room are wheelchair accessible.
Poster design by @naomiamandas.
With thanks to the Lectoraat Art & Spatial Praxis for their help in co-organising.
research group
Art & Spatial Praxis
Art & Spatial Praxis
project
Plot(ting)
Plot(ting)