Felwine Sarr

Felwine Sarr is a humanist, philosopher, economist, and musician and the Anne-Marie Bryan Chair in French and Francophone Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Afrotopia (University of Minnessota Press, 2019, tr. by Drew S. Burk). Well-known for his groundbreaking report “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics,” Sarr taught at the University of Gaston-Berger in Saint Louis, Senegal, where he was previously dean of its Economics and Management department. His research focuses on economic policies, the development economy, econometrics, epistemology, and the history of religious ideas. In addition to Afrotopia, he has published the meditative essay Dahij (Gallimard, 2009), the collection of short stories 105, rue Carnot, the philosophical text Méditations africaines (Mémoire d’encrier, 2011), as well as the essay “Habiter le monde” and the collection “Ishindenshin,” both published by Mémoire d’Encrier. Further, he cofounded the Laboratory for the Analysis of Societies and Powers/Africa-Diasporas (LASPAD) in Saint Louis, as well as the publishing company Jimsaan in Dakar. In 2016, he co-created with Achille Mbembe the annual Dakar and Saint Louis workshops Ateliers de la pensée, which sought to stimulate a “non-colonial” school of thought. Sarr also co-founded with Achille Mbembe the Ateliers de la pensée’s doctoral school.

Bio Aug 2020