Lecture series in Global Political Thought (UvA)

On Wednesday 15 October, the first lecture of our new Amsterdam lecture series in Global Political Thought (UvA) will take place (see for the entire programme of 2025-2026 with a stellar series of speakers our homepage: https://ash.uva.nl/content/research-groups/global-political-thought/global-political-thought.html). You are all cordially invited, on behalf of the conveners (Serena Ferente, Natalie Scholz, Lisa Kattenberg, Hanco Jürgens and Mart Rutjes), Matthijs Lok.

Africa and Material Desire: A Note on an Enduring Western Stereotype

That Africans are structurally and historically moved by an uncontrollable lust for material objects remains a powerful component of Western knowledge.  Surging in the 16th century on the coast of Guinea, diffused by merchants’ narratives back in Europe, theorized in the 17th and 18th century by philosophers, and hardened in the 19th century as a commonplace stereotype, the idea that Africans are possessed by a misguided hunger for imported commodities and material riches, has a genealogy as ancient as the first contacts between West Africa and foreign sailors. These Western fabrications have obscured many of the complex, real strategies of local societies to engage with material and immaterial wealth.

To critically examine these propositions I propose to group them together under the term of “double material curse.” Belonging to different periods and to various disciplines and social spheres, the double material curse, I argue, has worked, and still works, as a complex cluster of theories, opinions, and decisions, historically fluid yet enduring, to placate the relationships that Africans supposedly nurture with various forms of assets. 

Florence Bernault is professor of history at Science Po in Paris and specializes in the political and cultural history of Central Africa. Her research focuses on historical dynamics that crossed over African and European societies. Her latest monograph, Colonial Transactions (Duke University Press 2019) historicizes the notion of witchcraft, power and puissance in Gabon.

Organized by Global Political Thought research group Lecture series 2025-26 Amsterdam School of Historical Studies

 Supported by Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area.

Time & Date:

• Location: University of Amsterdam, Bushuis, F 1.01 B (Oost-Indisch Huis,  Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CE Amsterdam)
• Date: Wednesday, 15 October
• Time: 16:00- Unknown Time 
• Lecturer: Florence Bernault (Science Po, Paris) (information: n.scholz@uva.nl)
• Entrance: Free, no registration needed