Tumi Mogorosi – The Human under crisis: Notes on a possible moment of Invention

Mittwoch, 12. November 2025, 19 uhr, Aula
Filzengraben 2
50676 Köln
Eintritt frei

In this current moment of an ecological catastrophe we are faced with serious theoretical, ideological and political questions that we need to come to terms with. We are here in a moment that proposes the anthropocene as fundamentally linked with a centering of a human project propelled by the capital which makes other thinkers propose instead of the anthropocene we are in the capitalocene.

The current critique of decentering the human as a way to open up other possibilities of ethical relations with all life forces proposes a coming to terms with the crisis within the conception of human autonomy and its hierarchical position. This decentering of the sovereignty of the human opens up a way that complicates the symbolic position of the category of the human.

What my lecture or talk will wrestle with is: what is to become of the human once it loses its status as autonomy? Does the end of the human-centered world open up a possibility of undoing the violence of the original sins of humanism in their imperial and colonial anthro-capitalocene postures? Can post-humanism's ethical equality between species be a possibility or are we to invent, through a revolutionary process, categories unthought of, within this paradigm of the human?

Tumi Mogorosi is an artist, activist and theorist with a focus on Black liberation through the prism of the Black radical tradition as a framework, and as a way to engage the Black sonic in its diasporic articulation. Mogorosi has recorded five jazz and improvised music albums, and features as a side-drummer on some leading groups in South Africa and globally.

He holds an MAFA from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a PhD candidate in Political Science. His trans-national orientation to thought and being fosters infidelity to the performative relay of national situatedness. His practice straddles performance theory, jazz studies, critical theory and Black studies in close relation with questions of Black liberation beyond the incompleteness of South African rainbowism and global emancipation politics.

He is the author of DeAesthetic: Writing with and from the Black Sonic published by iwalewabooks (2021).

On 9 November, Tumi Mogorosi will be performing at Cologne's Stadtgarten – with Alice Leggett (saxophone), Josiah Woodson (trumpet), Teis Semey (guitar) and Neil Charles (bass). An evening that reminds jazz of its roots: of new beginnings, energy and liberation.

09.11.2025 | 18:00 Uhr, Stadtgarten Köln
️ VVK € 22 / 12 (erm.) | AK € 25 / 15 (erm.)

Editor — Juliane Kuhn

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Tumi Mogorosi – The Human under crisis: Notes on a possible moment of Invention

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