Radiant, bright, and soft spoken Tapji Garba is a fourth-year honours undergraduate student studying religion and culture at The University of Winnipeg. He recently answered a call for papers at a graduate student conference, (E)racing Theory, (En)gendering Praxis and sponsored by the University of California Irvine’s (UC Irvine), Department of Comparative Literature. His paper was selected and he presented his paper Ante-Secular Blackness: A Critique of Categorical Distinction, at the graduate conference.
His paper is an exploration of the concept of blackness beyond categories that would reify or essentialize race, which ties into his current focus of research on the relationship between Black feminism and the Platonic-Aristotelian presuppositions of Anti-Black ontologies. More broadly, his research concerns the intersection between Continental Philosophy, Black feminist theory, Political theology, and Political economy.
Garba appreciated his UC Irvine experience, “It was good to spend a couple of days in discussions at a level that I don’t get to participate in very often.”
Garba’s professor, Dr. Jane Barter describes his paper as a sophisticated analysis that combined black studies, black feminist theory, and contemporary continental philosophy.
“UC Irvine is renowned for its humanities programs which engender cutting edge research in critical race, feminist, and continental theory,” said Barter. “It is a sign of Mr. Garba’s maturity as a theorist that his paper was accepted at such a prestigious graduate conference.”
Born in Steinbach, MB, Garba is known by his professors to be a voracious reader who is interested in reaching out to critical race theorists around the world. He has already presented at two other national conferences and is well read in Islamic and Christian theology.
