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Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Uncomfortable Work of Destabilising Cultural Hegemony
Delivering the inaugural Sylvia Wynter Lecture, poet, critic, and editor, Kayo Chingonyi, presents a talk on moving beyond the zero sum model of diversity in which simply having people of minoritized subjectivities in positions of power (published by major presses, on our TV screens, in board rooms, winning prizes &c) is the beginning and end of the work. Taking account of interweaving factors that make up disparity, through Wynter’s elucidation of Fanon’s ’Sociogeny’ this talk asks questions about the kinds of creative work that are seen as universal, challenging the idea of identification with as a reasonable model for affinity. Is seeing oneself represented all there is to it or is being human equally concerned with discomfort; those moments in which we are stretched beyond the familiarity of a narrow view?
Bio
Kayo Chingonyi's debut collection, Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus, 2017) was a Guardian and Telegraph Book of the Year, and the winner of the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. A Burgess Fellow at the Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, and Associate Poet at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Kayo is the Poetry Editor for The White Review, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. He has performed his work at festivals and events around the world. A Blood Condition, a new collection of poems, will be published by Chatto & Windus, and his memoir Prodigal, is forthcoming with Picador.