CAS LT Seminar Series 2026 - Afrobeats as Method and Philosophy - Prof Adeshina Afolayan, University of Ibadan

• In this lecture, I will be taking Afrobeats seriously beyond the journalistic and moralistic critiques that have become the pastime of African (popular) music and African Studies scholars. The fundamental significance of Afrobeats, as my forthcoming book—The Afrobeats Poetics in Postcolonial Nigeria—demonstrates, is that it provides a space for many Nigerians to engage with the postcolonial lifeworld conceptually, existentially, aesthetically and philosophically. However, beyond this, Afrobeats is also essentially a generative genre that possesses a discursive capacity to engage with any subject matter within Nigeria’s postcolonial experience, from the God-imaginary to political radicalism. This discursive capacity, within the ambivalent nature of the agonistic postcolonial context, I will also argue, provides a very rich methodic source for philosophical reflection. Philosophy is defined by its capacity for concept formation and critique. Afrobeats therefore provides a critical space by which the postcolonial context can be critically and aesthetically engaged. These engagements constitute one source for rethinking some of the perennial problems of (African) philosophy. 

• Adeshina Afolayan teaches philosophy at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His areas of specialization include African cultural studies, African political philosophy and philosophy of modernity. He was a 2023-2024 Founder’s Fellow at the National Humanities Center, North Carolina. He is currently a research fellow at The Free State Center for Human Rights, University of the Free State, South Africa. He is the author of Philosophy and National Development in Nigeria (2018); editor of Auteuring Nollywood (2014) and Identities, Histories and Values in Postcolonial Nigeria (2021); the coeditor of the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (2017), Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa (2018), Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development in Africa (2020), Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Africa (2021), and Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19 Pandemic (2023). His current project interrogates the critical engagements between African philosophy, African indigenous knowledge and popular culture in postcolonial Nigeria. 

Please note that exceptionally, the CAS seminar series will take place on Tuesdays from 16:30 to 18:00 throughout Lent Term 2026.

All are welcome to attend. An informal drinks reception will be held after the talk.