As a recent recipient of the Francophone Mobility Chairs from uOttawa, Professor Brezault gave a keynote talk on October 12, 2023, at the University of Ottawa entitled: “Masquerade and Corporality among some African Performers: In Search of a New Ecopoetic Consciousness of Place.”
She is looking at the works of Congolese performers who use the body as an object of performance/resistance to reflect on the object as waste/art/energy/life. Indeed, the bodies on display in the performances are made from waste and recycled objects, which tell a story of silences, that of less visible exploitation of the country's mineral resources. Reflecting on Mbembe’s ideas in his latest book, Brutalism, Professor Brezault examined these Afrofuturistic bodies as a new form of ecopoetic consciousness that resist an Anthropocene vision of the world by delving into African cosmologies of the world.
The talk followed up an innovative graduate summer seminar she conceptualized and co-taught at uOttawa as part of the Francophone Mobility Chairs fellowship she received. She co-taught a transdisciplinary seminar in person and remotely with professors and students from the universities of Ottawa, Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD, Senegal), and Bordeaux-Montaigne (France) in June-July 2023 at uOttawa about the construction of Race.
