Introducing Benda Hofmeyr

Benda Hofmeyr is a philosopher currently affiliated to the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, South Africa, where she was awarded her 10-year long service award in 2019. She lived and worked in the Netherlands while completing her doctoral studies and postdoctoral research. She still maintains strong collaborative ties with the Radboud University Nijmegen where she obtained her doctoral degree in Philosophy on the work of Foucault and Levinas. Her research interests fall within the broad ambit of contemorary Continental philosophy (especially thinkers following in the wake of Heidegger with emphasis  on post-structuralism and phenomenology) with an enduring facination for the inextricable entanglement of the ethical and the political.

In her present research, she is reflecting on the entanglement of European and non-Western, especially post-colonial African philosophy and the possibility of a dialogue across these divergent yet fundamentally intertwined traditions of thought.

Benda is a passionate lecturer and thrives on engaging with her students. Interested to know what Benda's  postgraduate students think about her? Read her 2019 Honours student's feedback & comments .

Complete CV in UP format (Updated Oct 2024)

Google Scholar Profile

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Academia.edu

* Please Contact me via my website rather than through one of the above profiles, since I don't get around to visiting or updating them as often as I would like. With so many platforms out there, I hope that you have found your way here via one of them or via Google and everything that you were looking for. Please feel free to Contact me should you have any questions or are in need of any text not available under Publications or Download or News. The Search function at the top of the page might also help you to find what you are looking for. 

LAST UPDATED OCT 2024

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Aug142017

About Me

I am philosopher affiliated to the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, South Africa as Full Professor. After the completion of my doctoral thesis in Philosophy at the Radboud University Nijmegen (NL), I conducted research at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (NL) on the political dimension of art and cultural production. I still have strong and active collaborative ties with the Radboud University Nijmegen.

My research interests fall within the broad ambit of contemorary Continental philosophy (especially thinkers following in the wake of Heidegger with specific focus on the work of Foucault and Levinas) with an enduring facination for the inextricable entanglement of the ethical and the political. 

In my present research, I am reflecting on the entanglement of European and non-Western, especially post-colonial African philosophy and the possibility of a dialogue across these divergent yet fundamentally intertwined traditions of thought.

The contested status of the Humanities, the ever increasing neoliberalization of our globalized life-world, the crisis of higher education, the increased democratization of university eduction and resultant massification, as well as the need for a critical reconceptualization of our curricula, have forced me to fundamentally rethink what sort of activity philosophy is and should be in the postcolonial context. The legacy of Western metaphysics have shaped my mind, but my body and heart belongs to the African continent. Thinking, as we know, is never merely rational and cannot be disconnected from its context. How then does a South African academic account for the schizophrenia of her European intellectual roots, on the one hand, and her postcolonial African situatedness, on the other?

From the very inception of my research career, my intellectual pursuits were animated by the need to understand the relationship between the Self and the Other. From the onset I was gravely aware that this is an inextricably ethico-political concern, that it lies at the very heart of human ethical quandaries, which cannot be extricated from its socio-political situatedness. It refuses reduction to a simplistic binary opposition, while at the same time often falls prey to what may be called ‘identitarian fundamentalism’ resulting in violent reductionism and a ‘closing of the mind’. Self and Other are inextricably tied in a double-bind that facilitates self-enrichment through the transgressive discovery of what is Other than itself. Yet the Self, by its egocentric nature operates by virtue of a reductive logic, reducing the Other to that which is merely provisionally separate from the Same, but ultimately reconcilable with it. This attraction-revulsion or love-hate binary, if you will, and a desire to make sense of the necessarily incommensurable entanglement is the golden thread that charts the course through my meandering research journey.

Download my complete CV here.


Some past and recent presentation recordings: 

Paper presented as invited speaker on 15 Dec 2005 Basis voor Actuele Kunst (BAK), Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Debate topic: Concerning War. Soft Target. War as a Daily First-Hand Reality: Options and Strategies of Resistance.

Participants: Lars Bang Larsen (curator, Copenhagen), Dieter Lesage (philosopher, Brussels), Benda Hofmeyr & Sagi Groner (artist, Amsterdam).

 

Paper presented on 7 October 2020 at the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns Symposiun. NP van Wyk Louw. 50 jaar na sy dood / NP van Wyk. Louw. 50 years after his death.

Symposium. Commemoration of  NP van Wyk Louw - 50 years after his death.

 

 

 

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