Michael Neocosmos

Michael Neocosmos is a South African Marxist political theorist. He is an emeritus professor in humanities at Rhodes University, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute and a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.

Work Neocosmos holds a B.Sc. (1972, Loughborough University, UK), a MA (1973, Wye College, University of London, UK), and a Ph.D. (1982, Bradford University, UK).

He has taught at various universities in the United Kingdom and in Africa, most especially at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, at the University of Swaziland, at the National University of Lesotho where he headed the Department of Development Studies, at the University of Botswana where he was associate professor of sociology, the University of Pretoria where he held the position of Professor of Sociology, at Monash University where he was Director of Global Movements Research and at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa where he was the Director of the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU).

Awards

In 2017, Neocosmos's book Thinking Freedom in Africa, was awarded The Frantz Fanon Award for Outstanding Book in Caribbean Thought by the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Works

Books

Articles From people's politics to state politics: aspects of national liberation in South Africa 1984--1994, 1994 Thinking the Impossible? Elements of a Critique of Political Liberalism in South Africa, 2004 The State of the Post-apartheid State: the poverty of critique on the South African left, 2004 Citizenship, Rights and Development: Revisiting the social in Africa today, 2005 Civil society, citizenship and the politics of the (im)possible: rethinking militancy in Africa today, 2007 The Pogroms in South Africa: The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics, 2008 Africa and Migration in a Globalised World, 2008 The Political Meaning of the Attacks on Abahlali baseMjondolo, 2009 The Political Conditions of Social Thought and the Politics of Emancipation: An Introduction to the work of Sylvain Lazarus, 2009 Mass mobilisation, ‘democratic transition’ and ‘transitional violence’ in Africa, 2011 Transition, human rights and violence: rethinking a liberal political relationship in the African neo-colony, Interface, 2011 Are Those-Who-Do-Not-Count Capable of Reason? Thinking Political Subjectivity in the (Neo-)Colonial World and the Limits of History, 2012 Thinking freedom: achieving the impossible collectively - Interview with Michael Neocosmos, 2018 The Thought and Practice of an Emancipatory Politics for Africa, Interview with Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, 2022