Writing in Dark Times
Teju Cole
Recovering Meanings
Debate
In dialogue with the journalist and cultural researcher Berta Ares, the writer, photographer and historian Teju Cole speaks about dehumanisation in today’s world and, on this occasion of the publication of his latest book—Black Paper: Writing in Dark Times (in Spanish, Papel negro. Escribir en tiempos oscuros, Acantilado, 2025)—he turns to art and literature to explore possible paths of meaning and belonging.
Invoking such diverse figures as Edward Said, Caravaggio, Black Panther, Lorna Simpson, and Susan Sontag, Teju Cole draws on art, documentary photography, and literature as a way of criticising, denouncing, and examining questions like the vulnerability of the migratory experience, negritude and its many manifestations, and the colonial imaginaries that forged western discourse, and also the wounds they are still inflicting. Confronting the cruelty of the world, Teju Cole explores the language of art as an essential instrument for navigating the present and resisting dehumanisation.
In this session, conducted by Berta Ares, Cole offers his deep, poetic, personal thoughts on the human condition, while calling for awareness and a return to meaning in the name of complex-free resistance.
