Bonaventure Ndikung Proposes De-Othering as Method in Sesc_Videobrasil Biennial Catalog

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung introduces the concept of 'de-othering' as a critical strategy in his catalog essay for the 21st Sesc_Videobrasil Contemporary Art Biennial. His text, titled 'De-othering as Method,' uses a Ngemba phrase meaning 'keep yours and I'll keep mine' to challenge binary narratives of self and other rooted in Enlightenment reason. Ndikung argues this reason, born from mythical anxiety, became a violent tool for domination, linking it to capitalist exploitation and colonial hierarchies. He critiques neoliberal geopolitics as a continuation of colonial systems, producing genocide, ethnocide, ecocide, and memoricide. The essay references Achille Mbembe, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ta-Nehisi Coates to analyze how racial difference underpins imperial projects. Ndikung suggests de-othering requires a new ethics of responsibility, moving beyond rigid binaries. He draws on Walter Benjamin's 'second technique'—a playful, non-dominating relationship with nature—and Novalis's image of a circle of people sitting on each other's laps to envision an open system of differences. The method aims to foster new subjectivities and imagine a post-national politics, responding to the fundamentalist turn of triumphant neoliberalism and Eurocentrism.