Philosophy as translation: A conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Villa Albertine and Emory University are delighted to welcome philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne to Atlanta for a conversation on philosophy, translation, and transatlantic dialogues, with Associate Professor of French and African Studies Subha Xavier.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a leading philosopher and public intellectual from Senegal. Professor Emeritus of French and Philosophy at Columbia University, he directed the Institute of African Studies for a decade. His work bridges African, Islamic, and European intellectual traditions, offering a vision of philosophy as a truly global, plural, and dialogical practice.

Author of numerous landmark books, Diagne has illuminated fields ranging from Islamic thought to African philosophy, postcolonial studies, and the history of ideas. His major works include Bergson Postcolonial: The Elan Vital in the Thought of Léopold Sédar Senghor and Muhammad Iqbal (2011), The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa (2016), Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition (2018), and Postcolonial Bergson (2019). More recently, he has reexamined universalism in In Search of Africa(s): Universalism and Decolonial Thought (2022), explored aesthetics and identity in African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude (2023), and developed a compelling theory of translation in From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation (2024).

For Diagne, translation is not merely a linguistic exercise but a philosophical act of hospitality—a way of making ideas travel across languages, cultures, and histories while preserving their multiplicity. In this spirit, he has consistently advocated for philosophy as a practice of openness, dialogue, and mutual transformation across traditions.

His contributions have been widely recognized: he received the Edouard Glissant Award in 2011, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, and in 2024 was named Chaire du Louvre in Paris.

This Atlanta conversation will be an opportunity to engage with one of today’s most inspiring thinkers, and to reflect on how philosophy, like translation, can serve as a bridge across cultures and worlds.