HOLBERG PRIZE WINNER: Achille Mbembe's books all revolve around how the people in post-colonial states are kept down and marginalized. But also about how democracy today does not work because threats, violence and murder keep people away from the public sphere, from debates, from being able to say what you think for fear of losing your job, being put in prison or killed.
MODERNIZATION: The Nigerian professor Olùfèmi Táíwò looks at power relations between the formerly colonized and colonialists. All states strive to adapt modern institutions to their own history, cultural context and ideological climate. But can the demand to decolonize the language become absurd?