What would it mean to rethink the human beyond the limits of colonial modernity? How must we, as Frantz Fanon called us to do, “turn over a new leaf”? This conversation brings together Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Felwine Sarr to explore the possibility of a planetary humanism grounded in decolonial thought. Moving beyond dominant Western conceptions of the human, they reflect on how philosophies emerging from histories of colonialism, struggle, and repair might help reimagine humanity, community, and our relationship to the planet.

Nelson Maldonado-Torres is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut (USA) and Professor Extraordinarious at the University of South Africa. He is also Co-Chair of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and Senior Associate of the BlackHouse Kollective-Soweto in South Africa. He has published extensively in decolonial philosophy, ethics and political theory, the theory of religion, the philosophy of race, and the theoretical foundations of ethnic studies. His recent work explores the concept of combative decoloniality, and can be found in chapters such as “Palestine, the War against Decolonization, and Combative Decoloniality” in the SAGE Handbook of Decolonial Theory (2025), and “Combative Decoloniality and the Abolition of the Humanities” in The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature (2025).

Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic and writer. He is a Professor of Romance Studies and African & African American Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after teaching at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he is Professeur Titulaire des Universités and agrégé in economics. His academic work focuses on economics, the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology and the history of religious ideas.