Philosophy Department Visiting Speaker Series Spring 2025 with Prof. Ajume Wingo

This is a special VSS talk, because it's also a crossover event co-hosted by our Center for Comparative Philosophy! 

Our speaker is Prof. Ajume Wingo from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His talk is "Apatherianism and Its Implications for Democracies in Post-Colonial African States." Please see the attached poster for more details. 

The talk will be March 7, from 12-1:30. It will he HYBRID, so you can join in person or online on Zoom (link on the poster). 

Abstract: 

What happens when people stop caring whether they’re governed at all? Democracy and civil society rely on the assumption that citizens care enough to vote, protest, or engage. Yet a new class of “Apatherians” simply doesn’t play the political game—neither rebelling against nor obeying authority but shrugging it off entirely. This presentation introduces the concept of Apatherianism as an indifference toward governance itself. Could this quiet refusal to participate shake democracy to its core—or liberate us from its constraints?

Bio: 

Professor Ajume Wingo is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he specializes in political philosophy, ethics, and leadership. He is the author of Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States, work that explores the delicate balance between cultural identity and individual rights in multicultural societies. He is presently working on a book manuscript entitled "In the Shade of Power: The Paths to Power" and on a paper on a new political phenomenon he's christened "Apatherianism", an attitude that treats government as an external force that is irrelevant to the fundamental experience of being human.