Join the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs on Zoom for two inaugural events in a series of interventions organized by the Critical South book series. These events will put two recently published books on Blackness and decoloniality into timely conversation with our current political moment.
Tuesday, June 16
10:00 am PDT / 7:00 pm SAST
The Black Register, a conversation with Tendayi Sithole (University of South Africa), Victoria Collis-Buthelezi (University of Johannesburg), and Thabang Monoa (University of Johannesburg), moderated by David Theo Goldberg (UC Irvine).
Tendayi Sithole’s The Black Register asks: how have Black thinkers confronted and made sense of a world structured by anti-Blackness, a world that militates against the very existence of Blacks? Sithole undertakes a critical interrogation into the work of Sylvia Wynter, Aimé Césaire, Steve Biko, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, and Mabogo P. More to develop a critical perspective from which to confront worlds that are systematically structured to dehumanize. The “Black register” is the ways of thinking, knowing, and doing that emerge from the struggles against anti-Blackness and that dwell in the lived experience of being Black in an anti-Black world.
Register here to receive a personalized Zoom link to join the webinar.
Thursday, June 18
10:00 am PDT / 7:00 pm CET
Resolutely Black, a conversation with Françoise Vergès (Independent Scholar, Paris), Matthew Smith (Northern Illinois University), and Donna Jones (UC Berkeley), moderated by Karl Britto (UC Berkeley).
Resolutely Black takes the form of a series of interviews with Aimé Césaire that were conducted by Françoise Vergès shortly before his death. Their conversations take up questions around the origins of Césaire’s political activism, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, reparations, and tensions between literature and politics. Who should be considered a citizen of a nation? Should a state recognize slavery as a crime against humanity? What role did the colonies and their inhabitants play in the modernization of metropolitan centers? These conversations around race and coloniality are ones we must urgently return to in order to dismantle all forms of anti-Blackness.
Register here to receive a personalized Zoom link to join the webinar.
Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the UC Berkeley Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information, contact icctpbooks@berkeley.edu.