Black Studies in/from the Southern Hemisphere, towards a Global Frame
Victoria Collis-Buthelezi
Associate Professor of English and Director of the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class, University of Johannesburg; ICCTP Visiting Scholar
In a chapter entitled “Fanonian Futures,” David Scott points to the difference between the (Frantz) Fanon text that has resonated the most in the Northern Hemisphere — Black Skin, White Masks — and that which seemed most widely read in the South — The Wretched of the Earth, most especially “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness.” The first centers the individual coming into awareness of themselves as a racialized being within a largely white society. The second points to the problem of the political elite and untransformed state in newly independent, majority Black countries. With Scott’s insight on the different Fanons, this seminar serves as a space for thinking through what it means to study Blackness within a global frame rather than a national one, given these divergences between the Global North and the South as spaces of Black Studies and lived experiences, as well as their points of connection.
Victoria Collis-Buthelezi is director of the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender, and Class at the University of Johannesburg. Her research interests are Caribbean studies, African and African diaspora literature, and black intellectual and literary history. Her current book project, Before Nation, excavates black globalism in Cape Town at the dawn of the twentieth century and its investments in empire thinking. She co-edits with Natalia Brizuela and Leticia Sabsay the Critical South Book Series (Polity).
Advance Registration for the seminar is required. To register and receive readings, please contact info.ictconsortium@berkeley.edu.
Presented by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
Share this Post