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Racial Biopolitics, Black Futurity

Class at Faculty of Humanities |
YMGS639

Syllabus

The full course syllabus and the first readings will be available in the first week of the semester. Sessions will consist of short lectures, student led discussions and classroom excercises. Course requirements include leading the discussion, a short response papers and a term paper.

Block I (6.10.2023): White Innocence and the In/visibilities of Racial Formations

Block II (3.11.2023): Gender, Racial Schemas and Premature Death

Block III (24.10.2023): Silence and Absences in the Archive

Block IV (15.12.2023): Racial and gendered Trans/Formations and Utopias

Recommended Literature

Mbembe, Achille (2019) Necro-Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.  

Judith Butler (2003) Endangered/Endangering:schematic racism and white paranoia.  

Yasmin Gunartnam (2013) Death and the Migrant. London: Bloomsbury.  

Wekker, Gloria 2016 White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham: Duke University Press.  

Annotation

This course introduces students into the racial structuring of contemporary societies that purport to foster equality including their bio- and necropolitics, the forgotten places of slow death and white innocence. Of particular interest are questions of how we can take account of histories and experiences that are not integrated into historical discourses or archives, and what forms of futurity might inhere in these histories and everyday practices and sensations.