This thematic track considers the difference that place and locality make in the logic of disposability. Critical race theorists have long argued that racial formations are shaped both by geography and temporality and that the contours of racialized forms of power and the production of racial subjectivities cannot be assumed across differences of time and place. This track, then, takes seriously how the politics of place produce multiple logics of disposability that operate within and across various nation-states within the broader racial geography of the African diaspora. The seminar will invite scholars studying the logics of disposability in Brazil, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Mexico, Honduras, the United States and other nation-states and ask the following questions: What are the many logics of disposability that currently operate in the Americas? How have they historically been produced and normalized in these different locations? How are they informed by discourses of racial disposability that circulate transnationally and how are they mobilized in specific geopolitical contexts? What kinds of political models have disposable communities throughout the Americas produced to contend with multivalent narratives of disposability?How have these models been adapted and repurposed in other political contexts? What are the social,political, and cultural networks that disposable communities have developed to support hemispheric movements for racial and economic justice?
Featured image credit: Courtney Desiree Morris. “Sugar House Road,” Soil. (courtneydesireemorris.com)
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