Theorizing Blackness: A Genealogy of Radical Thought in the Black World

3 units

What are the discurvise histories and futures of blackness? Taking as its point of departure this question, the advanced-level course sets out to investigate the genealogies of black critical studies and their theoretical implications on how we talk about race, gender, nationality, and political resistance. We will explore such topics as the formation of racism and blackness, the cartographies of black resistance, Afropessimism, and the critiques of historical constructions of blackness as an analytic of history. Our interlocutors include such central figures to black studies as Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon, Saidiya Hartman et al, but also more recent scholarship that aims to further complicate our study of blackness - Zakiyah Jackson, Kevin Quashie, and others.