Race and the Academy: A Discussion

Per chi è o sarà a Londra a giugno, di seguito la presentazione dell'incontro Race and the Academy: A Discussion (con Sara Ahmed,Joan Amin-Addo, Denise Ferreira da Silva e Nirmal Puwar) che si terrà al Goldsmiths College il prossimo 20 giugno. We will ask how whiteness is institutionalised and discuss the difficulties and challenges of ‘embodying diversity’. We will aim to account for the political labour entailed in describing the morphing contours of the dynamics of ‘race’. We will work from the position that all racialised bodies can’t be placed on a flat playing field. Conditionsof privilege are differentiated. There is an inter-play between conditions of inclusion and exclusion. Thus it is absolutely vital to be cognisant to how marginality itself is claimed and embedded in global circuits of productivity. The relationship between multiculturalism and institutions has shifted to including visible markers of difference, whilst at the same time obfuscating the continued institutional privileges of whiteness. We will try to name just a few of the issues in the contemporary racialised space of the academy, whilst trying to side step becoming the problem. The panel will signal how the arsenal of social and political thought we have at our disposal can provide a reflexive aid for strategies and tactics for inhabiting and transforming institutional worlds. The discussion is open to all academics, practitioners, activists and students interested in anti-racist theory and practice. However numbers are restricted: if you would like to attend please email:s.ahmed@gold.ac.uk