If there ever was a time to read together, to run our fingers through the unlaminated pages of human longings, to revisit the scorched landscapes of our contested concepts and disagreements, to linger in the devilish spaces between the lines, it is now. Now in the sweltering heat of breakdown. Now in the thick flames pluming from the once-shiny machines of justice. Now at the edges in the middle.
Join us on Thursday, May 25 (7:00 AM - 9:00 AM PT / 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM BST / 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM CET) for a global reading event dedicated to the exploration of liminal and generative concepts in Dr. Bayo Akomolafe's essay, "Black Lives Matter: But to whom? Why We Need a Politics of Exile in a Time of Troubling Stuckness.” The event, a partnering between the Democracy and Belonging Forum at the Othering and Belonging Institute and Ijeruka, facilitated by author and scholar Professor Erin Manning, will be a co-exploration of the concepts of radical hope and black mattering, grounded by a reading of Dr. Akomolafe's essay. We will be anchored for flight, not for scarcity; our shared questions will work with unusual propositions: that Blackness is a stabilizing force, a province of the white gaze, a "natureculture" (or "a nature") that produces carcerality and some openings towards inclusivity; that while matters of representation cannot be sidestepped, we need a different kind of creativity to address the racial-geological impasses and gridlocks of our time; that there might be something else, something beyond the lines drawn, that calls into effect new bodily arrangements.
Click here to register for free. Participants will be sent the essay ahead of time, along with the guiding questions.
