MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | RETHINKING NECROPOLITICS

Black Phoenix Rising: Death and Resurrection of Black Lives

SEPTEMBER 25 @ 6 P.M. | Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

In the face of violent anti-black forms of institutionalized racism, black people are forced to find new ways to refuse being killed. Yet, in the wake of successful racist killings, the deaths of black people take on new meanings that give life and hope to those who survive. The deaths of black people become sources of collective and symbolic power for the living. Positioning the Black Lives Matter Movement in the context of necropolitics helps renew our collective need to theorize the value and meaning of black lives within a deluge of death and disappearance in black communities. This movement is part of a broader intellectual tradition in black radical praxis that aims to transform scholarly, activist, and public discourse and public policies concerning anti-black racisms and the prospects for antiracist futures. By drawing on this broader tradition, this lecture envisions a black radical praxis that simultaneously recognizes how black people resist death and transform symbolic meanings of death in ways that push back against anti-black racisms.