Approches critiques de la race - Global Blackness, Class Politics and the Dilemmas of Solidarity

Séminaire Approches critiques de la race / Critical Approaches to Race Seminar

Global Blackness, Class Politics and the Dilemmas of Solidarity 

by Joao Gabriel (John Hopkins University)

• Abstract 

I will analyze the limits of both the universalizing form of Blackness that conceptualizes a world approached solely through the Black/non-Black binary, and multiracial alliances formed against capitalism that tend to minimize the specificities of racial antagonisms and specifically anti-black racism. To be effective, these globalizing theories need to be anchored in specific contexts, and racism needs to be understood in relation to the international division of labor, leading to envisioning racial identities as an expression of class politics.

• Bio

Joao Gabriel is a Guadeloupean anti-colonial activist, writer, and Ph.D. student in History at Johns Hopkins University working on colonial imprisonment in 19th century French Caribbean. Before coming to Hopkins, he had lived in France for several years and had been a member of the United Front of Immigrants and Working-Class Neighborhoods in Marseille. He is now a member of an anti-border/pro-migration group in Guadeloupe. He has been writing (on his website "Le blog de Joao", and in several journals and magazines) on issues related to historical and present-day French imperialism in the Caribbean and West Africa, as well as the intersections between imperialism, sexuality, and gender.

Responsables scientifiques : Leila Mouhib – Alana Osbourne – Lena Terrando Kenza Talmat – Jean Illi – Marti Luntumbue

Infos et Inscriptions : jean.illi@ulb.be / marti.luntumbue@ulb.be