https://events.berkeley.edu/clacs/event/304711-christen-smith-a-blueprint-for-freedom-the-black-radi

Event description

Lecture

A Blueprint for Freedom: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento

Black radical intellectuals have long reflected on the question of freedom as an antidote to the condition of anti-Blackness in the Americas, looking to the past to discern potential pathways toward liberation — blueprints for freedom. This talk engages with the radical thought and political life of Black Brazilian intellectual Beatriz Nascimento as one such blueprint for freedom. Engaging with her theorizations of quilombo (marronage as it has been historically practiced in Brazil) as a product of and rejoinder to the historical context of authoritarianism in which she wrote, Smith considers what quilombo offers us today, and the role that translation can play in reshaping our understandings of the Black radical tradition in the Americas.

In addition to the lecture, Smith will also lead a two-hour mini-seminar on Friday, April 10, at 10 am. The mini seminar is open to Berkeley graduate students only; interested students should email jesus.gutierrez@berkeley.edu for consideration.

Mini Seminar

Towards a Black Feminist Methodology of Dialogic Translation

Epistemicide is a critical dimension of the cultural-political hegemony of the global North. The consolidation of power through imperialist politics of language obfuscates the intellectual contributions of scholars from the global South who write and speak in languages other than English. This is particularly the case for Black and Indigenous women, whose intellectual contributions are often rendered invisible at the intersection of imperialism, racism and sexism. Taking up this premise as a problem, this mini seminar considers the role that translation and dialogue might play in a radical approach to transnational Black feminism. Black Brazilian feminist philosopher Sueli Carneiro argues that the insurgent intellectual works against epistemicide by refusing the intellectual hegemony of the global North. For her, to “engage in civil disobedience and cite us [Black women in Latin America] rather than seeking our legitimacy in the references we are able to quote from the North…” is a radical act of defiance. Following that, this seminar engages dialogic translation as Black feminist methodology — considering the role that anti-hierarchical translation and dialogue can and does play in reorienting our minds away from the intellectual imperialism of the North-South towards an anti-colonial, disruptive, and insurgent intellectualism that is South-North.

Part of the CLACS Series New Vocabularies, New Grammars: Améfrica. Presented in collaboration with the Center for African Studies.

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