'LIFE IN MARVELOUS TIMES': CULTURAL WORK IN THE RACIAL PRESENT
A Race/Knowledge Project Conference, Friday, May 14, 2010
Keynote address by Vijay Prashad, Thursday, May 13, 2010
The University of Washington, Seattle
EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 1, 2010
In the 2009 single â??Life in Marvelous Times,â?? Mos Def declares that
â??we are alive in amazing
times.â?? The lyrical images that follow those opening lines, the sleeve
artwork, and the fan-made
video Mos Def chose to represent the song suggest that the meaning of
â??marvelousâ?? and
â??amazingâ?? must be read as multiple; they must be read to mean both
â??excellentâ?? and â??greatâ?? but
also â??to cause wonder,â?? â??to astonish,â?? and â??to bewilder.â??
According to Mos Def, we must be
amazed and marvel at how â??basic survival requires super heroicsâ??; we
must be amazed and
marvel at the â??delicate heartsâ?? and â??diabolical minds,â?? at the
â??revelations, hatred, love and war.â??
Taking a cue from Mos Def, The Race/Knowledge Project understands the
racial present as one
of these marvelous times. This is a moment marked both by seemingly
intractable political
stalemates and by possibilities for large-scale transformation; by
dispossession, displacement
and unchecked accumulation and by new mobilities, movements and
coalitions which seek to
counter those formations; and by the incivility of political discourse
and by the widespread
acknowledgement of the fraudulent nature of those discourses and their
claim to represent
â??publicâ?? good. We marvel at the horror; we marvel at the possibility.
We marvel at the crisis,
the beauty, the apathy, and the critical potential.
This conference is premised on the understanding that cultural workers
like Mos Def help us to
comprehend and re-think these â??amazingâ?? and â??marvelous times.â?? We
especially marvel at how
literature, music, performance, film, television, visual art, and all
cultural production work to
theorize, actively (re)produce, and shape this racial present. Though
much cultural knowledge is
assumed to be theorized and disseminated through the academy, cultural
workers occupy
multiple locations that generate insightful and invaluable criticism of
these â??marvelous times.â??
Cultural work, then, allows us to ask different questions about political
identities, radical
coalitions, cultural/social critique, and political emancipation across
disciplines, institutional
boundaries, and the divisions constructed between â??activist,â??
â??academic,â?? and â??communityâ??
work. The broad questions driving this conference include: How does the
marvelous erupt in
culture and become politically meaningful? What counts as cultural work?
What are the
different ways cultural work addresses race, social justice, gender,
sexuality in an era of global
capitalism? What is the relationship between cultural production and
social mobilization?
The Race/Knowledge Project situates the concerns of this conference
within global histories of
decolonial struggle. In doing so, we position our inquiries within the
legacies of social struggles
that considered culture and cultural politics to be key vehicles of
institutional and political
contestation. In these terms, we recognize the university as a site of
racial dominance and
systemic inequality, as well as a terrain of social struggle. As such, we
understand that a critical
focus on culture asks us to not only challenge the content of academic
knowledge production, but
also its institutional rituals and forms. Understanding the conference
format as one such ritual of
knowledge production, we seek submissions that disrupt the line between
the study and
production of culture, and put into question both the forms and contents
with which we know our
â??marvelous times.â??
In addition to university faculty and graduate students, we strongly
encourage submissions from
undergraduate students, artists, performers and other cultural workers,
activists, and organizers,
both in and outside of the university, as well as from K-12 teachers.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:
cultural workers, cultural work and cultural politics in â??marvelous
timesâ??
race/racialization in its shifting articulations with gender, sexuality,
class, ethnicity,
nationality and transnationality
racism and anti-racist praxis in the context of â??neoliberal
multiculturalismâ?? and the
â??colorblind presentâ??
Women of Color and materialist feminisms and the work of culture
racial nationalisms and the state
migrations, the violence of borders, and border thinking
links between university sites, local/global activisms and performance
anticapitalist struggles in the racial present
racialized and gendered labor in regimes of â??globalizedâ?? capital
Queer of Color critique and cultural production
the prison-industrial complex, immiseration, and the â??new
abolitionismâ??
neocolonialism and decolonial struggle at â??homeâ?? and â??abroadâ??
intellectual and activist labor with/against academic work
racial democracy and fascism
state violences and social movements
whiteness, property, and (new) racial histories
Possible session formats may include but are not limited to:
critical dialogues/roundtables between cultural workers, activists,
academics, and
educators
performances and performance-based workshops
collaborative, multi-format presentations
facilitated workshops or dialogues on topics related to the above
readings followed by discussion
visual presentations, art installations or film screenings
short-format film plus interactive dialogue
paper presentations
workshops on anti-racist/anti-oppression pedagogy (community-based, K-12
and
university level)
planned collaborative reading and discussion of particular texts or
traditions
Please email proposals (of no more than 250 words) and equipment needs to
(rkp9 /at/ uw.edu)
The Race/Knowledge Project is sponsored by the Simpson Center for the
Humanities at the University of
Washington
_____________________________________________________
Jason Morse, Doctoral Candidate
English Department - Box 354330 - Seattle, WA - 98195
(jhmorse /at/ u.washington.edu)
www.simpsoncenter.org/rkp
