Race and the Academy: A Discussion
Goldsmiths College
June 20, 4-6pm, New Academic Building, LG01
Free, register with s.ahmed@gold.ac.uk
Chaired by Sara Ahmed (Media and Communications, Goldsmiths)
Panel Speakers:
Joan Anim-Addo (Centre for Caribbean Studies, Goldsmiths)
Denise Ferreira da Silva (Centre for Ethics & Politics, Queen Mary)
Nirmal Puwar (Sociology, Goldsmiths)
We will ask how whiteness is institutionalised and discuss the
difficulties and challenges of ‘embodying diversity’. We will aim to
account for the political labour entailed in describing the morphing
contours of the dynamics of ‘race’. We will work from the position that
all racialised bodies can’t be placed on a flat playing field. Conditions
of privilege are differentiated. There is an inter-play between conditions
of inclusion and exclusion. Thus it is absolutely vital to be cognisant to
how marginality itself is claimed and embedded in global circuits of
productivity. The relationship between multiculturalism and institutions
has shifted to including visible markers of difference, whilst at the same
time obfuscating the continued institutional privileges of whiteness. We
will try to name just a few of the issues in the contemporary racialised
space of the academy, whilst trying to side step becoming the problem. The
panel will signal how the arsenal of social and political thought we have
at our disposal can provide a reflexive aid for strategies and tactics for
inhabiting and transforming institutional worlds.
The discussion is open to all academics, practitioners, activists and
students interested in anti-racist theory and practice. However numbers
are restricted: if you would like to attend please email
s.ahmed@gold.ac.uk by May 25th.
After the panel discussion there will be a launch of Sara Ahmed’s new book
On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Duke
University Press, 2012) in the Atrium, New Academic Building, from 6.30
pm. The launch will include comments from Heidi Mirza (Institute of
Education).
This event is co-organised by Media and Communications and Sociology
Methods Lab, Goldsmiths College.
