Afro-Pessimism and the Ruse of Analogy

The Department of Political Science invites you to a plenary talk by:

Frank B. Wilderson, III

Plenary Talk 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Workshop 10:30 am – 12:30 pm

Registration is required for the Workshop only

The talk: The expanding field of Afro-Pessimism elaborates a paradigmatic critique of the Human that reckons civil society’s perverse and parasitic relation to the hydraulics of anti-Black violence. This talk will explain how this regime of anti-Black violence elaborates and positions Black people as internal enemies of civil society; and why an anti-Black regime of violence cannot be analogized with the regimes of violence that elaborate and position the Gramscian subaltern, the postcolonial subaltern, the coloured but non-Black Western immigrant, and even the non-Black woman.

The workshop: Frank B. Wilderson, III will screen his film Reparations Now and lead a discussion revolving around it and selected readings

Frank B. Wilderson, III is an award-winning writer, activist, and critical theorist who spent five and a half years in South Africa, where he was one of two Americans to have held an elected office in the African National Congress during the country’s transition from apartheid. He also worked clandestinely as a member of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK).

With thanks to Women & Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto and York University sponsors: Political Science, Humanities, African Studies, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, and The Harriet Tubman Institute