Upcoming Race, Gender, and Justice Lectures
Monday, May 6, 2024
4pm in Filene Auditorium
José Medina, Northwestern University
"Counter-Communities, Uncivil Resistance and Queer Epistemic Activism"
Abstract: "This talk will argue that the fight against stigmatizing forms of social exclusion requires uncivil resistance and participation in a community whose counter-practices prefigure a new sensibility and the abolition of unjust social arrangements. I argue that, when confronting stigmatizing taboos, protests must be uncivil in order to confront (and transform) sensibilities through epistemic and affective friction. I argue that a central part of the task of uncivil resistance is what I call epistemic activism, which consists in subversive practices that resist stigmatizing silences and deploy epistemic and affective friction against dominant sensibilities. The talk will focus on multiracial queer activism and the social silences that differently racialized queer activists fight. Examples will include the Cooper Do-nuts Riot of 1959 in L.A., the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City, and the visibility actions of Queer Nation in the 1990's."
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
4pm in 41 Haldeman
Lidal Dror, Princeton University
"Ignorance of and Indifference to the Deaths of Select Others"
Abstract: "While much concern has rightfully been expressed for Ukrainian civilians suffering as a result of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, many have noted that the level of concern expressed for Ukrainians exceeds that expressed for civilians, particularly non-white civilians, who die in other conflicts. This talk attempts to offer an explanation of the disparate concern Westerners have for civilians who die in different wars abroad. I consider two attempts to explain the disparate concern in terms of racism; first a more interpersonal understanding of racism as racist animus, and then a more structural explanation in terms of 'white ignorance'. I ultimately argue that trying to understand the disparate concern evinced for different civilian causalities primarily in terms of racism is mistaken, and that an adequate explanation of Western attitudes must be grounded on an account of imperialist interests."