Invitation: 'On Race, Species and Becoming Human, an Evening with Zakiyyah Iman Jackson' @ Kaaitheater (online) 25 March, 8-9.30PM CET

Mariska Jung Discussion

Dear all,

 

You are hereby warmly invited to attend an online conversation with Zakiyyah Iman Jackson on her book Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, to be held on March 25 from 8-9.30PM CET.

 

In her thought-provoking book (NYU Press, 2020) Jackson scrutinizes key African American, African and Caribbean cultural texts. She argues they generate conceptions of ‘being’ that disrupt the human-animal distinction that persistently reproduces the racial logics and orders of Western thought. Unlike most black studies scholars, Jackson questions the emancipatory promise of ‘humanization’. Instead, she turns to texts by leading scholars and writers like Sylvia Wynter, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler and others. She uses their work to drive a creation of a new understanding of being that neither relies on animal abjection to define the human, nor reestablishes the need to be recognized as ‘proper human’ within liberal humanism as an antidote to racialization.

 

The event is an initiative from the Race and Research Network at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) to highlight the International Day Against Racism earlier that week. It is organized in cooperation with RHEA and Crosstalks at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Race-Religion Constellation Project at Radboud Universiteit (the Netherlands) and Kaaitheater in Brussels (Belgium). Tickets are available on a sliding scale from free till 10 euros depending on your financial situation. For more information and to get your tickets, please go to https://www.kaaitheater.be/nl/agenda/on-race-species-and-becoming-human.

 

 

 

 

MARISKA JUNG (she/her)

PhD candidate

Department of Political Sciences

mariska.jung@vub.be twitter @mariska_jung

Pleinlaan 5, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

 

With best wishes,

Mariska Jung