UW English professor Habiba Ibrahim discusses her new book, "Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life" (NYU Press, 2021) with Stephanie Smallwood (History, UW) and Margo Natalie Crawford (English, University of Pennsylvania). Along with several other books and publications, Stephanie Smallwood is author of "Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora" (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Margo Natalie Crawford of "Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics" (University of Illinois Press, 2017). Due to technical difficulties, the generous commentary and opening by Elliott Bay Books at the beginning is trimmed from this recording.
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Synopsis of "Black Age" by NYU Press:
Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time and time again, excuses for police brutality and aggression-particularly against Black children- concern the victim "appearing" as a threat. But why and how is the perceived "appearance" of Black persons so completely separated from common perceptions of age and time?
Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with regard to the history of transatlantic slavery. Focusing on Black literary culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Habiba Ibrahim examines how the history of transatlantic slavery and the constitution of modern Blackness has been reimagined through the embodiment of age. She argues that Black age-through nearly four centuries of subjugation- has become contingent, malleable, and suited for the needs of enslavement.
As a result, rather than the number of years lived or a developmental life stage, Black age came to signify exchange value, historical under-development, timelessness, and other fantasies borne out of Black exclusion from the human.
Ibrahim asks: What constitutes a normative timeline of maturation for Black girls when "all the women"-all the canonically feminized adults-"are white"? How does a "slave" become a "man" when adulthood is foreclosed to Black subjects of any gender? Black Age tracks the struggle between the abuses of Black exclusion from Western humanism and the reclamation of non-normative Black life, arguing that, if some of us are brave, it is because we dare to live lives considered incomprehensible within a schema of "human time."
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The Simpson Center for the Humanities is a proud co-sponsor of this event. Captioning was provided through 3Play Media services. Video editing was provided by Communications Manager at the Simpson Center, C. R. Grimmer.
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17 окт 2024
