Events

"Animality and Fugitive Humanism in Nineteenth-Century African America"

Lindgren Johnson
University of Virginia

In this talk I will discuss my recent book, Race Matters, Animal Matters (Routledge 2018), where I argue for a critical African American tradition that at pivotal moments reconsiders and recuperates discourses of animality weaponized against both African Americans and animals. I articulate a theory of “fugitive humanism” in which these texts, at pivotal moments, flee the “human” exceptionalism in which white supremacy is embedded. Fugitive humanism, in thinking within animality and not from the purview of the human, conceives black liberation as one necessarily in intimate alliance with nonhuman animals, providing prophetic frameworks for panoramic liberation, both human and animal, and current vegan theory.

Brian Boyd (co-chair)
Na’ama Harel  (co-chair)
Evin Grody (rapporteur)