On June 7th 2020, a group of Black demonstrators scaled a statue of King Leopold II in Brussels, Belgium and brandished the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; chanting one word repeatedly: “Reparations”. Such demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism are occurring across multiple scales and locales, in various forms, and have intensified in the context of the global movement for Black Lives. An increasing number of institutions, NGO’s and even states are responding to reparations demands: sometimes by acknowledging their moral legitimacy, rarely by addressing their material merits.
This webinar series investigates the significance of a global turn towards demands for reparatory justice for slavery and colonialism, and probes the terms upon which reparations would be capable of both enacting repair and accounting for social inequality in capitalist, white supremacist, and settler colonial contexts. Acknowledging the global implications of racialized forms of oppression, the series prioritizes an international framing of the question of reparatory justice and asks us to ponder the possibilities and the impossibilities of reparations for slavery and colonialism: What is the relationship between reparatory justice and the possibility of the abolition of the carceral state? What could material reparations for histories of colonialism and enslavement look like, how might they be adjudicated and administered? What is the relationship between claims for reparation, studies of repair, and liberal progressive state logics?
Click here to register. Please note that your registration will sign you up for all of the webinars in the series. If you have any questions about this event, please email [email protected]
Program:
Wednesday March 17th; 1-3pm EDT
Welcome by Howard Rechavia-Taylor and Anna Schirrer, Professor David Scott
Keynotes in conversation: Katherine Franke (Columbia University) and Jovan Scott Lewis (Berkeley)
Monday March 22nd; 1-3pm EDT
Reparations on a Global Scale
Ralph Wilde (University College London) “Colonial Justice in International Law”
Vasuki Nesiah (New York University) “Colonialism and (International) Law”
Ahmed Reid (Bronx, CUNY) "Garvey’s 1920 Declaration: Rights and Reparations"
Discussant: Keston Perry (UWE Bristol)
Wednesday March 24th; 1-3pm EDT
Epistemologies of Repair
Zaira Simone (Graduate Center, City University of New York) “Reading Caribbean Visions of Repair”
Nicole Immler (University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht) “What is Meant by ‘Repair’ when Claiming
to Repair Colonial Wrongs?”
Jovan Scott Lewis (UC Berkeley) “Criminal Repair”
Discussant: Roseline Armange (U of Michigan)
Monday March 29th; 1-3pm EDT
Reparations within and beyond the Law
Yukiko Koga (Yale University )“Post-imperial Reckoning: The Unmaking of Empire and
Transitional Injustice in East Asia”
Howard Rechavia-Taylor (Columbia University) “Refusing Reparations and the Creation of the
Bilateral Event”
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) “Reparations and Climate Justice?”
Anna Schirrer (Columbia University) “Reparative Reason: Multiple Epistemologies of
Redress”
Discussant: Aparna Gopalan (Harvard)
Wednesday March 31st; 1-3pm EDT
Ecologies of Repair
Carter Mathes (Rutgers University)
Andrea Baldwin (Virginia Tech University) “Reparatory Justice and Caribbean Women at the
Vanguard of Change within the Diaspora"
Natasha Mortley (University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston Jamaica) “Caribbean women and
reparatory justice: Reclaiming, rebuilding and restoring communities through migration”
Laura Bini Carter (The Graduate Center, City University of New York) "Reconnaissance -
Reparations - Reconciliation : triptych for a more just Guadeloupe?"
Discussant: Alyssa James (Columbia)
Monday April 5th; 1-3pm EDT
Colonial Reckoning
Cresa Pugh (Harvard University )“The Afterlife of Cultural Death: On the Promise of Restitution
for the Benin Bronzes”
Lyndsey Beutin (McMaster University) “Slavery in Africa’ and Other Tired Tropes: How Anti-trafficking
Rhetoric Undermines Reparations Organizing"
Roseline Armange (University of Michigan) "Racial Terminology, Positionality, and Reparations
in the Francophone Caribbean"
Discussant: Laura Bini Carter (GC, CUNY)
