How Does Black Life Matter to How We Understand Urban Life
AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield)
2.10. 2024, 17.00 Uhr
Raum S26, Seminargebäude, Universität zu Köln
Premise that black people, across different geographies and political histories have inhabited urban spaces and contributed to urbanization processes in ways that remain unprecedented and unparalleled. With vernaculars, social and temporal orientations, and techne that have had to navigate the tricky conundrum of black people attempting to insert themselves into what passes as the normative ethos and demeanors of urban life—whose affordances have been largely foreclosed or distributed unevenly—while simultaneously refusing to “normalize” themselves according to the structures of power and codes that have subjugated them. In these volatile, often ephemeral interstices, emerges the materialization of distinctive ways of being urban that are constantly recalibrated, yet constitute a living archive whose sensibilities are constantly being ignored, repressed or co-opted.
AbdouMaliq Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow Emeritus at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, co-director of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab, Polytechnic University of Turin, and Visiting Professor, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. His most recent book is The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture, Duke University Press 2022.
The lecture is part of the program of the GSSC-Thematic Area South-South Relations: Engaging with New Constellations and Dynamics in the Global Souths