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Podcast Series

Date: July 2020

This podcast forms part of a series of conversations organised by doctoral fellows at the University of Potsdam’s Research Training Group minor cosmopolitanisms.

In this two-part series Hannah Vögele, Kathleen Samson, and Yael Attia co-hosted a conversation between Dr. Vanessa Thompson, based at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt , and Dr. Sara Salem based at LSE. They brought their interests in decolonial studies, critical race theory, travelling theories and the articulations of race in Europe together in a co-written article titled “Old Racisms, New Masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts”, and it was thrilling for Hannah, Kathleen, and Yael to be able to talk with them about their academic work and practice.

"Erased in Translation" Podcast Episode-1

  • https://soundcloud.com/user-803562991/erased-in-translation-podcast-episode-1

  • The “Erased in Translation” series shines light on how when race is addressed in Europe there is a logic of locating it as something that happens “over there”, or “back then”. In episode 1 we focus on the “over there”, discussing travelling theory, untranslatability and US centricity in academic research. We challenge dominant narratives by pointing to specific articulations of racism, and talk about ways of resisting and creating anew in and beyond the academy.  

REFERENCES (PODCAST EPISODE-1)

Primary article:
Salem, Salem, Thompson, Vanessa. (2016). Old racisms, New masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts. nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal, 3(1). Retrieved from escholarship.org/uc/item/98p8q169

Organisations & initiatives

Authors and Books/Texts

Colonial aphasia/amnesia; white innocence

  • Stoler, Ann Laura (2011). Colonial Aphasia: Race and Disabled Histories in France. Public Culture, 23 (1), 121–156. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2010-018
  • Gilroy, Paul (2005). Postcolonial melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press
  • Wekker, Gloria (2016). White innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham: Duke University Press

Working and writing transnationally

ADEFRA e. V. - Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland ist ein kulturpolitisches Forum von und für Schwarze Frauen/ ADEFRA e. V. - Black Women in Germany is a cultural and political forum by and for Black women

Travelling theory and the stretching of concepts

  • Fanon, Frantz (1963). The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press.
  • Salem, Sara (2019). ‘Stretching’ Marxism in the Postcolonial World, Historical Materialism, 27(4), 3-28. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-00001840

Pitfalls of comparison

  • David Theo Goldberg (2009) Racial comparisons, relational racisms: some thoughts on method, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32:7, 1271-1282, DOI: 10.1080/01419870902999233

Working as activist-academic; tracing and listening

  • Haritaworn, Jin (2008). Shifting Positionalities: Empirical Reflections on a Queer/Trans of Colour Methodology. Sociological Research Online 13(1)13
  • Trouilliot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.
  • Kobayashi, Audrey, Mackenzie, Suzanne (2014). Remaking Human Geography. London: Routledge.

Policing

  • Thompson, Vanessa (2018) » There is no justice, there is just us!«: Ansätze zu einer postkolonial-feministischen Kritik der Polizei am Beispiel von Racial Profiling. In Loick, Daniel (ed.) Kritik der Polizei, 197-221. Frankfurt: Campus.

Additional resources from the longer conversation

Working with the archive

  • Saidiya Hartman
    • Saidiya Hartman; Venus in Two Acts. Small Axe 1 June 2008; 12 (2): 1–14. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1
    • Hartman, Saidiya (2019). Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. New York: Columbia University Press

Lived reality as theory production; activist & academic work

  • Combahee River Collective
    • The Combahee River Collective Statement 1977
  • Ella Baker
    • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

"Erased in Translation" Podcast Episode-2

  • https://soundcloud.com/user-803562991/erased-in-translation-podcast-episode-2

  • The “Erased in Translation” series shines light on how when race is addressed in Europe there is a logic of locating it as something that happens “over there”, or “back then”.  In this episode we flesh out the “back then” and take up the articulations of racism through the language of cultural difference and how this is connected to old religious racism in European histories and presents.

REFERENCES (PODCAST EPISODE-2)

Primary article:
Salem, Salem, Thompson, Vanessa. (2016). Old racisms, New masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts. nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal, 3(1). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98p8q169

Authors and Books/Texts

Race and Culture/ The new racism 

  • Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks. Grove press, 2008.
  • Balibar, Etienne, Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, and Senior Researcher Immanuel Wallerstein. Race, nation, class: Ambiguous identities. Verso, 1991.
  • Gilroy, Paul. Against race: Imagining political culture beyond the color line. Harvard University Press, 2000.
  • Hall, Stuart. The fateful triangle. Harvard University Press, 2017.
  • Hall, Stuart. "Race, articulation, and societies structured in dominance." Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader (1996b): 16-60.
  • Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Vol. 2. Sage, 1997.
  • Fanon, Franz. "Speech to Congress of Black African Writers." Wretched of the Earth (1959).
  • Aydin, Cemil. The idea of the Muslim world. Harvard University Press, 2017

Racism and Anti-Semitism

  • Arendt, Hannah. The origins of totalitarianism. Vol. 244. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973.
  • Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Transl. by Joan Pinkham. Monthly Review Press, 1972

Little Rock

  • Arendt, Hannah. "Reflections on little rock." Dissent 6.1 (1959): 45-56.

Race critical analysis in context

  • Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. 1981.
  • Davis, Angela Y. "Women in Egypt: A Personal View." Women, Culture, and Politics (1990): 116-54.
Erased in Translation
Photo: Erased in Translation

Conversations by: 

Dr. Vanessa Thompson (Goethe Universität in Frankfurt), and Dr. Sara Salem (LSE)

Bio:

Dr. Vanessa Thompson and Dr. Sara Salem brought their interests in decolonial studies, critical race theory, travelling theories and the articulations of race in Europe together in a co-written article titled “Old Racisms, New Masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts."

Organized by:

This podcast forms part of a series of conversations organised by doctoral fellows at the University of Potsdam’s Research Training Group minor cosmopolitanisms. Hannah Vögele, Kathleen Samson, and Yael Attia co-hosted the conversation.

Erased in Translation
Photo: Erased in Translation