This introductory session will provide a critical framework for thinking through relations between class, race, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism and fascism. It will use the notion of 'racial capitalism' (as discussed by Robin D. G. Kelley and others) to think through 'race' as a contingent historical phenomenon, related to class, labour, ‘surplus’ and capital.
In contradistinction to liberal and apolitical anti-racist discourses which paradoxically essentialise race, the study session will also seek to emphasise that racialisation is an historical process enacted on people and that the ultimate object of anti-racist struggle is the abolition of 'race' as a definitive category of being, just as the object of class struggle is the abolition of ‘class’, a classless society.
We will look to examples of anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles which have sought to overcome race and have created space for hope and and the affirmation of life.
Some of the thinkers evoked in this introduction will include Robin D. G. Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, A Sivanadan, Joshua Virasami, Emma Dabiri, Arun Kundnani, Stuart Hall, Ghassan Kanafani and others
Participants will be encouraged to contribute to a shared resource for anti-racist organising.
Free or Pay what you can. Email me for a free spot - hussmitha@gmail.com
All welcome.
Hussein Mitha (they/them) is an independent researcher, and writer who lives in Glasgow.
