WhiteSpaces learning gatherings 2022 no.1

WhiteSpaces is a multidisciplinary globally connected initiative which aims to reframe understandings around supremacy, power, category, system, institutionalisation, oppression and domination so that these relations can be seen and exposed as real features of daily life.WhiteSpaces creates opportunities to challenge received narratives about power and oppression. It does this through a range of activity which includes audio, digital and live events, writings and information curating.

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WhiteSpaces  Learning Gatherings 2022 #1:  'The Fire that Time: Transnational Radicalism and the Sir George William Occupation'

This event is the first in a series of 'learning gatherings' being organised by the <a href="https://www.whitespaces.org.uk/initiatives" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">White Spaces Network</a> in 2022. We will have the great pleasure to welcome Ronald Cummings and Nalini Mohabir for a launch presentation and discussion around the new book they coedited The Fire That Time: Transnational Black Radicalism and the Sir George Williams Occupation (2022). Book summaryIn 1969, in one of the most significant black student protests in North American history, Caribbean students called out discriminatory pedagogical practices at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University), before occupying the computer center for two weeks. Upon the breakdown of negotiations, the police launched a violent crackdown as a fire mysteriously broke out inside the center and racist chants were hurled by spectators on the street. It was a heavily mediatized flashpoint in the Canadian civil rights movement and the international Black Power struggle that would send shockwaves as far as the Caribbean. Half a century later, we continue to grapple with the legacies of this watershed moment in light of current resistance movements such as Black Lives Matter, calls for reparations, or Rhodes Must Fall. How is the Sir George Williams "affair" remembered, forgotten, or contested? How is blackness included or occluded in decolonizing dialogues?The Fire That Time addresses those questions while it commemorates and reflects upon the transnational resonances of Black protest and radical student movements. Through several thoughtful essays, scholars examine the unfinished business of decolonization and its relationship to questions of pedagogy, institutional life and culture, and ongoing discussions about race and racism.<a href="https://blackrosebooks.com/products/cummings_mohabir-the-fire-that-time" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Please visit Black Rose Books for links to purchase and further info this includes access links to the Spotify playlist accompanying the text, to an interview on MA TV with the poet and Foreword contributor Kaie Kellough, and coeditor Nalini Mohabir and to the text via the Black Rose books online reader.</a>The coeditorsRonald Cummings is Associate Professor of Black Studies and African Diaspora Literatures at McMaster University, Hamilton (Ontario) and Nalini Mohabir is Assistant Professor of postcolonial geographies at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec). They are both member of the Protest and Pedagogy Collective.<a href="https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/re-examining-histories-of-black-and-queer-protest/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More about Ronald </a><a href="https://www.concordia.ca/faculty/nalini-mohabir.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More about Nalini </a>Event times: Universal Central Time/GMT: 16:00-17:30Eastern Time: 11:00-12:30European Central time : 17:00-18:30Joining links will be forwarded to those registered prior to the event. More about White Spaces Learning Gatherings The White Spaces learning gatherings are part of a process of learning and change through dialogue. These events are conceived and organised by Gaspard Rey and Shona Hunter. We are living and working in different countries and institutions and positioned differently in relation to the academy, whiteness and power. Both of us are stimulated to learn and grow in our antiracist practice through collective conversation between peers. These events build out of our experiences of being in dialogue across academic and other contexts.
We anticipate these gatherings taking place over these next months of 2022. The broad aim is to gather to learn with others who are engaging with ideas of global colonial whiteness in antiracism which challenge substantialist approaches to white identities. The purpose is to extend and create a network of support for our antiracist thinking and practice. Without making prior assumptions as to how and in what ways that might materialise.
For the moment, although this is open to discussion, we have proposed to call these meetings ‘learning gatherings’ even though they follow the series of masterclasses that took place in 2010-2013 organised by Say Burgin and other members of the Postgraduate arm of the White Spaces network. The ethos of the masterclasses held two aspects in tension. It was student led in an attempt to subvert the usual hierarchical dynamics of power and assumptions of expertise present in a masterclass model. Yet, it engaged with academic work and debate recognizing the specialist nature and contributions of conversations and activities going on in the academy in relation to supporting learning around whiteness as an orientation to power in the context of our contemporary global coloniality. We envisage continuing to work with these tensions rather than ignore the challenges that they produce in terms of power and process.In this new iteration of activity, we envision these gatherings as meeting points: places to invest in and (re)create a community rooted in intellectual, artistic, activist, academic dialogues around antiracist issues raised by contemporary forms of racialization, whiteness and racism across interconnected geographical locations. They will aim to promote dialogue, collaboration, discussion, presentation of works and practices engaging with the intersectional dynamics of power forming our global coloniality and especially with the current neoliberal flattening of antiracist politics.We see these meeting points as part of an undercommons (Moten and Harney, 2013), in the sense that they derive from the academy but can be seen as ways of negotiating a way through the growing material cultural and affective pressures catalyzed by the pandemic and experienced across a range of institutions, antiracist social movements and informal antiracist actions. Their format attempts to address the weight of racializing dynamics in academic and activist forms as well as the translation of this weight into modes of white consumption of antiracist energies (Michel, 2021) and forms of conservative politics.We hope that you’ll be interested in this project and that you’ll be able to join us for these sessions and then stay interested enough to engage further. <a href="https://www.whitespaces.org.uk/post/white-spaces-network-masterclasses-2010-2013" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More on the masterclasses</a><a href="https://www.whitespaces.org.uk/post/white-spaces-network-masterclasses-2010-2013" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a><a href="https://www.whitespaces.org.uk/initiatives" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More on the network</a><a href="https://www.unil.ch/ceg/home/menuinst/membres.html?url_params=-v_faculte=40-v_unite=245-v_personne=1237628-mode=fiche&amp;pubsIdParam=0c81d2f5bb864564849d1d6c0cf1dc08" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More on Gaspard </a><a href="https://www.whitespaces.org.uk/post/dr-shona-hunter" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">More on Shona</a>References Cummings, R. Mohabir, N. (Eds.) (2022). The Fire That Time: Transnational Black Radicalism and the Sir George Williams Occupation. Black Rose Books.Michel, N. (2021) « Doing good in blackface: a consuming story », Darkmatter Hub (Beta), vol.15. Online. URL: <a href="https://darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org/pub/0aclt8cj/release/1" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org/pub/0aclt8cj/release/1</a>Moten F. and Harney S. (2013). The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning &amp; Black Study. New York, Autonomedia.

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WhiteSpaces learning gatherings 2022 no.1

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