Munro Lecture - 'Surrender: The death of the west, Caribbean world-building, and the future of us all' Sovereignty has become something of a disavowed category among those committed to Black thriving. How can one imagine sovereignty in a context in which the specter of Black death on the plantation remains an ordinary parameter for organizing social and economic value? How can one enact self-determination when new forms of dispossession are continuously rewritten over earlier removals and displacements? Image These questions suffuse our engagements with notions of freedom, liberation, and justice, and seem to negate the possibility of sovereignty in Black life, insofar as sovereignty remains tethered to the state, or to the parameters of its institutions. For many of us, however, a particular understanding of what we might term collective self-making or world-building – something sometimes popularly glossed as “sovereignty” – remains a discursively pertinent frame, insofar as it speaks to the necessity of living outside of but in relation to the juridical structures that govern modern Western political and social life. In this talk, Professor Thomas will argue that reaching toward a sovereignty “otherwise” requires that we plumb other terms that might afford a clearer articulation of the histories and futures of (in this case) Caribbean freedom, building from from Caribbean theoretical genealogies to posit “possession” as a kind of companion term to sovereignty, one that both aligns with and disrupts imperialist and nationalist aspirations, and one that will ultimately lead us to another term, “surrender,” which can attune us to relations of repetition, recovery, return, and repair. Thinking through surrender can provide a way to envision a mode of relational sovereignty that is unanchored to a state and untethered to masculinist notions of revolution and human-ness, and that is instead constituted through iterative practice and grounded in decolonial love and accountability. This event will be followed by a drinks reception. Deborah A. Thomas Image Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Research Associate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. Her recent book, 'Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair,' was awarded the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association in 2021, the Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society in 2020, and was also the runner-up for the Gregory Bateson Prize in the same year. She is also the author of 'Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica' (2011), and 'Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004). She is co-editor of the volumes Sovereignty Unhinged: An Illustrated Primer for the Study of Present Intensities, Disavowals, and Temporal Derangements (2023), Citizenship on the Edge: Sex, Gender, Race' (2022); 'Changing Continuities and the Scholar-Activist Anthropology of Constance R. Sutton' (2022); and 'Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness' (2006). Thomas co-directed and co-produced the documentary films 'Bad Friday', and 'Four Days in May', and she is the co-curator of a multi-media installation titled 'Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston', which was on view at the Penn Museum from November 2017 to October 2020. From 2016-2020, Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of 'American Anthropologist', the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and she is currently the co-chair of the AAA Commission on the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains. Prior to Thomas’s life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women. Apr 06 2023 17.15 - 19.30 Munro Lecture - 'Surrender: The death of the west, Caribbean world-building, and the future of us all' Professor Deborah A. Thomas will deliver the next Munro Lecture on 6th April, 2023. Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 1, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE Find venue Register (free)
Munro Lecture - 'Surrender: The death of the west, Caribbean world-building, and the future of us all' Sovereignty has become something of a disavowed category among those committed to Black thriving. How can one imagine sovereignty in a context in which the specter of Black death on the plantation remains an ordinary parameter for organizing social and economic value? How can one enact self-determination when new forms of dispossession are continuously rewritten over earlier removals and displacements? Image These questions suffuse our engagements with notions of freedom, liberation, and justice, and seem to negate the possibility of sovereignty in Black life, insofar as sovereignty remains tethered to the state, or to the parameters of its institutions. For many of us, however, a particular understanding of what we might term collective self-making or world-building – something sometimes popularly glossed as “sovereignty” – remains a discursively pertinent frame, insofar as it speaks to the necessity of living outside of but in relation to the juridical structures that govern modern Western political and social life. In this talk, Professor Thomas will argue that reaching toward a sovereignty “otherwise” requires that we plumb other terms that might afford a clearer articulation of the histories and futures of (in this case) Caribbean freedom, building from from Caribbean theoretical genealogies to posit “possession” as a kind of companion term to sovereignty, one that both aligns with and disrupts imperialist and nationalist aspirations, and one that will ultimately lead us to another term, “surrender,” which can attune us to relations of repetition, recovery, return, and repair. Thinking through surrender can provide a way to envision a mode of relational sovereignty that is unanchored to a state and untethered to masculinist notions of revolution and human-ness, and that is instead constituted through iterative practice and grounded in decolonial love and accountability. This event will be followed by a drinks reception. Deborah A. Thomas Image Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Research Associate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. Her recent book, 'Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair,' was awarded the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association in 2021, the Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society in 2020, and was also the runner-up for the Gregory Bateson Prize in the same year. She is also the author of 'Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica' (2011), and 'Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004). She is co-editor of the volumes Sovereignty Unhinged: An Illustrated Primer for the Study of Present Intensities, Disavowals, and Temporal Derangements (2023), Citizenship on the Edge: Sex, Gender, Race' (2022); 'Changing Continuities and the Scholar-Activist Anthropology of Constance R. Sutton' (2022); and 'Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness' (2006). Thomas co-directed and co-produced the documentary films 'Bad Friday', and 'Four Days in May', and she is the co-curator of a multi-media installation titled 'Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston', which was on view at the Penn Museum from November 2017 to October 2020. From 2016-2020, Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of 'American Anthropologist', the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and she is currently the co-chair of the AAA Commission on the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains. Prior to Thomas’s life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women. Apr 06 2023 17.15 - 19.30 Munro Lecture - 'Surrender: The death of the west, Caribbean world-building, and the future of us all' Professor Deborah A. Thomas will deliver the next Munro Lecture on 6th April, 2023. Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 1, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE Find venue Register (free)
Apr 06 2023 17.15 - 19.30 Munro Lecture - 'Surrender: The death of the west, Caribbean world-building, and the future of us all' Professor Deborah A. Thomas will deliver the next Munro Lecture on 6th April, 2023.
