A seat at the table? Reflections on Black geographies and the limits of dialogue

Abstract

This commentary uses the Black Geographies Symposium, held at UC Berkeley from October 11-12, 2017, as a point of departure to discuss the political and intellectual limits of calls for dialogue. We focus specifically on the historical exclusion of Black scholars and Black thought from human geography and understand the academy as a site for the reproduction of epistemic violence against women and people of color. Calls for dialogue within the academy that neglect to consider historically sedimented power relations—including human geography’s own entanglement with colonialism and racism—therefore commit the grave error of substituting equity for true justice. We argue instead for nonhierarchical and nonlinear modes of study that can attend to the complex geographical itineraries and interconnected struggles that continue to shape our understandings of the relations of capitalism, racism, and sexism structuring the modern world. Specifically, an intellectual praxis that begins from a place of Black humanness can enable us to tap into a wider epistemological network, one that refutes cursory lip service to Black scholarship and engages deeply with its consequences for our political and intellectual interactions.

Black matters are spatial matters: Black geographies for the twenty‐first century

“…Questions of praxis—in other words, the idea that theory and political practice are inextricably intertwined—are central to Black geographic scholarship. For that reason, any account of the field of Black Geographies must also take into consideration the history of the discipline of geography, as well as the material conditions of possibility that shape intellectual labor in the academy (Hawthorne & Heitz, ). Darden & Terra's report on the under‐representation of Black geographers in institutions of higher education (Darden & Terra, ), as well as Pulido's powerful reflections on the study of race within a “white discipline” (Pulido, ), point to the structural context into which Black Geographies intervenes…”

Throwing our bodies against the white background of academia

“…As I have written elsewhere, I am wary of how “‘dialogue’ or ‘co‐production’ can be used to mask the need to redress structural inequalities” (Johnson, , p. 22; emphasis in original). Notably Hawthorne and Heitz address the limitations of dialogue within the academy, wherein “the academy can itself be a site of violence that regulates who [and how one] can participate in scholarly dialogue” (, p. 150; emphasis added). This is why I borrow from Black feminist work on dialogue: it presupposes a form of dialoguing that challenges the erasure and objectification of Black women specifically, and Women of Colour more generally.…”

Anti‐racist learning and teaching in British geography

“…A starting point for such an exercise would be engagement with work in the field of Black Geographies (cf. Bledsoe & Wright, 2019; Hawthorne, 2019; Hawthorne & Heitz, 2018; McKittrick, 2006; Noxolo, 2020; Shabazz, 2015).…”