Conference by Jerome Branche
“Afro-Diasporan Re/Location and the Politics of Permanence: Caso Inglaterra/España“
Date: May 2, 2016
Time: 12.00 – 14.00
Venue: Room 3.1 – School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon
Abstract:
This presentation discusses the historical concept of Afro-diasporan migration and focuses on the specific cases of contemporary England and Spain in the context of the current politics of “multiculturalism.” It highlights the difficulties for immigration and settlement for individuals from the their former colonies, the West Indies and Equatorial Guinea, respectively, to these metropoles, recently self-declared as “multicultural,” following varying official rhetorics. If visa and legal restrictions surrounding residency, or cultural criteria at school or work sites perpetuate ideas of difference and outsider status for these individuals, state apparatuses such as the courts and police force(s), apply terminal sanctions that in the final analysis reinforce the ideal of a “whites only” national normativity. The paper will examine the extra-judicial killing of Mark Duggan, that sparked the Nottingham (and countrywide), riots of 2011 in England, and the not-dissimilar case of Lucrecia Pérez Matos, of the Dominican Republic, in Aravaca, 1992, and two corresponding examples of post-colonial protest, through poetry and prose, from the settler enclave.
Jerome Branche is Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh.
Activity organised by projects DIIA (Group LOCUS) and Comparing We’s (Group CITCOM).