Abstract
Building on 5 months of ethnographic fieldwork among student activists at UC Berkeley, this presentation takes point of departure in negotiations over the de- and renaming of buildings and (the lack of) repatriation of ancestral remains at UC Berkeley.
I show how everyday student activism at UC Berkeley resonates with wider contemporary debates around statues and buildings through a haunting by the settler colonial past in particular ways that informs students’ fight for social justice and a-justice-to-come (Barad 2019; Bozalek et al. 2021; Gordon and Radway 1997). Importantly, this justice-to-come is of a spatio-temporal kind that continuously references global structures of inequality and national debates over how to reckon with the past and imagined futures.
I argue that students forcefully redirect debates of social justice at UC Berkeley by evoking particular spatio-temporal aspects of the past and present, and that this is manifested in internal (re)negotiations over what student activists at UC Berkeley are to prioritize as their main focus for their activism. Thus, renaming and denaming debates at UC Berkeley have gained new meaning following the pandemic and the onset of Black Lives Matter protests on and off campus. Discussions of building names, that used to be at the forefront of student activism, have now lost some importance because other things, such as repatriation of ancestral bones are pushed to the fore. In short, Black Lives Matter as national and global phenomena has made new discussions possible and new imaginaries feasible.
I show how everyday student activism at UC Berkeley resonates with wider contemporary debates around statues and buildings through a haunting by the settler colonial past in particular ways that informs students’ fight for social justice and a-justice-to-come (Barad 2019; Bozalek et al. 2021; Gordon and Radway 1997). Importantly, this justice-to-come is of a spatio-temporal kind that continuously references global structures of inequality and national debates over how to reckon with the past and imagined futures.
I argue that students forcefully redirect debates of social justice at UC Berkeley by evoking particular spatio-temporal aspects of the past and present, and that this is manifested in internal (re)negotiations over what student activists at UC Berkeley are to prioritize as their main focus for their activism. Thus, renaming and denaming debates at UC Berkeley have gained new meaning following the pandemic and the onset of Black Lives Matter protests on and off campus. Discussions of building names, that used to be at the forefront of student activism, have now lost some importance because other things, such as repatriation of ancestral bones are pushed to the fore. In short, Black Lives Matter as national and global phenomena has made new discussions possible and new imaginaries feasible.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 26 May 2023 |
| Publication status | Published - 26 May 2023 |
| Event | Not this time. Temporalities of ending, editing, and enduring - University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Duration: 24 Apr 2023 → 26 Apr 2023 https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/art-as-forum/events/not-this-time/ |
Conference
| Conference | Not this time. Temporalities of ending, editing, and enduring |
|---|---|
| Location | University of Copenhagen |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Copenhagen |
| Period | 24/04/2023 → 26/04/2023 |
| Internet address |