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Place, the Contestation of Racialised Violence and the Spatial Politics of the Global Colour Line
Andy Davies, Liverpool University, David Featherstone, Glasgow University, and Paul Griffin, Northumbria University. Sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group.
A defining aspect of the current conjuncture has been the articulation of renewed forms of racialized violence which has been contested through various forms of resistance most notably Black Lives Matter. One powerful way in which such geographies of racialised violence have been theorised in recent debates is in relation to ideas of the global colour line (Anievas, Manchanda, Shilliam, 2015). Such approaches usefully position racialised violence in relation to broader transnational dynamics of racism and resistance, but can also abstract racialised relations from particular placed dynamics and relations. As Kate Derickson has argued, however, ‘seemingly geographically disparate and unrelated events’ can be ‘connected at the intersection of the cultural logic of racism, white supremacy and the carceral/security state’ (Driscoll Derickson, 2016- 1-2).
This session seeks to contribute to these debates through exploring the relations between place-based events and the transnational circulation of racialised violence and resistance (Bressey, 2015). It seeks to think about the different ways such relations have been articulated in both past and present contexts. These thematics are of particular significance in Cardiff, where the multi-ethnic dockside communities of the Butetown area has long histories and geographies of connection including links to various black internationalist networks influenced by pan-Africanism, Garveyism and Communism (St Clair Drake, 1954, Saltus and Williams, 2015). In 1919 Cardiff was one of at least nine different UK ports where white rioters as part of a broader transnational wave of white supremacist violence (Jenkinson, 2009, Evans, 1982). Resistance to this violence was itself produced through significant transnational connections which included disturbances aboard ships carrying Black seafarers deported from Cardiff and Liverpool and in Caribbean and West African port cities. The centenary of these events in 2019 offers an important opportunity to re-assess both their significance and to consider their resonances with the present political conjuncture.
This session will therefore seek to discuss the 1919 riots and their legacies alongside resistance to other forms of racialized violence. We seek theoretically and empirically informed papers and interventions which speak to the following issues.
· What forms of translocal solidarity, agency and identity are shaped in opposition to racialized violence?
· How can exploring contested articulations of gender, race and class relate an intersectional politics of place to global colour line?
· How do ideas of whiteness with a transnational reach shape racialized violence in particular sites?
· How are community archives and organisations memorialising and challenging the legacies of racialized violence?
· How does attention to politics of place help to ground debates on global colour line?
· How is opposition to racialised violence constructed through articulations of black internationalism and other forms of anti-colonial internationalisms?
Abstracts of 200 words should be sent to [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by 9th February.
