"A Black Sense of Place": An ICDL Keynote Conversation with Prof. Katherine McKittrick
This keynote conversation with renowned Black feminist geographer Katherine McKittrick, that took place at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence's Annual Conference 2023, considers knowledge production processes and research practices from specifically Black spatializing vantage points, which are relevant to the transdisciplinary field of African Studies. The term 'field' is itself a spatial term concerning the conceptualisation of African Studies as a plethora of knowledge production sites which encompass epistemic perspectives from geopolitical and geophysical locations on the continent and the diverse African diasporas.
McKittrick's "Dear Science and Other Stories" (2021) combines poetic approaches with an erudite Black epistemic politics concerned with Black histories and how these have contributed to the intersectional spatialization of bodies read as Black. Here the term 'Black' transports more nuanced political, poetic and intellectual aggregates of being - rather than a mere racial category built on colonial logics. Thus this conversation is meant to sound and map distinct Black epistemic values through intersectional readings of power relations in structural, cultural and disciplinary sites of knowledge production. Notably the concept of the intersection and its accompanying socio-political and epistemic identity vectors are in and of themselves spatialising metaphors.
www.africamultiple.uni-bayreu...