01.12.2020 | KARA KEELING (University of Chicago, USA)
Queer Times,Black Futures
Abstract
In this talk, I extend and expand upon the formulation that closes my book Queer Times, Black Futures, that of „an empiricism that invites surprises.“ I suggest that as a mode of „poetic knowledge,“ „an empiricism that invites surprises“ might serve as a method that can anchor knowledge production and truth claims in a time when the very terms through which what facts constitute our shared reality seem contested. In a context characterized by anti-Black racism and violence, I develop the concept of „an empiricism that invites surprises“ in order to suggest that our efforts to anchor Black feminism today might itself be an enactment of those Black feminist futures that retain the potential to surprise us.
Biographical Note
Kara Keeling is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago. Keeling is author of Queer Times, Black Futures (New York University Press, 2019) and The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (Duke University Press, 2007) and coeditor (with Josh Kun) of a selection of writings about sound and American Studies entitled Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), and (with Colin MacCabe and Cornel West) a selection of writings by the late James A. Snead entitled European Pedigrees/African Contagions: Racist Traces and Other Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
English 
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