Monthly Archives: February 2024

“While the #OurLivesMatter photo that opens this chapter issues from the same impulse to preserve Black life, it redirects the rage of young people to the realm of the doable… Progressive Dystopia maps the tension between these two tenses of victory, and … Continue reading →

I was particularly struck by the author’s conceptualization of Blackness as a “place” that can be geographically defined but also situated in time. On page 14 she writes that “Blackness is perpetually out of place and constantly running out of time.” She very poetically describes … Continue reading →

In “Exceptional Violence”, Deborah Thomas describes how colonialism and slavery play part in the current violence against Jamaican people. What these 2 chapters reminded me of is also the violence against indigenous people. Indigenous people also had very unfortunate history … Continue reading →

In Exceptional Violence, Thomas actively confronts and advocates for the relevance of culture to “to demonstrate that violence generally is not a cultural phenomenon but an effect of class formation, a process that is immanently racialized and gendered” (2011: 4). … Continue reading →

Similarly to Mandy, I found Thomas’s use of “reparations” as a “framework for thinking” to be particularly interesting. I don’t know if it’s more that I expect quantitative data/research mindsets more (perhaps because of my computer science background) but when I … Continue reading →

This reading and discussion about reparations bring to mind a dialogue I had in a course with Dr. McKinson. We delved into how young Jamaican men engage in lottery scamming as a form of self-styled reparations in response to poverty. … Continue reading →

I was absolutely struck by Thomas’ use of reparations as a framework for thinking through the social conditions that she witnesses. I had to read the paragraph that introduced it a few times, as I initially struggled to conceive of how … Continue reading →

I was very much surprised at the playfulness and diversity of Bernard’s exercises, although I do have to say maths aren’t my strongest suit. I particularly enjoyed his explanation of what cultural domain analysis is, and the example he uses. I had already … Continue reading →