20 Dreams

Highlighting anti-colonial methodologies, this working paper addresses some of the limitations and possibilities of theorizing climate catastrophe and ecocide alongside race and racism. Working closely with Paul Gilroy, Édouard Glissant, and Sylvia Wynter, my thinking is propelled by their methodological clues that, as they unfold, unsettle analytical frames that tend to equate environmental toxicities with (degraded) blackness. The paper also centres pedagogy and draws attention to how black livingness is not a concept, per se, but a set of actions that teach us how to theorize our environs anew.

Speaker Information

Prof Katherine McKittrick is our 50th Geography in the Bluegrass Day Speaker. Prof McKittrick is Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen's University. She researches in the areas of Black studies, anti-colonial studies, and critical-creative methodologies. She authored Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, edited Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, and co-edited, with Clyde Woods, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. Her most recent monograph, Dear Science and Other Stories is an exploration of Black methodologies. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

We are grateful for support from the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies and our Geography Development Fund.

Learn more about this 50th Geography in the Bluegrass Day, here.