Risk, Relation, Revolution, Repair: Refusing Closure, Accepting Ambivalence
Decoloniality and Anti-Racism in Geography Seminar Series
Dr. Minelle Mahtani, Associate Professor, Institute for Social Justice;
Associate, Department of Geography; Associate, School of Journalism;
Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty; University of British Columbia
Friday, October, 30th at 12:00PM MDT, 11:00AM PDT, 2:00PM EDT
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Meeting ID: 975 4795 0574, Passcode: 964451
Abstract
Risk, Relation, Revolution and Repair: these four concepts will serve as the basis for a conversation about how anti-colonial storytelling might disrupt hegemonic political, social and cultural discourse in critical media studies. What are the risks involved in producing subversive and inelegant subject formations that inform emerging political imaginaries, ways of being – alternative cultural geographic revolutions that pulsate with anger, love and optimism? What relations, and at what scale, are negotiated in the process? How might we highlight the risks of investing in this approach - to map out moments of uncertainty that animate social and political projects of possibility - given the colonial violence that structures and saturates mainstream media spaces? This paper will explore my personal and professional ambivalence, through struggles and unsettling moments that have occurred over the past two years, as I created and hosted a daily radio show entitled “Sense of Place.” Through a series of vignettes and radio clips, I focus on the concepts of risk, relation, revolution and repair to share with listeners what anticolonial approaches can do to engage and refuse ongoing forms of colonial violence.
Bio
Dr. Minelle Mahtani is an Associate Professor at the Social Justice Institute at UBC. She is also Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty. She is former President of the Association of Canadian Studies and the winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee award. She is a former national television news journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and a former associate producer with “Canada: A People’s History.” She is the author of “Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality” (UBC Press) and one of the editors of the book, “Global Mixed Race” (NYU Press).
