Rethinking the Black Intellectual Tradition (ReBIT) is an annual symposium I’ve hosted over the past years at Amherst College, dedicated to critical engagement with historical and contemporary black Atlantic thought. The ideas and aims behind the symposium are simple: gather together a small group of scholars for a day of discussion oriented toward pressing issues in Black Studies. Each year is organized around a theme, which brings a thread of unity to the gathering and allows scholars to retrieve forgotten figures, deploy the given theme to draw out hitherto under-theorized aspects of a familiar figure, text, or motif, and any and all mixtures.
Créolité in Comparative Context :: Créolité in Sound and Image :: Rethinking James Baldwin :: Ideas in Translation :: Africa / Philosophy / Violence :: Decolonization in Comparative Context :: The Question of Medium :: Pessimism as Interpretative Frame :: Black Studies at Fifty
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The inaugural symposium was on the theme “Comparative Créolité,” which explored the meaning of creoleness in the hispanophone, anglophone, and francophone Caribbean literary traditions. Participants: Faith Smith, Natalie Melas, Hanétha Vété-Congolo, Silvio Torres-Saillant, and Valérie Loichot. Three of these essays were published as a mini-forum in Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. Also, link to poster.
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The second symposium kept with the theme of creoleness: Créolité in Sound and Image. Speakers theorized music, film, and art across the black Atlantic, with focus on mixed cultural and linguistic spaces. Participants: Adlai Murdoch, Marisa Parham, Anjali Prabhu, Jacqueline Lazu, and Rhonda Cobham-Sander.
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The third iteration of ReBIT shifted geography and topic, turning to a single figure and the United States. A group of scholars gathered to reassess James Baldwin’s intellectual legacy with new, key critical frames. Participants: Michele Elam, Marisa Parham, Grant Farred, Douglas Fields, John E. Drabinski, Magdalena Zaborowska, Quentin Miller, and Kenneth Surin. A selection of essays were later published as a special issue of New Centennial Review. Link to poster.
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For the fourth annual ReBIT event, I shifted format and arranged a week-long intellectual event with Paul Gilroy, Abdul JanMohammed, and Achille Mbembe (unable to attend). This event was comprised of a public lecture by each, small faculty seminar following the public talk, and a final event – public conversation on intersections of pessimism and political transformation. Link to poster.
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Previous ReBIT symposia and events focused on the Caribbean and the United States, and in this fifth event I turned focus to Africa and the vicissitudes of its philosophical legacy and heritage. An intimate and extremely exciting event. Participants: Jean-Paul Martinon, Grant Farred, Daniel Orrells, John E. Drabinski, Axelle Karera, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, and Kasereka Kavawahieri. Link to poster.
In fall 2017, I decided to expand and collaborate for a ReBIT event, working with Christopher Dole (Anthropology, Amherst College) and Kiara Vigil (American Studies, Amherst College) to host an event Decolonization in Comparative Context. The event was structured around reiterations of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks – Hamid Dabashi’s Brown Skin, White Masks and Glenn Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks – in order to discuss what decolonization might mean across geographies and historical experiences. Participants: Anjali Prabhu, George Ciccariello-Maher, Kehaulani Kauanui, Mark Rifkin, Jodi Byrd, Kyle Mays, Glen Coulthard, Anthony Alessandrini, Muriam Haleh Davis, Rana Baraket, Grant Farred, Kris Sealey, Abdul JanMohamed. Here is a link to the event poster. and here is the program with titles.
In collaboration with Marisa Parham (English, Amherst College), I convened this iteration of ReBIT alongside Mark Anthony Neal’s time in my department as the Charles Hamilton Houston Visiting Scholar, a week-long event with public lecture and faculty seminar. The week concluded with a symposium around the topic “The Question of Medium,” which explored sound, image, screen, and the digital as sites for thinking through the meaning of Black life. Participants: Mark Anthony Neal, Marisa Parham, Michael Gillespie, Christina Knight, Stephanie Sparling Williams, Ashon Crawley, John Drabinski, Anthony Reed. See the poster here…
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What is the lesson and ongoing significance of afropessimism for Africana studies and critical theory more broadly? The eighth ReBIT gathering addressed the topic “Pessimism as Interpretative Frame,” asking how pessimism helps us understand the epistemological and ontological debates in the Black intellectual tradition. Participants: David Marriott, M. Shadee Malaklou, Axelle Karera, Bhakti Shringarpure, Rizvana Bradley, Neil Roberts, Melvin Rogers, Calvin Warren. Here is the poster for the event.
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The spring 2020 ReBIT meeting was dedicated to honoring the fiftieth anniversary of Black Studies at Amherst College. I wanted to recognize my department’s legacy with a symposium that reflects the eclectic, diverse geographies of thought in the black Atlantic tradition – something Black Studies at Amherst College has always embodied in profound ways. Alas, it was canceled due to COVID-19 travel and meeting restrictions. Participants: Rizvana Bradley, Odile Ferly, Rosa Carrasquillo, Elleni Zeleke, Lester Spence, Charles McKinney, Charisse Burden-Stelly, Mari Crabtree, Utz McKnight, and Kwame Otu.