'Doing good in blackface: a consuming story'
Wed 30 Mar
|Zoom
WhiteSpaces Learning Gatherings 2022 #2: Join us for a conversation on the paper ‘Doing good in blackface: a consuming story’ (2021) by black feminist activist and political theorist, assistant professor at Geneva University (Switzerland) Noémi Michel.


Time & Location
30 Mar 2022, 17:00 – 18:30 BST
Zoom
About the event
WhiteSpaces Learning Gatherings 2022 #2: Wednesday 30 March 2022
Join us for a conversation on the paper ‘Doing good in blackface: a consuming story’ (2021) by black feminist activist and political theorist, assistant professor at Geneva University (Switzerland) Noémi Michel.
Article summary
This article re-visits failed intervention. I consider the latter as a telling case for understanding racism’s renewal at the crossroads of neoliberal humanitarianism and persisting ideologies of racial innocence in contemporary Europe. Whereas dominant public debates and scholarship tend to locate anti-racism’s most urgent challenges in the struggle against far right-wing populism and extremist white supremacy, I claim that it is no less urgent to grasp how do-gooders’ (anti-)racism (exemplified here by the Swiss section of A.I.) hinders anti-racist efforts. In dialogue with critical race, queer of colour and Black feminist literature, I show that do-gooders take part in complex processes that consume – both by burning and…