The title of the conference incorporates the tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes of Blackness in Europe. At the same time as black histories, cultures and social conditions are made invisible in hegemonic accounts on Europe, there is a hypervisibility and presence of black stereotyping in European popular culture. Also, while the concept of race has largely disappeared from political, sociological and administrative discourses (in continental Europe), and while the disengagement with institutional and structural racism has been reframed in new capitalist post racial rhetorics, racial markers still have currency, and black bodies continue to be invoked as either tolerated guests at best, or threatening intruders at worst. The consequence is the practice of “embodying an identity that is declared impossible even though lived by millions”, namely as non-white Europeans, and specifically as Black Europeans. This identity has become even more conditioned by a new mainstreaming of right-wing discourses and the tightening immigrant and refugee policies that affect people of African descent.
Eurocentric power needs to create narratives about colonial history in order to control interpretations of it. Concepts of law and justice have played an important role in this. Also today, the idea of justice is used to approve violent migratory control policies, including the aggressive persecution, detention, and deportation of persons.
Why does Europe (still) have such trouble showing a coherent attitude in the face of discourses which legitimate racism and xenophobia? What are the masks that stop it from accepting its colonial past and understanding, once and for all, that diasporas are part of the richness of the European cultural map?
had brought a dry twig with me from the bushes I hid in for a couple of days. Everytime I hear there is a fire on that island, I just find myself thinking about it... Also brought a couple of snail shells from the same bushes. Why? If the day comes that I forget about it, they would remind me what it is to move forward... even at the speed of a snail..."
The difficult subject of a politically null war and the traumatic end of the imperial cycle have tended to produce a memory of the colonial war which – though often stressing its “tragic” and “useless” dimension – still emphasizes participation in it as a question of duty. This casts the figure of the veteran as a victim, either of the “winds of history”, or as having been forced to fight.
The exhibition Lost Lover speaks about the political, historical and geographical conditions through which knowledge is produced and controlled. The screening program assembled by Lara Koseff was originally presented in Rio de Janeiro, in the courtyard of Lanchonete, now in Rampa, Porto.
In the front room, 11 single-channel video pieces are projected in a loop. The authors, who are mostly from South Africa, confront us with the abandon of fear, thus calling to action topics that are often and strategically silenced.
Hartman offers new methodological pistes for literary critics working in archives and shows how literary studies can learn from the wayward lives of women like Esther Brown to expand its understandings of creative practices. Reading Hartman reminds us of the political imperative to interrogate spaces and structures of oppression, confinement and conformism from the perspective – speculative if necessary – of those who resist them.
The title of the conference incorporates the tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes of Blackness in Europe. At the same time as black histories, cultures and social conditions are made invisible in hegemonic accounts on Europe, there is a hypervisibility and presence of black stereotyping in European popular culture. Also, while the concept of race has largely disappeared from political, sociological and administrative discourses (in continental Europe), and while the disengagement with institutional and structural racism has been reframed in new capitalist post racial rhetorics, racial markers still have currency, and black bodies continue to be invoked as either tolerated guests at best, or threatening intruders at worst. The consequence is the practice of “embodying an identity that is declared impossible even though lived by millions”, namely as non-white Europeans, and specifically as Black Europeans. This identity has become even more conditioned by a new mainstreaming of right-wing discourses and the tightening immigrant and refugee policies that affect people of African descent. 
Eurocentric power needs to create narratives about colonial history in order to control interpretations of it. Concepts of law and justice have played an important role in this. Also today, the idea of justice is used to approve violent migratory control policies, including the aggressive persecution, detention, and deportation of persons. 
Why does Europe (still) have such trouble showing a coherent attitude in the face of discourses which legitimate racism and xenophobia? What are the masks that stop it from accepting its colonial past and understanding, once and for all, that diasporas are part of the richness of the European cultural map? 
had brought a dry twig with me from the bushes I hid in for a couple of days. Everytime I hear there is a fire on that island, I just find myself thinking about it... Also brought a couple of snail shells from the same bushes. Why? If the day comes that I forget about it, they would remind me what it is to move forward... even at the speed of a snail..." 
The difficult subject of a politically null war and the traumatic end of the imperial cycle have tended to produce a memory of the colonial war which – though often stressing its “tragic” and “useless” dimension – still emphasizes participation in it as a question of duty. This casts the figure of the veteran as a victim, either of the “winds of history”, or as having been forced to fight. 
The exhibition Lost Lover speaks about the political, historical and geographical conditions through which knowledge is produced and controlled. The screening program assembled by Lara Koseff was originally presented in Rio de Janeiro, in the courtyard of Lanchonete, now in Rampa, Porto.
In the front room, 11 single-channel video pieces are projected in a loop. The authors, who are mostly from South Africa, confront us with the abandon of fear, thus calling to action topics that are often and strategically silenced. 
Hartman offers new methodological pistes for literary critics working in archives and shows how literary studies can learn from the wayward lives of women like Esther Brown to expand its understandings of creative practices. Reading Hartman reminds us of the political imperative to interrogate spaces and structures of oppression, confinement and conformism from the perspective – speculative if necessary – of those who resist them. 
