Associate Professor Damani J. Partridge will reflect on the relationships between European Enlightenment, Holocaust memory, and “Black” futures.

To what extent do noncitizens have access to democratic participation? How do they make claims on nation-states (and related institutions) and hold them accountable to their needs and desires? He will examine, in particular, the ways in which holding states and other institutions accountable to “Black” claimants intervenes in philosophical and everyday discussions of enlightenment and genocide. It works through the relevance of the Haitian revolution to French democracy and post-World War II African-American military occupation to a democratizing and denazifying Germany. 

Speaker's biography: 

Damani J. Partridge (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2003) (@djpartri) is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.  As a researcher, he has published broadly on questions of citizenship, sexuality, post-Cold War ‘freedom’, Holocaust memorialization, African-American military occupation, ‘Blackness’ and embodiment, the production of noncitizens, the culture and politics of ‘fair trade’, and the Obama moment in Berlin. He has also made and worked on documentaries for private and public broadcasters in the US and Canada, and currently directs the Filming Future Cities Project in Detroit and Berlin (see filmingfuturecities.org). In 2012, he published Hypersexuality and Headscarves: Race, Sex, and Citizenship in the New Germany and is currently preparing his manuscript, “Articulating ‘Blackness’ as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, European Enlightenment, and Noncitizen Futures,” for publication.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEContemporaryTurkishStudies 

The Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies focuses on culture, religion, politics, and memory in Turkey and among Turkey's diasporic populations. Its mission is to promote a deeper understanding of Turkey with emphasis on its diversity and a focus on its connections to the world. As the only Chair of its kind located at a European Institute, its specific focus is Turkey's dynamic relationship with Europe. The Chair provides academic leadership in the study of Turkey through interdisciplinary and critical research, teaching and related public activities. It organizes seminars and conferences, and supports doctoral studies on contemporary Turkey.