History and Sociology Speaker Series
March 20 at 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The History and Sociology Speaker Series is back with another public lecture featuring Associate Professor of Global & International Studies, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard from the University of California, Irvine.
In her talk, Dr. Willoughby-Herard will focus on the political activism of South African Black feminist sociologist Fatima Meer. In the 1980s, Meer used her writings on state terror to upend the notion of a bloodless transition to democracy. She documented state orchestrated detention, murder, and destruction of political organizations and was a survivor of detention herself. The state that she analyzed and survived was one that killed activists, their attorneys, their doctors, and their nurses. In such a context, sustaining a leftist politics required her focusing on the intimate experiences and feminist subjectivities associated with making society “ungovernable.”
The lecture will reflect on the fact that the revolutionary politics that Meer catalyzed, engaged, and participated in occurred in a context that was far more bloody than we like to remember. As a student of Fatima Meer, Dr. Willoughby-Herard will gather the lessons of Meer’s practices of refusal. In our own time as we meditate on the violent pressures to consent to imperialism and genocide, Meer’s refusal and her unwillingness to give consent represents a form of extravagant protest.
Join us for this engaging lecture! Everyone is welcome and registration is not required.
