Cancelled

This iteration of SPAIS Lunchtime Talks is a chance to hear an international expert speak on the issue of reparations for slavery and colonial exploitation as an element of a contemporary programme for countering racial injustice. We anticipate it will be of particular interest to students and staff engaged with themes of decoloniality  The talk will last approximately 25 minutes, followed by a Q&A session. 

Calls for reparations for slavery, colonialism, settler colonialism and their ongoing effects are resounding around the world. In the United States, the idea of reparations appears to be gaining unprecedented political traction after years of being dismissed or derided. Can contemporary visions of reparations help to eliminate entrenched structures of racial inequality and provide meaningful redress for slavery and its legacies? What are the dangers of enacting a program of reparations without undoing those structures or offering lasting redress? This talk explores dangers of aligning reparations proposals with an uncritical view of capitalism, an ideal of integration, or a dream of national redemption. Only a vision of “reparations unbound,” I argue, has the potential to make reconstructive change.

Lawrie is currently the John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at Oxford. Her home institution is the University of Virginia, where she teaches political theory and American studies. Lawrie studies the intersections of race, gender, and democracy through the writing of Black political thinkers. Her books and articles have focused on James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells, among others, as well as the struggle for reparations. Her newest book, Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom (Oxford University Press), was published in February.