In his lecture, Damani J. Partridge will examine the possibilities and limits of a universalized Black politics. Young people in Germany of Turkish, Arab, and African descent use claims of Blackness to hold states and other institutions accountable for their everyday struggle. Partridge tracks how these youth invoke the expressions of Black Power, acting out the medal-podium salute from the 1968 Olympics, proclaiming “I am Malcolm X,” expressing mutual struggle with Muhammad Ali and Spike Lee, and standing with raised and clenched fists next to Angela Davis. Partridge also documents the demands by public-school teachers, federal-program leaders, and politicians that young immigrants take responsibility for countering the global persistence of anti-Semitism as part of the German state’s commitment to anti-genocidal education. He uses these stories to interrogate relationships among European Enlightenment, Holocaust memory, and Black futures, showing how noncitizens work to reshape their everyday lives. This interdisciplinary lecture will discuss how the concept of Blackness energizes, inspires, and makes democratic participation possible beyond prevailing precepts of national belonging.

Damani J. Partridge is a Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is also an affiliate with the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Vice President and President-Elect of the German Studies Association.

Further information may be found here.