Six Contradictions and the End of the Present. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Yayo Herrero

Raciality and Care in the Dispute Over Other Lives

27 and 29 June, 2018 - 7pm and 6pm (check programme)
Free ticket
Place
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and Protocol Room
Admission

Lecture and Research workshop: Free, until full capacity is reached

Workshop capacity:

100 places (registration not required)

Language:

English, with simultaneous interpretation

Activity included in the programme:

Six Contradictions and the End of the Present

 

Organized by
Museo Reina Sofía and The Commons Foundation
Protest of Black Lives Matter in Washington on November 10, 2015. Photograph: Johnny Silvercloud
Protest of Black Lives Matter in Washington on November 10, 2015. Photograph: Johnny Silvercloud

This third session in the series Six Contradictions and the End of the Present is centred on Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, activist and African American theorist, and Yayo Herrero, anthropologist, technical engineer, social educator and ecofeminist. These sessions will reflect on racial difference and care as a point of departure for contemplating a more just and equal society, putting forward a life which is possible outside ideas of production and economic value.

The conflict between life and neoliberalism is understood as a further step in past clashes between capital and work. While this concept has traditionally referred to the exploitation of the wage earner, its contemporary version assumes that this exploitation does not affect salaried activities exclusively, but life itself. Therefore, from an ecofeminist and antiracist perspective, these lectures demonstrate other possible subjectivities outside the logic of capitalism. With this in mind, Yayo Herrero will discuss how care has become precarious and is circumscribed to the home, migrant collectives and women — essential yet excluded from social consideration. Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor, meanwhile, will expound her theory of contemporary racism in the USA as the structural effect of a system which seeks to create a state of terror and supremacy through division and control.

In the workshop Class, Race, Gender: Intersections, Conflicts, Alliances Taylor will engage in dialogue with different city collectives and social agents involved in activism against racial discrimination in order to share experiences of the past — the history of Black movements in the USA and their long-standing fight for civil rights — and present: the contemporary initiative BlackLivesMatter, a global network set up to combat structural violence against the Black community.


Programme

Wednesday, 27 June – 7pm / Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Lectures by Yayo Herrero and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Friday, 29 June – 6pm / Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Research workshop Class, Race, Gender: Intersections, Conflicts, Alliances
Conducted by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, with the participation of city collectives and social agents.

Participants

Keeanga-Yamahtta Tayloris an activist and theorist on Black freedom struggles and a lecturer in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She has published articles on social movements, urban politics and racial inequality in the USA, and is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2016), which brings historical perspective to the present and indicates future struggles for Black liberation. In 2017 she published a new collection of essays entitled How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective.

Yayo Herrero López is a theorist and activist in ecology and feminist movements. She holds a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Technical Agricultural Engineering, a diploma in Social Education and a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Educational Sciences.She has also worked as State Coordinator for Ecologistas en Acción and has participated in a wide range of social initiatives to promote human rights and social ecology. Moreover, she is a professor in Spain’s National University of Distance Learning and is general director of Fundación Hogar del Empleado (FUHEM). She is the author of numerous articles and has co-written over a dozen books on social ecology, including La gran encrucijada. Sobre la crisis ecosocial y el cambio de ciclo histórico (The Great Crossroads. On the Eco-Social Crisis and the Changing Historical Cycle, Libros en Acción, 2016) and Cambiar las gafas para mirar el mundo (Change Glasses to See the World, Libros en Acción, 2011).