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- Convenors:
-
Daniela Triml-Chifflard
(University of Marburg, Germany)
Inga Scharf da Silva (Saravá Berlin)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Regional groups:
- Afroamerica
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
This workshop explores the transformative potential of the Black Commons framework to challenge capitalist resource management of commodification and exploitation, and to imagine alternative forms of collective resource management to address today's multiple socio-environmental crises.
Long Abstract:
We aim to collectively explore the transformative potential of the "Black Commons" as a framework for imagining alternative forms of social life that challenge capitalist systems of commodification and exploitation. Black Commons center on the creation and preservation of shared resources, spaces, and social infrastructures by Black communities, cultivated through acts of resistance and survival.
Emerging in response to the violent domination and control over Black bodies, labor, and resources during and after slavery, Black Commons represent a radical alternative. Hidden spaces and practices allowed Black communities to claim autonomy beyond the reach of dominant power structures, reclaiming agency through collective action and mutual support. Grounded in distinct cosmologies and forms of knowledge, Black Commons emphasize a reciprocal relationship with the natural environment, fostering communal resilience and self-determination.
We invite participants to discuss the creativity and ingenuity embedded in Black commoning practices, and their potential to address today's multiple socio-ecological crises. Scholars, activists, and artists are encouraged to submit proposals for a panel exploring collective stewardship, resistance, and care within Black communities in the Americas and Europe.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• Theoretical frameworks for understanding Black commons
• Historical and contemporary examples of Black commoning in rural and urban contexts
• Black communal economies, cooperative models, and mutual aid networks
• Intersection of Black commons with Black feminist thought
• Role of art, storytelling, and performance in shaping and preserving Black commons
• Environmental justice movements in Black communities
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
This paper traces the diasporic lifeworlds of the Serer Niominka from the drowning Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal in southern Spain and inquires the ’minor tactics’ they (have to) employ at the intersections of participation and refusal to achieve a livable ’life within limits’.
Contribution long abstract:
Southern Spain’s desiccating agricultural landscape is a formulation of the Plantationocene, where control over humans and non-humans is high, while land is neatly parceled, engineered and terraformed, packed under a ’sea of plastic’ and watered and farmed to ruination – mainly on the back of African migrant labor. This paper inquires into Serer Niominka laborers' subaltern agency and how they strive to achieve a livable ’life within limits’ in the context of exploitative labor and dependence, racism, undocumentedness and landlessness. It traces when, how and why the Serer Niominka (can or have to) render themselves legible to employers, NGOs, the state or the public and reproduce their categorisations or become appropriated and exploitable (e.g. via labor, health care, unionizing) and when, how and why they (can or have to) rather nurture refusal and their own sovereign communal realities (e.g. via redistributive economies, village network groups). It critically inquires into the co-production of participation and refusal within the framework of ’minor tactics’ and links them to key Senegalese norms of dignity (ngor); benevolence, generosity, reciprocity and honor (teranga); modesty and restraint (kersa); and discretion (sutura). Ultimately, it maps in what forms the Serer Niominka community is able to constitute Black (Under)Commons beyond property and citizenship, total independence or a shared good, justice and comprehensive change and in what ways it thereby also challenges traditional views of the Mediterranean as a purely European, white, or classical space – and helps us refine our understandings of the possibilities and limits of Black (Under)Commons.
Contribution short abstract:
Marronage sites in the Americas have a dual historical dimension: they are the result of the wounds caused by the colonial project (dispossession, enslavement), while at the same time being the result of healing practices (creation of the collective). The scar is the result of all of the above.
Contribution long abstract:
Based on the analysis of written sources, landscape characteristics, and archaeological materials, I discuss the emergence and persistence of a particular landscape of freedom associated with the phenomenon of collective marronage in northern Colombia. The irruption and recurrence of this phenomenon throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Montes de María region, allows me to trace the way in which maroons and their descendants transformed the asymmetrical power relations of slavery and created concrete spaces of freedom: the palenques (maroon settlements). These new sites of habitation are crossed by a double historical dimension: they are connected to the occurrence of events that hurt and cause wounds (enslavement and persecution), while at the same time being the result of acts of healing (creation of social relations and generation of spaces of collective care). I represent this dialectical condition of the production of space and the material culture that integrates it through the figure and metaphor of the scar. This makes visible the temporal and spatial transversality of the tension that accompanied the creation of community by Africans and their descendants during the colonial period.
Contribution short abstract:
This proposal explores Black commoning through the lens of Black pregnant bodies and lived experiences with Black midwives in pre- and post-natal care. As a niche of Black reproductive experience in Germany and Switzerland, I will explore Black midwifery – or the lack thereof.
Contribution long abstract:
“Meanwhile they had to keep body and soul together somehow” (Emecheta, 1979, p.100)
Black women face disproportionately high rates of adverse reproductive outcomes, including miscarriages, preterm births, and higher rates of maternal mortality (Davis, 2020).
According to Rainford (2023), Black obstetric and gynaecological staff and Black midwives, however, hold the opportunity to change the otherwise adverse pregnancy and birth experiences of Black individuals. My contribution to this panel will discuss the
work of Black midwives and their care for Black pregnant bodies.
This will demonstrate how Black midwives promote a sense of self, agency and power of the body despite the intersecting injustices based on race, gender and class. In doing so, Black midwives provide pre- and post-natal care and practice forms of
commoning that support the reproduction of Black (social) lives and experiences.
This analysis of caring for Black (pregnant) bodies offers an “intuitive and sensory dimension” (Davis, 2020, p.58) of embodied experiences, stressing the layers of affective experiences that accumulate and intensify when “pregnant while Black”
(Rainford, 2023).
Against the backdrop of ongoing colonization and marginalization of Black birthing individuals, this contribution will examine the nexus between Black pregnant bodies and the potential and futures of Black Midwifery as a way of commoning Black
reproduction.