The paper questions why, in a time of heightened subjugation of African/Black lives around the globe to death and abjection, scholars have devoted such little attention to coeval and similarly situated struggles. The paper explores grounds for transnational solidarity against police brutality.
Paper long abstract:
The murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020 generated intense scrutiny and solidarity around the globe. And nowhere as critically as from the African continent, which shortly after experienced its own “Floyd moment” in the form of the #EndSARS movement against police brutality. Taking Nigeria and the United States as zones of awkward engagements, this paper explores grounds for transnational solidarity against police brutality. The paper locates police brutality within a field of power that naturalize certain persons as "mere danglers" (Menkiti, 1984) and disposable. By recasting spectacular instances of police brutality in a spectral light, the paper tracks the ghost-like effects of the state across vast and multiple interacting spaces. The invitation is to allow ourselves to be contaminated by our encounters and conditions as they allow for the surfacing of mutual worlds and new directions.