Speaker(s): LaCharles Ward
Carrie Mae Weems, Photography and Black Life’s Requiem
What does it mean to imagine life within the impossible conditions of Black death? In this conceptual and methodological talk, LaCharles Ward positions death as crucial object of study that performs cultural, political, and rhetorical work. In arguing that death is condition of possibility for thinking Black life, this talk claims that there is no way to write a history of Black life — present and past — if Black death is not rigorously attended to.
To chart a response to this and other questions, this talk turns to photography and Black feminist visual and artistic practices to imagine in spite of all.