SIG Event with Lyndsey P. Beutin: Trafficking in Antiblackness
What is at stake when contemporary campaigns to abolish “modern-day slavery” invoke the memory of transatlantic slavery? How do the language and imagery of abolition circulate in ways that can, paradoxically, undermine struggles for racial justice and reparations? And what does a critical media and communication studies lens reveal about the racial politics embedded in seemingly humanitarian discourse?
On Thursday, November 5 at 11 a.m. in the Anatol Center (AS-119), Dr. Lyndsey P. Beutin will discuss her award-winning book, (Duke University Press, 2023).
Please come. Please invite your students. Please spread the word.
Drawing on contemporary anti-trafficking visual culture and media discourse, Beutin analyzes how a constellation of media, philanthropic, NGO, and government actors repurpose the history of transatlantic slavery and abolition in ways that reproduce antiblackness. She shows how recurring narratives, images, and figures—such as “slavery in Africa,” “Arab slave traders,” and “Black incapacity for self-governance”—discursively recast Black people across the diaspora as the enslavers of past and present in place of white Americans and Europeans.
