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Session Submission Summary

Seepage: Viscous Readings of African Diasporic Archives

Fri, October 31, 8:30 to 10:00am, Marriott St Louis Grand, Landmark 2

Session Submission Type: Panel

Description for Program

“[…] before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.”
– Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

“The ill humors seep out, tumultuous as lava flows.”
– Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

This panel reflects on “seepage” as both material and metaphor in African and African diasporic archives of militarism, empire, and insurgency. When read attentively, the edifices of colonial and military infrastructure, even those shrouded in secrecy, were latent with slow, creeping movements that erupted and disintegrated– porous spaces for the infiltration of resistant ideas, actions, and matter. The cases presented in this panel interrogate the military optics of what or who was designated as “contaminated,” offer new analytics on “Creolization” when viewed through the political ecology of the swamp, and examine when military infrastructures eventually burst while attempting to close themselves off from so-called local contagion. The attempt to correct for seepage through draining, sanitizing, sealing, and eviscerating often resulted in the growth of new formations– languages, arguments, and itineraries for anti-imperial refusal. We argue that it is precisely in those sopping, viscous encounters that we find generative sites for plumbing creative, political, and intellectual provocations.

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