Inventing Race: The Global Supply Chain, Five Skulls, and a Breadfruit

We are pleased to announce our distinguished guest, Professor Forbes Morlock (Syracus University London), as our speaker and workshop leader for the JHI-UTM Seminar Series, "Mediating Race,  Reimagining Geopolitics."  This event is organized by Assistant Professor Elizabeth Wijaya (U of T) with assistance from Yung-Lin Wang and Daniele Iannucci, and is co-hosted by the Jackman Humanities Institute and the UTM Collaborative Digital Research Space. Please join us for an in-person talk on November 17th and workshop-lunch on November 18th.

Talk - Thursday, November 17

"Inventing Race: The Global Supply Chain, Five Skulls, and a Breadfruit"

Jackman Humanities Building - First Floor Conference Room

4:30 pm - 6:30 pm (Seating is available on a first come, first served basis)

Beginning from Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s line that “logistics is the white science,” this talk seeks to extend the circulation of capital through the circuits of ships, specimens and stories in the final quarter of the 18th century. Focusing closely on a couple of episodes, it will analyze the role of vital visual displays in the production of science (and surplus-value). Wondering how the modern concept of race came to be determined in a provincial, German-speaking university, it will explore the economies that tie a lecture hall in Göttingen to the global city of London, the “paradise” of Tahiti, and state-subsidized food production on the slave plantations of the Caribbean. Can we read even the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry on “Caucasian” symptomatically?

Workshop - Friday, November 18

"Kant's 'Determination of the Concept of Race in Human Beings'-- A Reading Workshop"

MN3230, Collaborative Digital Research Space (UTM Campus)

11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Lunch Provided

To RSVP, email e.wijaya@utoronto.ca. Space is limited.

Forbes Morlock is working on two books -- one on Ottobah Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments and the other on the invention of race among Kant, Blumenbach, and Joseph Banks.  He has published on Freud, Derrida, and Rancière, as well as works of litearture, visual art, and film.  A member of the KRAATZ artists' collective, he lives in Brixton and teaches in the English Department at Syracuse University London.