Mabel O. Wilson: Memory/Race/Nation - The Politics of Modern Memorials

The recent fiery debates and now deadly protests sparked by the removals of Confederate war monuments around the United States raises import questions about the racialized origins of American democracy and as a consequence whether public representations can ever truly represent foundational ideals liberty, equality and justice for all. Prof. Mabel O. Wilson’s talk will explore the blueprint for the biopolitics of the U.S. social order, one where white citizens, idealized in the bronze figures of soldiers, politicians and muses, have thrived at the expense of the lives and labor of black and brown bodies, what Michel Foucault formulated in the modern racial state’s power dynamic of “to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die.”