BlackLife: Post- BLM and the Struggle for Freedom
What does it mean in the era of Black Lives Matter to continue to ignore and deny the violence that is the foundation of the Canadian nation state? BlackLife discloses the ongoing destruction of Black people as enacted not simply by state structures, but beneath them in the foundational modernist ideology that underlies thinking around migration and movement, as Black erasure and death are unveiled as horrifically acceptable throughout western culture. With exactitude and celerity, Idil Abdillahi and Rinaldo Walcott pull from local history, literature, theory, music, and public policy around everything from arts funding, to crime and mental health–presenting a convincing call to challenge pervasive thought on dominant culture’s conception of Black personhood. They argue that artists, theorists, activists, and scholars offer us the opportunity to rethink and expose flawed thought, providing us new avenues into potential new lives and a more livable reality of BlackLife.
Idil Abdillahi is a critical Black interdisciplinary scholar, policy analyst, community organizer, researcher, and educator. She is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies and School of Social Work. She is also the Advisor to the Dean on Anti-Black Racism for the Faculty of Community and Social Services.
Other publications from this author include: