Derrick Bell and Racial Realism; Hartmut Rosa and Temporal Alienation
An event with Hartmut Rosa; the transcript of a conversation with Timothy Golden
Dear all,
I am delighted to say that our expanded team of managing editors is now in place, along with an expanded editorial board. The general feeling was that we must be doing something right to have attracted such a large number of delightful and talented people willing to offer their time and energy for free. You can see the full editorial team here. The hope, of course, is that we can now spread our work more equitably, do more of the things we like to do, and better than ever. Let’s see how it plays out!
Your Sunday Read
“Derrick Bell and Racial Realism”
a conversation with Timothy Golden
As we find ourselves wondering how far the moral backsliding in US politics will go, this conversation on racial progress from November 2021 seems very timely.
For Derrick Bell, the influential legal scholar and activist, we must acknowledge both that anti-Black racism in America is permanent, and that we all have a moral obligation to resist it. This paradoxical formulation lies at the heart of his influential and controversial thesis of “racial realism”. This conversation looks at Bell’s thesis in the context of a supposedly post-racial America heralded by the election of Barack Obama as president. Critically engaging with the racial progress narrative, Timothy Golden argues that racism has in fact worsened since Obama’s presidency, simmering away until unleashed by the Trump administration. As Golden concludes, the letter of the law may have changed in some domains, but there have not been corresponding changes to the hearts and minds of people. You can read the conversation here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK/8pm CET
“The End of History and the Loss of Temporal Resonance”
Hartmut Rosa in conversation with Nicholas Halmi
We round off our “Historical Anxiety” series in style with Hartmut Rosa, one of the world’s most influential social theorists, as our guest speaker.
Modern human subjects necessarily operate on three levels of temporality simultaneously: every-day temporality, biographical time (life-time), and the historical age or epoch. In this event, the renowned sociologist Hartmut Rosa will argue that in late-modern society, owing to processes and pressures of acceleration, the three levels of time have become fragmented and disintegrated; temporal resonance has given way to temporal alienation. This leads to individual as well as collective disconnection from past and future generations, and hence to historical anxiety: the feeling that history has stopped moving forward. You can find out more and register here.
You can find recordings of the three earlier events in the series on our YouTube channel.
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Managing Editor