Killing the Black Body with Dorothy Roberts

The Dig

Daniel Denvir

News, Politics

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2018

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chattel slavery made black women’s reproduction the source of private property—and in doing so invented race and American racism. Ever since, the denigration and regulation of black women’s childbearing has been central to the construction of white supremacy and the exploitative economic order that it protects, as scholar Dorothy Roberts explained in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, a pivotal book first published in 1997. In this episode, @DorothyERoberts talks about the book and what lessons it holds today as Trump and Republicans seek to destroy yet more of the social safety net and use racism as a smokescreen to distract white Americans from their class war against working people. Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art And please support The Dig with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books,
0:05.0	which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:11.0	One that you might like is duty-free art, art in the age of planetary civil war, by Hito Styrl.
0:19.0	What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization?
0:23.6	How can one think of art institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war,
0:29.6	growing inequality, and proprietary digital technology?
0:33.6	The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy. They extend from a region where the
0:39.9	audience is pumped for tweets to a future of neurocurating, in which paintings surveil their
0:46.0	audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious
0:53.7	activity.
0:55.0	In duty-free art, filmmaker and writer, Hito Styrl wonders how we can appreciate or even make art in the present age.
1:03.9	What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global
1:12.2	futures market detached from productive work. Can we distinguish between information,
1:18.2	fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse
1:25.4	as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of free ports and political actions.
1:31.1	She exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.
1:40.5	Duty-free art, art in the age of planetaryary Civil War, by Hito Styrill.
1:45.9	Out now from Verso Books.
1:56.2	Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine.
2:00.4	My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting
2:03.1	from Providence, Rhode Island. Conservatives have long blamed poverty at its glaringly racist
2:10.4	disproportionality on what they describe as pathological family dysfunction amongst the poor,
	...

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