Articulating a Noncitizen Politics: German Pity v. Democratic Inclusion – A Lecture by Damani Partridge

"Germany received a great deal of global credit for accepting so many refugees in the late summer and fall of 2015. In 2016, continuing into 2017, as the world seemed to be turning towards nationalist populism as a solution to fears of globalization and global migration, and at a time when many fewer migrants actually made it to Germany, its Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was being celebrated across the world as the one who stood up against the otherwise exclusionary sentiment. The results of that extended moment of welcome should not be forgotten. Real people benefited from the possibility to live and stay in Germany. Still, though, one needs to ask, ‘under what conditions?’ When one looks more closely at the forms of incorporation that took place during this time marked by ‘refugees welcome’ initiatives, one should consider both the extent to which these forms of incorporation were also exclusionary (see Partridge 2012), and further, who got left out of the so-called Willkommenskultur (culture of welcome). Damani J. Partridge is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He has published broadly on questions of citizenship, sexuality, post-Cold War ‘freedom’, Holocaust memorialization, African-American military occupation, ‘Blackness’ and embodiment, the production of noncitizens, the culture and politics of ‘fair trade’, and the Obama moment in Berlin. He has also made and worked on documentaries for private and public broadcasters in the US and Canada. He is the author of Hypersexuality and Headscarves: Race, Sex, and Citizenship in the New Germany (2012)."

When 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm on Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Building Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Rd
Room Floor 1
Contact Name Elizabeth Amrien
Contact Organization Center for the Study of Europe-CAS
Fees Free
Speakers Damani Partridge