Unbearable Black Studies: On the Academic Archetypes

Abstract

Theorizing the introduction and consolidation of the Social and Political Thought Black Studies Stream (a stream that was introduced prior to George Floyd’s summary execution and the wave of statements and “commitments” that followed in its wake), the author probes how the promise of integration relies on a temporality of belatedness that perpetually defers the content of its offer while simultaneously intensifying white violence. Thinking with Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), a novel attending to the failures of postcolonial Ghana, the author contends with the ruse of promissory liberal gestures made in service of introducing Black studies at York University and their function to stabilize the liberal multicultural university.