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Call for Papers
Theme: 'Blood on the Leaves / And Blood at the Roots'
Subtitle: Reconsidering Forms of Enslavement and Subjection across
Disciplines
Type: Interdisciplinary Conference
Institution: University of Warwick
Location: Coventry (United Kingdom)
Date: 19.–20.6.2020
Deadline: 20.4.2020
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18th June 2020:
Pre-conference panel on getting published & networking event for
postgraduate students and early career researchers and practitioners
19th-20th June 2020:
Conference at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Funded by the University of Warwick Centre for Philosophy, Literature
and the Arts (CRPLA), The Humanities Research Centre (HRC), the
Environmental Humanities Network (EHN), the Yesu Persaud Centre for
Caribbean Studies (YPCCS), the Department of English and Comparative
Studies, the Department of Philosophy, the British Comparative
Literature Association (BCLA) and The Royal Historical Society (RHS).
This event aims to open a multicultural space beyond institutional
and geographical boundaries to foster discussions and to listen to a
variety of voices, addressing the problems of enslavement and
subjection. In this space, this conference seeks to explore the
various figurations and conceptions of enslavement and subjection
across disciplines—from philosophy to literature, from the arts to
the social sciences, to mention only a few— and beyond territories.
Enslavement and subjugation are not only concerns of our past but
urgent problems of our present and future. The title of the
conference directly refers to Billie Holiday’s 1939 performance of
Strange Fruit so as to emphasise both the human and environmental
impact of forms of enslavement and subjection which have—literally
and metaphorically—left “Blood on the leaves / And blood at the
Roots.”
This exploration, as we intend it, takes the form of a
reconsideration because we believe that enslavement and subjection
need to be continuously ‘considered again’ and ‘rethought’ to extend
and problematise understandings and approaches to these key themes.
Each time we return to these issues, we fix in our mind something
that we ought not to forget and we learn something new that we ought
not to neglect. In this conference, we would like to reconsider and
return on the multiple facets of the problems of enslavement and its
evolution in modern forms of subjections, taking with us and keeping
in mind the following words:
“[E]ven as we experienced, recognized, and lived subjection, we did
not simply or only live in subjection and as the subjected.” (2016:4)
In this quote, describing her family’s struggle as Black Americans in
the 1950s US, Christina Sharpe’s words and italics highlight an
insidious pitfall in methodological approaches to the study of
slavery and its legacies in a number of academic disciplines. These
approaches are often conducive to a consideration of subjected
individuals and communities “simply or only” as ‘enslaved’ people.
These subjected agents become objects of study only as ‘slaves’
rather than subjects endowed with their own agency, thinking and
feelings, and this tendency continues in post-slavery and race
studies. Hence, the very attempt to study and understand
(post-)slavery and subjection poses the risk of falling back into
another type of objectification and dehumanisation of ‘subjected
subjects.’ As for example, Saidiya Hartman notes in relation to
archival studies that “[t]he archive dictates what can be said about
the past and the kinds of stories that can be told about the persons
cataloged, embalmed, and sealed away in box files and folios. To read
the archive is to enter a mortuary; it permits one final viewing and
allows for a last glimpse of persons about to disappear into the
slave hold.” (2007:17)
In light of these words and cognizant of this danger, the conference
would like to propose a reconsideration of enslavement and subjection
that aims to de-objectify and do justice to the humanity of what we
have called the ‘subjected subjects,’ of the subjects of uneven
(hi)stories of a brutally imposed condition, that is not just part of
our past, but also continues to have disastrous impacts on our
society and environment. Thus, we also aim to further consider the
ecological dimension of enslavement and subjugation as tightly knit
with the human one, promoting a de-reification of ‘nature’ and the
‘natural.’ Thereby our purpose is to illuminate systematic and
structural issues of our current climates.
The best way to carry out this reconsideration, in our view, is to
create a space to listen and to discuss, bringing together diverse
contributions across disciplines and institutions, within and without
academia. We are convinced that only an inter-and-trans-disciplinary
enterprise, which encourages human and intellectual diversity,
enables a reconsideration of the problems of enslavement and
subjection, as
