The first ‘Sheffield Urbanism’ Lecture Series

The Urban Surrounds: From Extinction to Abolition” is a series which attempts to examine spaces and temporalities of urbanization from the viewpoints of abolitionist histories and sensibilities, and in ways that attempt to circumvent the apparatuses of anti-blackness that have shaped urban life everywhere. It seeks to demonstrate how abolition can assume a multiplicity of unanticipated operations in its objective of “changing everything”, surrounding the urban with unforeseen possibilities that mitigate its toxic atmospheres and concretize generative potentialities in its brokenness.

To recognise this critical mass, the Urban Institute is curating a ‘Sheffield Urbanism’ Lecture series with colleagues across the Faculty designed to provide a context for colleagues to present an innovative thesis in a systemic and programmatic manner over the course of a series of lectures.

The first ‘Sheffield Urbanism Lectures Series’ 2020 will profile work from Professor AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Professorial Fellow in the Urban Institute.

The series is constituted by three lectures which would cover the following three themes:

1. Without Capture How has the urban as the “proper” context for a self-reflecting, continuously self-improving human been based on fundamental misconceptions of both the human and of life? This lecture argues that the ambivalent generativity of blackness is a key resource in rethinking urbanization not just in terms of space and territory, but of the very reshaping of the human. Wednesday October 7th, 3-4.30pm
2. It’s Forgetting Time Invoking this ironical query of black resistance struggles, the intersection of quantum physics with black temporalities and the planetary scope of contemporary urbanization process amplify the heterogeneity of multiple times. In face of myriad potential extinctions (for instance, posed by climate change or financial indebtedness to the future), the collapse of clear temporal distinctions is increasingly folded into the operating systems of urban development. Wednesday October 21^st, 3-4.30pm
3. Rebellion without Redemption While conventional responses to the implications of climate change on urbanization centre on intensifying the density and self-sufficiencies of human settlements, contemporary urban processes now largely produce wide-spread unsettling. Across vast expanses of diverse landscapes, settlement is now increasingly provisional and taking place in wildly disparate built environment settings and regulatory conditions. This lecture explores the questions and issues raised by such recognitions, including the possibilities for abolishing the historical dependence upon anti-blackness and human-centrism that has established extinction as our common horizon. Wednesday November 4^th, 3-4.30pm.

If you would like to express an interest in attending, click here to register and further information will be sent in due course.