(Anti)Blackness and Dual Power: Thinking from Durban, South Africa

This talk identifies two common themes in many of the uprisings and movements that have emerged over the past decade in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis: (anti)blackness and dual power. It is grounded in the concrete experiences of social movements in Durban, South Africa, but it takes those experiences as a window into broader geographies of social movement experimentation in other parts of the world. As such, the intervention offers a bridge between an initial place-based research project and a second upcoming comparative study of global struggles over the past decade. Primarily theoretical and synthetic in nature, the talk’s focus on (anti)blackness and dual power also offers one attempt to link otherwise disparate tendencies within radical movements. In so doing it brings together a focus on racist state violence with a study of the black radical tradition, and links state-oriented electoral movements with those more focused on fighting for autonomy from the state.