Abstract
The limits of contemporary reparations discourse lie not only in its political and economic formulations but also in its grammar. The prevailing grammar of to repair organizes reparations through the logic of injury, in which harm authorizes recognition and justice is rendered as compensation. Within this framework, Black life becomes legible only through suffering, and the state’s moral authority is affirmed through its ability to account for loss. This talk advocates for a shift from to repair toward repair to, a grammatical and political reorientation that moves from restitution to composition and from recognition to relation. Repair to describes a reparative practice grounded in place and oriented by collective life, in which repair is practiced through the making and maintenance of relation rather than just the settlement of accounts.
Speaker
Jovan Scott Lewis is Professor of Geography and Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of California, Berkeley. His research examines Black geographies, racial capitalism, and reparations within the economic and social conditions of Black life in the United States and the Caribbean. He is the author of Scammer’s Yard (2020), Violent Utopia (2022), and co-editor of The Black Geographic (2023).
The REPAIR lectures
The REPAIR lectures are an interdisciplinary lecture series on contemporary reparations demands and policies around the globe. They are given by leading reparations experts and investigate how reparations claims and policies come about, how they play out from a political, economic and moral perspective, and what they may teach us about politics and economics today. The lectures are hosted by the REPAIR project, based at the Anthropology Department of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They are co-sponsored by the UvA’s Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS).