The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is pleased to present our first Social Anthropology Seminar Series talk of Spring 2023, featuring Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Erica Caple James.
This event is open to the public and will be held in Tozzer Anthropology Building (Rm. 203) on Thursday, March 2nd at 3PM.
The Matter of Black Lives:
Hauntology, Infrastructure, and the Necropolitics of History in the American South
by
Erica Caple James
Abstract
The specter of race haunts the unfolding of many infrastructure projects and displays their hegemonic character—on aesthetic, symbolic, political, and economic levels—precisely because of the way structural inequalities bleed through decisions about the design, siting, and development of public space. In contrast to the highly visible story of White supremacy, violence, and public space surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments, this talk recounts a largely invisible struggle over history, its definition, and meaning; land, its unearthing, and uses; environment and its protection, and race and place, all of which emerged during debates over the destruction of the Sammons Farmstead to make way for a federally funded highway in greater-Charlottesville.
In late 2012, a cemetery on a several-acre property in Albemarle County was “discovered” during the pre-construction phase of a project to extend a federally funded highway, the Route 29 Bypass. The burial site contained the marked headstones of prominent leader of color, Jesse Scott Sammons (1853–1901), and those of his extended family, plus the unmarked graves of an unknown number of other persons. The Sammons case demonstrates how public infrastructure policies can make and remake race through discourses and practices that delineate the boundaries of what is deemed “historic.” In addition to discussing the foundations for and ontology of infrastructure in Charlottesville, this example draws attention to the hauntology of infrastructure.
Speaker Bio
Erica Caple James is an Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology and Urban Studies at MIT. Her work focuses on violence and trauma; philanthropy, humanitarianism, and faith-based charity; human rights, democratization, and postconflict transition processes; race, historic preservation, and spatial politics; and agricultural development and climate change in Haiti. Her most recent book project, Life at the Center: Haitians and Corporate Catholicism in Boston, selected for the Atelier Series at UC Press, analyzes the “biopolitics of charity” at an organization serving Haitian immigrants and refugees and funded through Catholic Charities.