Black Socialities - Racism, Resistance and Social Change by Vanessa Eileen Thompson Hardcover

About the Book

The book explores black urban resistance against racist imagery, policing, and housing insecurity in the Parisian region. Based on ethnographic research and qualitative interviews, this study explores the formation of abolitionist spatial resistance, mutli-racial solidarity and the possibilities of political blackness.

Book Synopsis

This is a cutting-edge exploration of black urban politics in Parisian racialized working class and working poor districts, the formation of abolition geography, and the possibilities of new forms of political blackness.

In Black socialities, Vanessa E. Thompson argues that black urban politics in the French banlieues are multi-racial and spatially grounded towards abolition. Based on a close engagement with urban black activist practices against racial imagery in the city, policing and state racism, and housing insecurity, she shows how radical anti-racism goes beyond struggles for recognition and unfolds alongside new formations of political blackness that is based on urban conviviality.

This form of black politics has much to teach us in this current conjuncture of liberal anti-racism and state recognition politics.

From the Back Cover

How do black urban movements resist state racism in Paris beyond calls for recognition or collective identity formation? What role does place-making play in urban black struggles against policing and housing inequalities? What kinds of anti-racism and black politics hold the possibilities for radical solidarity?

In Black socialities: Urban resistance and the struggle beyond recognition in Paris, Vanessa E. Thompson shows how black urban movements from the racialized working-class and working-poor districts of Paris develop collective place-making strategies in their anti-racist political mobilizations. These places shape and inform practices of black solidarity as well as multi-racial alliances against state racism, policing, and organized abandonment.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Parisian region, in-depth qualitative interviews, and analyses of political and media discourses, Thompson explores how urban black-led movements disrupt racist and carceral geographies by claiming and appropriating public and semi-public spaces, protesting in front of racist imagery in the city, creating and supporting self-made infrastructures of expelled black families, and organizing multi-racial resistance against policing. Bringing a spatial perspective to the study of blackness and anti-racism in France, and Europe writ large, Thompson provides a nuanced understanding of black urban politics in France, its relation to local and transnational spaces, and how they forge multi-racial alliances and new formations of political blackness.

About the Author

Vanessa E. Thompson is Assistant Professor and Distinguished Professor of Black Studies and Social Justice at Queen's University, Canada.