ASRC 6230 - Imperial Realms/Black Worlds

Spring. 4 credits.

S. Grovogui.

The term ‘empire’ denotes a dominium, domain, or political space under the lordship of an entity with simple, full, partial, and, in any case, legal or near-legal and sovereign privileges over all others within it. Depending time, culture or traditions, and the available politics, an empire may be predicated upon direct ownership, occupation, tenancy, or usufruct by the overlord. In this sense, empire denotes a state of dominion of one political entity over key dimensions of the public and private lives of populations who are culturally and ethnically distinct from that of the ruling or imperial class. The structures, institutions, and values that give effect to empire are assembled under the rubric of ‘imperial’ while the ambition to or desire for it is ‘imperialism’. Lying within imperial realms but beyond their hold, Black People instituted historic forms of political subjectivity and agency through historic institutions whose legal, political and moral idioms generated discourses of freedom and liberties, obligations and duties, necessity and morality, and ministering and care – and therefore expectations from life. Spanning Africa, the Caribbean, and Americas, the related moral universes and their languages, values, and institutions are the objects of this course.