Avie Bennett Historica Lecture

Writing Difficult Histories in Difficult Times

Speaker: Barrington Walker

This talk is about the challenges of writing difficult histories in difficult times. It asks how members of the historical community should respond to the demands for social justice and inclusion being placed on a profession.

How do we grapple with the modernity’s difficult legacies and its countercultures –to invoke Paul Gilroy- birthed from slavery, colonization, racial capitalism and environmental degradation (among other violent products of modernity) and how should this inform our understanding of history and historical practice?

How do we continue to center the voices of those who were a product of modernity’s countercultures and their resistance, defiance and creation of thriving emancipatory spaces in the face of a global necropolitics that endures in various iterations? Focused primarily on the Canadian context, this talk also considers for whom these histories are difficult and the academic, institutional and bureaucratic challenges that they present for the university.