Season 3, Episode 2: Black Feminism is Intersectional Justice

Aug 4

Season 3, Episode 2: Black Feminism is Intersectional Justice

In this episode, edna bonhomme speaks with academic activist, artist, filmmaker, and writer Dr. Natasha A. Kelly about the history of Black people in Germany, Black feminism, and her specific approach to understanding the Afro-German movement—recognizing anticolonial resistance movements during German colonialism as its first wave and the second wave in the 1980s with Afro-German poet May Ayim as one of its founders. They also discussed the long ongoing history of Afrofuturism and its roots in the works of Martin Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, who, as Dr. Kelly points out, “wrote speculative fiction and already had the idea of connecting literature to politics, and the idea of liberating Black people.” Critical to their discussion was also unpacking the German word “Rasse,” its history, and the current debates surrounding removing this word from the German constitution while also addressing how racism is entrenched in the construct of nation-state itself.

Transcriptions for all episodes are available upon request.

Biography

LINKS: WEBSITE

DR. NATASHA A. KELLY

Natasha A. Kelly has a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology. She is the author and editor of four books. Her first art installation "The Poison Cabinet" dealt with racism in/and language and was shown at the German Historical Museum Berlin in 2016. Based on this idea, she developed a "Cabinet of Curiosities" during a visiting fellowship at the University of Virginia in 2019, in which her students could banish objects of everyday racism. With her award-winning and internationally acclaimed documentary "Millis Awakening," she made her film debut at the 10th Berlin Biennale, winning the Black Laurel Film Award for Best Documentary Feature in San Francisco in 2018. Film installations and screenings followed throughout Europe, in India, Australia, Brazil, and the USA. She made her directorial debut with the theater performance of her dissertation “Afroculture. The Space between Yesterday and Tomorrow” in three countries and three languages in 2019/20. Her forthcoming book The Comet is a documentary of the Afrofuturism symposium of the same name which she curated at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin in 2018.