Insolence, Indolence, and Blackness in Hispaniola - A Talk with Professor Dixa Ramírez-D'Oleo
Insolence” and “indolence” define two sides of the same coin that is the figure of the free black on the island that now encompasses both Haiti and the Dominican Republic—from the figure of the insolent free black through the historical case of a serial killer terrorizing the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo in the early 1790s and who became known as El Negro Incógnito (The Unknown Black), to the figure of the indolent free black through the appearance of Carrefour, a character in the 1943 film I Walked With a Zombie. Either insolent or indolent, the figure of the free black on this island emerges in various cultural and historical texts as untethered to the fungible and laboring function of blackness in the Americas, occasioning horror and suspicion.
RSVP by May 5 by visiting https://bit.ly/charlacondixa
Wednesday, May 10, 2023 | 11:30 AM (PST)
PEB 721, Public Engagement Building
Boxed Lunch - 11:30AM - 12:00PM
Talk - 12:00PM - 1:00PM
Event Details
Cosponsored by the Black Studies Project and Latin American Studies as a part of the Blackness in Latin America Series.
About Professor Dixa Ramírez-D'Oleo
Dixa Ramírez-D’Oleo completed her Ph.D. in Literature at UC San Diego. She has published two books: Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (2018, NYU Press), which received the 2019 Barbara Christian Literary Award from the Caribbean Studies Association, and This Will Not Be Generative (2023, Cambridge University Press). She is finishing her third book, Blackness and the Photographic Negative (Duke University Press). Her writing has appeared in ASAP/Journal, Atlantic Studies, Avidly, The Black Scholar, Comparative Literature, Hyperallergic, Interventions, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Small Axe, and Social Text. She also serves on the Editorial Committee of Small Axe.
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