Biocolonial and Racial Entanglements-- A Talk By Dr. Sam Okoth Opondo

Through a reading of Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 science fiction / mock documentary "District 9" and John le Carré’s "The Constant Gardener", this paper illustrates how the concern for generic human life has an identity-constituting function that enables bodies and lives to be valued differently with far reaching implications for both biomedical experiments and experiments with the ethics of co-habitation. More specifically, the paper heeds insights from Frantz Fanon’s critical humanist project and examines how the acceptance that we are all human albeit in unequal ways creates biocolonial regimes, ‘imagined immunities’ and limited sympathies that transform racialized, class-mediated and transnational vulnerable bodies into experimental labour or biomaterial (hearts, kidneys, corneas) to be consumed or disposed of as part of life-sustaining and life-administering apparatuses.

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Free Public Event

Event Sponsor
Political Science, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Wumaier Yilamu, (808) 956-8357, wumaier@hawaii.edu

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