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Sweetness in the Key of Black: Baking as Experimental Method
Topics: Black Geographies
, Food Systems
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Keywords: black ecologies, black geographies, sugar, critical food studies Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Sunday Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 39
Authors:
Ashanté M. Reese, The University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract
Few commodities have shaped and continue to haunt the lives of Black people across the diaspora as much as sugar. From forced labor to surveilled consumption, sugar has been deployed as a carceral technology that undergirds the construction of cities, corporations, and empire. Yet, to only view Black people’s relationship to sugar through violent histories and presents is to miss a sweetness—belonging, intimacy, connection—that exceeds it. Inspired by Dionne Brand’s assertion that “reclaim[ing] the Black body from that domesticated, captive, open space is the creative project always underway,” (2001,43), this paper uses baking as method toward answering the question: how might we map a distinction between sugar—a product of racial capitalism—and sweetness, a necessary component of Black life?
Sweetness in the Key of Black: Baking as Experimental Method