Program Directory

Today we go ​“over the edge” of Cana­da to chat with our guest, schol­ar Dr. K. Wayne Yang, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Eth­nic Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty Cal­i­for­nia – San Diego. We dis­cuss his lat­est book he pub­lished as the avatar ​“la paper­son” via UMin­neso­ta Press: A Third Uni­ver­si­ty is Pos­si­ble. Fol­low­ing the form of grey lit­er­a­ture, ​“la paper­son” taps into the inster­sti­tial space some­hwere between a man­u­script and an arti­cle, to spec­u­late wide­ly about decol­o­niz­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty from with­in the inter­sec­tion­al lens of Black film cri­tique and indige­nous fem­i­nisms. Due to the nature of ​“grey lit­er­a­ture” or per­haps in spite of it, A Third Uni­ver­si­ty is Pos­si­ble ges­tures sophis­ti­cat­ed­ly towards a the­o­ry of sub­vert­ing set­tler-colo­nial lega­cies and process­es that per­vade the insti­tu­tion. ​“la paper­son” imag­ines how a uni­ver­si­ty man­i­fests decol­o­niz­ing rid­ers rather than coerces a decol­o­nized eth­ic, s/​he enter­tains the notion of the tru­ly rema­tri­at­ed space, and they asks us to con­sid­er how/​where/​what the third uni­ver­si­ty space could be or look like with­out cast­ing judge­ment of its via­bil­i­ty or moral­i­ty. We dis­cuss writ­ing con­tin­gent­ly, grey lit­er­a­ture as a genre, Ta-nehisi Coates’ ver­sion of The Mec­ca (Howard Uni­ver­si­ty), and, bor­row­ing from Tiffany Lethabo King, unpack a decol­o­niz­ing land biopol­i­tics. Yang/“la paper­son” is an incred­i­ble thinker, com­pas­sion­ate orga­niz­er, and boom­ing voice in inter­sec­tion­al cul­tur­al studies.