Black socialities

Vanessa E. Thompson is Assistant Professor and Distinguished Professor in Black Studies and Social Justice at Queen’s University, Canada

'Vanessa E. Thompson’s beautiful text shows how Black Studies, feminist studies, and Marxism interactively strengthen our ability to notice and analyse dynamics that might otherwise remain obscure. Her lively concept 'Black socialities' is materially grounded and symbolically stunning. This is a magnificent work of abolition geography.'– Ruth Wilson Gilmore, City University of New York'With this book, Vanessa E. Thompson offers an English-speaking audience a way to think about anti-racist struggles in France by linking material demands, symbolic struggles, and their spatial grounding in working-class neighborhoods. A very important intervention that moves beyond U.S.-centered frameworks.'– Joao Gabriel, historian and author'This beautifully written book demonstrates how conviviality and creativity operate as everyday social practices that create spaces of care, breath and organization. It is a crucial contribution to our understanding of black political subjectivity, the making of black social movements, and ultimately global liberation struggles. This book offers urgent lessons for challenging times.'– Beverley Mullings, University of Toronto'Drawing on her organizing work in Paris and beyond, and with a sharp analytical eye, Vanessa E. Thompson demonstrates the ways urban space provides the conditions for renewed understandings of placemaking, community, conviviality, and social change. Beautifully written and fiercely argued, Black Socialities is a thoughtful invitation to notice how black struggles for liberation generate multi-scalar cooperative activities that fracture simplistic understandings of race and belonging. The book is an offering of sorts—a set of smart spatial lessons that teach us about organizing, how to conceptualize radical transformation, and what it means to activate multi-racial solidarities.'– Katherine McKittrick, Queen’s University

• Introduction1.Engaging the quartiers populaires2 Struggles beyond recognition3 Policing as un-breathing4 Resistance and creation in paris5 Black liminal infrastructuresFrom black struggles to abolition