Notes for Planetary Bodies:
Black Studies and Critical Whiteness Praxis in Europe
Keynote Lecture
28 April 2026
International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC)
Justus Liebig University Giessen
Germany
This presentation grapples with the increasingly prevalent concept of the planetary, foregrounding embodiment from a queer critical race perspective. Advancing critical black studies as an essential contemporary theoretical project and robust “critique of Western Civilisation” (Cedric Robinson), I argue that it will not be possible to envision the planetary — as distinct from the global and the international — without that field’s serious account of enslavement, colonialism, and racialisation as foundational to modernity. I offer notes toward thinking and enacting our own bodies in planetary ways, especially when we are operating within and through the predominantly white institutions of europe, such as its universities. These suggestions are drawn from my critical research on embodied knowledge, with a focus on the complex relations among blackness, whiteness, jewishness, and indigeneity. The presentation will be multimodal and experimental, addressing topics that may include: white writing; research as ceremony; critical audiovisual methods; and decolonising jewishness. I aim to provoke and inspire new experiments in the forms of academic and para-academic praxis.
Discussants:
Frederic Hanusch, Professor of Planetary Change and Politics, Justus Liebig University Giessen
Bojana Kunst, Professor in Dance Studies with a Focus on Choreography and Performance, Institute of Applied Theatre Studies, Justus Liebig University Giessen
