Fatal blow

Urbicidal geographies, pax colonial and black sovereignty in the Colombian city

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476717
AutoresJ A Alves (0000-0002-3231-1693, University of California, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen39
Número6
Páginas1055-1072
Fecha de publicación2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758211042022
OpenAlexW3197781008
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas31

This article gives ethnographic form to Fanon's warning that in the colonial world, "zombies are more terrifying than settlers," by analyzing how racial mythologies produce spatial classifications of Black urban communities as unruly places and how Black individuals challenge their wretched condition by embracing a "program of complete disorder." To do so, the article analyzes the short(ened) life of Paco, a young Black man under house arrest whose retaliatory violence against, and territorial dispute with, the police is an entry point for exploring resistance to urban coloniality in Santiago de Cali/Colombia. The article engages with the field of Black geography to propose a Fanonian reading of contemporary cityscapes as colonial spaces. Such colonial spatialities, it is argued, are not defined merely by subjugation to death but also, as Paco's refusal to be killed may reveal, by an insurgent spatial praxis that might reposition the Black subject in relation to the city and the regime of Law

Colonialism · Criminology · Ethnography · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Sovereignty · Anthropology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Sex work and related issues