Sunday March 4, 2012, 2pm
Exceptional Violence
Jamaica– Where does it come from? - Philadelphia
An InterActive Panel Discussion
with Deborah A. Thomas, John Jackson, Theodore Harris
Whether it's Philadelphia or Kingston Jamaica, people often talk about contemporary urban struggles within the idiom of culture.
They say we have a "culture of violence," one that infiltrates other areas of the city and, through migration, the world. What if we
talked about violence as a structural phenomenon rather than a cultural one? What sorts of histories would we have to lay bare?
What sorts of un-examined connections would we have to unearth? How would it make us think about contemporary inequality?
The Exhibit: Theodore A. Harris – Collagist – Cover art for both the book and the
DVD - “There is a clarity and cleanness to his craftsmanship which heighten the
ideational projection the image sprays at us. He tells us about the peoples' struggles,
world wide, against oppression and exploitation. Our lives under racism and the
twisted rule of capital.” - Amiri Baraka
The Book: Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica
by Deborah A. Thomas ($23.95 Duke University Press) - “Exceptional Violence is
at once methodologically astute, richly researched, and critically engaged. In
reframing the historical object of violence in Jamaica, she enables us to see hitherto
obscured dimensions of its embodied constitution as social practice and social
imaginary, its relation to citizenship and gender, the state and community, racial
subjectivities and transnational migrations. It is a fine achievement.”—David Scott,
Columbia University - Thomas is Professor and Chair of the Graduate Group in the
Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Film: Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens (2011), a compelling documentary
that chronicles the history of violence against Rastafarians in Jamaica. Produced and
directed by John Jackson, Jr. and Deborah Thomas, along with Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn
and Junior “Ista J” Manning, Bad Friday focuses on a community of Rastafarians in western
Jamaica who annually commemorate the 1963 Coral Gardens incident, a moment just after
the island’s independence, when the Jamaican government rounded up, jailed and tortured
hundreds of Rastafarians. The documentary recounts the poignant history of violence in
Jamaica through the eyes of its most iconic community and shows how people use their
recollections of past traumas to imagine new possibilities for a collective future. - John L.
Jackson, Jr. - Producer and Co-Director - is Richard Perry University Professor of
Communication and Anthropology at the U of P.
Exhibit – Book – Film – Discussion – Refreshments
for more info www.moonstoneartscenter.org