Naminata Diabate: The Forms of Naked Agency and Genital Cursing

Join the African Cultural Studies department in welcoming Naminata Diabate to campus. Diabate will give a lecture titled “The Forms of Naked Agency and Genital Cursing.”

Abstract
This talk tracks the changing nature of genital cursing as it travels spatially, temporally, and formally. It also considers the gesture’s newly acquired form, what Diabate calls “naked agency,” as a point of departure for deliberating on the texture of the women’s and their targets’ agency. A comparison of the forms of naked agency and genital cursing carries larger implications for how form shapes theory in a world of dispersion, multiplication, and circulation.