Society Is a Labyrinth of Incarnations

Lecture organized by the Committee on Ethnicity Migration Rights, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Abstract
“Society is a labyrinth of incarnations.” This statement by Edward Said suggests that society is formed by processes where identities, relations, and things become “incarnate”—literally become flesh (carne). This lecture unpacks the implications of this view for understanding racial/ethnic identities. What would it mean to think of race and ethnicity as part of social-material processes? And what do conceptions of “flesh” in Caribbean poetry and religious studies contribute to this project?