‘A Grief of Distortions’: Evidence, Imagination & Technē Made for the Measure of the World

Abstract: This talk invites a collective reconsideration of how we measure and validate knowledge, aligning with Aimé Césaire’s vision of a humanism “made to the measure of the world.” In a present conjuncture marked by authoritarianism, fascism, competing pandemics, trans antagonism, and ecological collapse, the practices and cosmologies cultivated by the dispossessed continue to disrupt hegemonic understandings of truth, verifiability, and scale. Rooted in Audre Lorde’s notion of anger as a “grief of distortions,” this talk explores how affect farming (e.g., rage baiting) and other technē are wielded to maintain systems of oppression. Smythe engages archival, juridical, media, and medical sources to assess U.S. citizenship policies and conditions in Italy’s detention centers (CPRs) and to analyze which evidence defines belonging and to what end. Smythe highlights the transformative aesthetics of Black study and political imagination in response to the metrics of “proof” and objectivity commonly used to deny marginalized communities their humanity.

Bio: Dr. SA Smythe is a critical theorist, transmedia storyteller, and educator committed to black belonging beyond genres and geographies. They are assistant professor of Black Studies & the Archive and Director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis at the University of Toronto. Smythe is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and serves on international editorial and advisory boards primarily dedicated to Black arts & culture, trans & nonbinary liberation, Black studies, and human rights/migrant justice. Smythe is editor of Troubling the Grounds: Global Configurations of Blackness, Nativism, and Indigeneity (vols. 1&2) (Postmodern Culture), Transnational Black Studies (Liverpool University Press), and author of Where Blackness Meets the Sea: On Crisis, Culture, and the Black Mediterranean (forthcoming) and [proclivity], a poetry collection and sound installation-performance suite. Shortlisted for the 2025 Creative Capital Award (in Multimedia Performance), Smythe is recipient of the 2021-22 Rome Prize for Modern Italian Studies and numerous composer/artist fellowships and residencies supporting their transmedia artwork including Leighton Studios at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and a MacDowell Fellowship in Multimedia Installation. For decades, Smythe has organised with literary/performance, abolitionist, and migrant support collectives across Turtle Island, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

In person or on Zoom
Reception to follow on 6th floor patio