Yannick Giovanni Marshall’s talk followed by the NICA seminar examines the neutralization of Black revolt, the containment of anti-colonial critique, and the accelerating collapse of institutional protections for radical thought. The talk weaves political theory, personal narrative, and intellectual history, drawing on his book The End of Supplication: The Invention of Prostrate Blackness as a Replacement for the Maroon (Bloomsbury, 2025) and his recent essay “Universities v. Protest: A Letter from a Lesser Alumnus” (Al Jazeera). We also think through the implications of thinking marooning in our contemporary moment from the spaces we invoke in our conversations, notably the Netherlands, the Caribbean, Europe, and the USA. Confirmed participants in this NICA Seminar are the keynote guest Yannick Giovanni Marshall, in conversation with Michael Thomas and Sarah Budasz. The event is organized by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken and Michael Thomas.

Bios

Yannick Giovanni Marshall, PhD is a faculty member at California Institute of Arts, USA in self-imposed exile. A writer and scholar of African and Africana Studies he holds an MA in African American Studies and a PhD from the Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Columbia University. Marshall has published two collections of poetry, regularly contributes editorials and articles to Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and Current Affairs, and has given numerous talks and interviews on race, colonialism, radical dissent and policing. His first academic book The End of Supplication: The Invention of Prostrate Blackness as a Replacement for the Maroon was published with Zed-Bloomsbury Press in 2025.  His writing, courses and projects can be found at yannickgiovannimarshall.net.

Michael L. Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Critical Cultural Theory capacity group at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches in Media Studies as a part of the Film Team. He has held positions as a Humboldt Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in the JFK Institute for North American Studies at the Freie University Berlin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and coordinator of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University, and a Post-Doctoral Lecturer in Structured Liberal Education at Stanford University, among others. He specializes in work in Social Aesthetics, an investigation of aesthetic dimensions of social life. He has published work in the Critical Philosophy of Race, Philosophy and Literature, American Studies, Social Theory, Political Theory, Speculative Philosophy, and most recently Band Research. In each of these arenas, he uses aesthetic feeling, art and media objects, or reflections on aesthetic theory to analyze sociological processes and their implications in the search for novel ways of organizing “social life.”

Sarah Budasz is an Assistant Professor in Decolonial Literatures and Cultures: French in the School of Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures. After a PhD at Durham University, she previously worked as a lecturer in French at Aberystwyth University. Her recently completed PhD examined the reception of Classical culture in French 19th Century travel writing about the ‘Orient’. She is currently working on publications related to nationalist travel writing in Greece, race and classical scholarship, Egyptian dancers as well as Roman models in narratives of the Haitian revolution. Her future projects include a special issue of Dix-Neuf on “Press and the French Empire” as well as research on ancient myths in 19th and 20th narratives of emancipation from slavery.

Rita Ouédraogo is an Amsterdam-based curator, researcher, writer and anthropologist pioneering ‘decolonial’ practices in contemporary art. Co-founder of Buro Stedelijk, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’s project space, she transforms how institutions engage with African diaspora narratives and counter-culture. Through experimental collaborations and radical public programming, she dismantles traditional power structures while amplifying marginalized voices in cultural spaces.