Black Material Geographies - Episode 8

Black Cotton

In this episode of Black Material Geographies, Teju speaks with:

• Sha'Mira Covington, PhD candidate at the University of Georgia

• Anna Arabindan-Kesson, assistant professor in African American and Black Diaspora Art at Princeton University

Cotton: Past, Present, and Futures

• Cotton plants have been growing on Earth for about 10 to 20 million years. Though native to tropical regions, cotton plants can easily adapt to different climates.

• Cotton became the catalyst for British colonization, as well as industrialization in the US through slave labor and textile trading

• Sha'Mira Covington delves into cotton’s history tied to slavery, industrialization, and the fashion industry across the globe

• Cotton as a commodity: While cotton became a global impetus for development throughout history, Anna Arabindan-Kesson has worked with artists that explore the ways cotton impacts those connections and how we relate to each other

• We learn how abolitionists like Henry Garnet magnified the exploitation of labor that goes into manufacturing cotton based textiles in his travels to the UK.

• Black people’s connection with cotton goes beyond violence and exploitation, and is also used as a form of self-expression and distinction, using garments as empowering items.

• Anna describes her efforts to articulate how 19th century black abolitionists and artists were re-defining value and balance that with the violent system created by colonization and industrialism in her book Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World

• Can the current fashion industry be overhauled? Sha’Mira ponders an industry with black liberation and indigenous sovereignty at the forefront, and how that would best support black and indigenous designers