Black Studies without Excellence

As the Canadian university expands its market to previously excluded populations and areas of study, Black students and scholars take up positions in academia to engage in intellectual work geared toward liberation, knowing that from the perspective of the neoliberal institution, our value is primarily as new categories of institutional consumer and forms of institutional capital. We work from this incongruous position of within and against the academy, simultaneously posited as visible representatives and visual representations of its reformation as “diverse” and “decolonized.” The university has long asserted its excellence, and in sponsoring “Black Excellence” and “Indigenous Excellence” it now claims its excellence at being inclusive—hence “Inclusive Excellence”. This paper draws on the work of Bill Readings in conversation with Black radical thought and my recent research to examine these issues as they are emerging in the much delayed and ongoing development of Black Studies in Canada.