Publications

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 In Search of Repair

For the past six years I have explored the trajectory of contemporary institutional  claims for reparations for slavery  and colonialism in the Caribbean. The questions that have guided my work are what are the discursive and material conditions that shape reparative policies? What motivates reparative speech? While less concerned with the possibilities and impossibilities of reparative justice. But in witnessing the pandemic's assault on Black lives and most importantly in experiencing the death of my mother, who I imagine as a practitioner of repair, I question how one can maintain “wholeness” in grief? In the absence of certainties often promised through formal processes of justice, where else can one locate repair? In this chapter I answer these questions through paying  homage to my mother—her journey to repair and exploring the relationship as well as friction between grief and repair. ​

Simone, Z. (forthcoming), In Search for Repair: Reflections on Grief, the Repaired and Reparations in Deborah McFee and Tracie Rogers (eds.) Panoramic Public Policy: Gender Human Security & Public Policy in the Caribbean. Palgrave McMillan.

Tek Down Nelson! The Struggle for Repair in Barbados

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In this article I explore how the decommissioning of the statue of Lord Horatio Nelson captures some of the ways justice is envisioned within Barbados. I ask: How does the decommissioning generate more attention to the reparations question? How is repair and sovereignty conceptualised through the performances that animated and structured the event? What do these performances suggest about the Barbadian geographic-historical foundation? I engage theorists of Black geographies and Black studies to work through the above questions. I do close readings of the performances featured in the ceremony, to illuminate how the decommissioning gestured to a range of histories and struggles that are punctuated by political transformation. My reading draws attention to how the statue's removal builds on regional demands for reparations and Barbadian struggles for sovereignty, which I argue are complementary aims.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12926

Caribbean Repair

Inside or Outside of a Black Radical Tradition

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In this essay, I explore how contemporary claims for reparations in the Caribbean challenge us to think differently about the scope and limitations of certain strands of what Cedric J. Robinson called the black radical tradition.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00086495.2022.2068848