Hybrid Seminar – Denial and Disavowal in the 1983 Killing and Inquest of Colin Roach
Wednesday 8 April 2026, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm BST, London, UK
Please join us for an evening seminar and drinks with Dr Carson Arthur in conversation with Dr Kodwo Eshun discussing his research into the killing of Colin Roach and subsequent inquest.
Abstract:
From a social epistemological perspective, ‘official discourse’ (e.g. narratives, accounts, and explanations) produced and propagated by political and legal institutions seek to control and withhold information from the public. Arguably, what conditions official discourse is a culture of denial with deceptive statements released and crucial evidence undisclosed. Official discourse and denial was nowhere more apparent than in the inquest of Colin Roach, a 21-year-old Black man who was found dead in a London police station in 1983. According to official discourse, Colin had shot himself with a sawn off shotgun and committed suicide. However, evidence did not support this conclusion. An independent inquiry commissioned by the Roach Family Support Committee reviewed the inquest and re-examined the evidence. It found the inquest had not been conducted properly, following procedural deficiencies. Based on my reading of the independent inquiry’s report, alongside the inquest transcripts, this paper examines the official discourse, however, from a psychoanalytical perspective, and explores less the culture but more the mechanism of denial. Incorporating Critical Black Theory to this perspective, this paper argues the police denied not simply empirical evidence but the ontological and ethical life of blackness: signifying ‘death’, ‘self-inflicted’ and ‘suicide’ as indeterminable.
Speaker bios:
Dr. Carson Cole Arthur is a Lecturer of Criminology at the University of Law (London, UK). His research interests include state racial violence, accountability, and testimony. He also writes about African and Afro-diasporic art and cinema. His work has been published in The British Journal of Criminology, Crime, Media, Culture, and Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge.
Dr Kodwo Eshun is a lecturer in aural/visual cultures at Goldsmiths. Kodwo specialises in critical theories and contemporary artistic practices with particular reference to modern and contemporary Black Studies, Anglophone Pan-African internationalisms, histories, theories and practices of the essay film, militant cinema, experimental documentary, diasporic science fictions and alternative futurisms.
Find more information and book your free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/denial-and-disavowal-in-the-1983-killing-and-inquest-of-colin-roach-tickets-1984782959260
This event will be held online and at Room 313, Third Floor, School of Law Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, UK.