In this talk I use light as a way of opening up questions about the relation of aesthetics to racial capitalism. Drawing from research in Nigeria, but thinking more generally, I move between structures of political economy and the everyday techniques and experience of living with and in light. Brian Larkin is co-director of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities and Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University. His research, broadly conceived, examines the operations of media…