I happened to re-read This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color this weekend. It struck me this time how much of that groundbreaking book is made up of journal entries and letter communications. Hmm.
Here are some passages that I wanted to feed you.
love,
lex
“For once in my life i have to let myself deserve a home, food on the table and a handful of loving friends, this is a time of healing and taking the blame of the rapes and attempted rapes, the child beatings i recieved, taking all that pain off my shoulders and giving it back to who it belongs.” Naomi Littlebear (from Earth-Lover, Survivor Musician)
“I am a revolutionary feminist because I want me to be free. And it is critically important to me that you who are here, that your commitment to revolution is based on the fact that you want revolution for yourself.” Pat Parker (from Revolution: It's Not Pretty, Easy or Quick)
“What I feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with people who are different from you. I feel it is radical to be dealing with race and sex and class and sexual identity all at one time. I think that is really radical because it has never been done before.” Barbara Smith (from Across the Kitchen Table A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue)
Monday, February 19, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
That is All
"That is all. That is all. The FIRST need of a free people is to define their own terms."
-Stokely Carmicheal
-Stokely Carmicheal
Thursday, January 25, 2007
gendered parts by Kameelah
Meditate on this brilliant photoart and check out Kameelah (an awesome teacher/artist/revolutionary) @ www.kameelahwrites.com
Monday, January 08, 2007
On Closure and Creation
(to meditate on while we transfer leadership...)
"What needs to be reconsidered are these widely adopted and imposed forms of closure whose main function is simply to wrap up a product and facilitate consumption. They create neither a space of serenity nor of fecundity for the mind and body to rest and grow; rather they naturalize the zone of confromity, where freedom conists of filling in to one’s taste and monetary capacity, the pre-assigned slots.”
"The work space and the space of creation is where she confronts and leaves off at the same time a world of named nooks and corners, of street signs and traffic regulations, of beaten paths and multiple masks, of constant intermeshing with other bodies'--that are also her own---needs, assumptions, prejudices and limits."
Trinh T. Min-ha "Cotton and Iron" (1990)
"What needs to be reconsidered are these widely adopted and imposed forms of closure whose main function is simply to wrap up a product and facilitate consumption. They create neither a space of serenity nor of fecundity for the mind and body to rest and grow; rather they naturalize the zone of confromity, where freedom conists of filling in to one’s taste and monetary capacity, the pre-assigned slots.”
"The work space and the space of creation is where she confronts and leaves off at the same time a world of named nooks and corners, of street signs and traffic regulations, of beaten paths and multiple masks, of constant intermeshing with other bodies'--that are also her own---needs, assumptions, prejudices and limits."
Trinh T. Min-ha "Cotton and Iron" (1990)
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Black Warrior Woman Bio---from Worldwide Underground
Ella Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. Baker developed a sense for social justice early in her life. As a girl growing up in North Carolina, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner.
Baker studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. She graduated in 1927 as class valedictorian and then moved to New York City. Baker began joining social activist organizations. In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League. The League's purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also involved herself with several women's organizations.
In 1940, Baker began her involvement with the NAACP. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946 when she resigned from the NAACP staff. She remained an active volunteer after her resignation from the staff, Baker led the New York NAACP branch's fight to desegregate New York City public schools.
In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship. Baker stayed at SCLC for two years although she disagreed with its policy of strong central leadership over grass-roots organization, saying "strong people don't need strong leaders.
" Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to help the new student activists and organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was born. Baker continued to take part in SNCC mostly as a quiet leader who listened and encouraged the young activists. She was widely respected by the students who referred to her as "Miss Baker."
Ella Baker died on December 13, 1986, in New York City.
Baker studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. She graduated in 1927 as class valedictorian and then moved to New York City. Baker began joining social activist organizations. In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League. The League's purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also involved herself with several women's organizations.
In 1940, Baker began her involvement with the NAACP. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946 when she resigned from the NAACP staff. She remained an active volunteer after her resignation from the staff, Baker led the New York NAACP branch's fight to desegregate New York City public schools.
In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship. Baker stayed at SCLC for two years although she disagreed with its policy of strong central leadership over grass-roots organization, saying "strong people don't need strong leaders.
" Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to help the new student activists and organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was born. Baker continued to take part in SNCC mostly as a quiet leader who listened and encouraged the young activists. She was widely respected by the students who referred to her as "Miss Baker."
Ella Baker died on December 13, 1986, in New York City.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Annie Christmas
Today (for some reason) I am thinking of Annie Christmas, the name taken by a revolutionary black woman survivor who was an instrumental part in the radical black freedom mission (1859) that is usually attributed to John Brown. The orignal Annie Christmas was a legendary black woman warrior (a cross between a momma-messiah and John Henry as the story goes), and this Annie Christmas took on her name and called herself inheriting an imperative to struggle for her people. Annie Christmas moved to the United States from the Caribbean after surviving incest and conspired with Mary Ann Shadd and Mary Ellen Pleasant (and yes, John Brown) to arm US slaves and create a free black state. After the plan was discovered she suffered further sexual abuse at the hands of her captors. She finally escaped. And her story has passed on (and been passed over) And here.
In Michelle Cliff's brilliant work of historical fiction about Annie Christmas, Mary Ellen Pleasant et. al. "Free Enterprise" (read it!) she insists that we have to become "talking books". Our stories of resistance, our dreams and the visions that we act upon...like our experiences of violence are often repressed. Today I am proud of and waiting for and in love with our stories, our visions, our actions, our histories. "Talk it on."
love,
lex
In Michelle Cliff's brilliant work of historical fiction about Annie Christmas, Mary Ellen Pleasant et. al. "Free Enterprise" (read it!) she insists that we have to become "talking books". Our stories of resistance, our dreams and the visions that we act upon...like our experiences of violence are often repressed. Today I am proud of and waiting for and in love with our stories, our visions, our actions, our histories. "Talk it on."
love,
lex
Sunday, December 03, 2006
verily thus sayeth the Lorde
as if she knew what we were up to right now...
From "My Words Will Be There"
"It is necessary to determine how much of this pain I can use. That is the essential question we must all ask ourselves. There is some point where pain becomes an end in itself, and then we must let it go. On the one hand, we must not be afraid of pain, but on the other hand we must not subject ourselves to pain as an end in itself. We must not celebrate victimization, because there are other ways of being Black.”
“Even if you are afraid, do it anyway. We learn to work when we are tired; so we can learn to work when we are afraid.”
"I have always felt that I cannot be categorized. That has been both my weakness and my stregnth. It has been my weakness because my independence has cost me a lot of support. But you see it has also been my stregnth because it has given me the power to go on. I don’t know how I would have lived through the diffeent things I have survivived and continued to produce if I had not felt that all of who I am is what fulfills me and what fulfills the vision I have of a world.”
“There are very few voices for Black women, speaking from the center of conciousness, for the I AM out to the WE ARE.”
Ashe
From "My Words Will Be There"
"It is necessary to determine how much of this pain I can use. That is the essential question we must all ask ourselves. There is some point where pain becomes an end in itself, and then we must let it go. On the one hand, we must not be afraid of pain, but on the other hand we must not subject ourselves to pain as an end in itself. We must not celebrate victimization, because there are other ways of being Black.”
“Even if you are afraid, do it anyway. We learn to work when we are tired; so we can learn to work when we are afraid.”
"I have always felt that I cannot be categorized. That has been both my weakness and my stregnth. It has been my weakness because my independence has cost me a lot of support. But you see it has also been my stregnth because it has given me the power to go on. I don’t know how I would have lived through the diffeent things I have survivived and continued to produce if I had not felt that all of who I am is what fulfills me and what fulfills the vision I have of a world.”
“There are very few voices for Black women, speaking from the center of conciousness, for the I AM out to the WE ARE.”
Ashe
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Some Insight from INCITE!: Comment!!!
Some of my favorite passages from Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology and some questions for us to think about...
From the introduction (by the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence Collective)
"The challenge women of color face in combatting personal AND state violence is to develo strategies for ending violence that DO assure safety for survivors of sexual/domestic violence and DO NOT strengthen our oppressive criminal justice system...The question that we ask as women of color is not how do we set up a model anti-violence program, but what will it take to end the violence against us?...Our work must be founded in a radical anaylsis and we must resist cooptation. Our work is not about opulating ethnicaly specific programs, not just about reparations for the past, not just about multicultural interventions, and not about reform. Our work is about justice and freedom."
Question for us: What will it take to end the violence against us?
From SisterSong's "The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice"
"Sistersong maintains that reproductive justice--the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls---will be achieved when women and girls have the economic, social and political powe and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for ourselves, our families, and our communities in all areas of our lives."
Question for us: Do we see ending sexual violence as a reproductive justice issue?
From "Four Generations in Resistance" by Dana Erekat
"As a Palestinian you know education is a vital weapon for the fight in the struggle, this is why the Israelis close the schools every other day and enter the school every other day. Your daughter runs home in fear but you keep sending her back knowing that education is the only way. Knowing that interference with education is a colonizers tactic for preventing the growth of society, you don't need a diploma to understand that: it is your lived reality. You keep on living with hopes of a free Palestine in the next generation. You give birth to a daughter, knowing she will continue the fight. New generations of Palestinian women are born resisting with their bodies, with their pens, and with their lives. Motherhood is an act of defiance in the midst of colonization."
Question for us: What relationships with pre-existing, and possible educational systems are we making?
From "Sistas Making Moves" by Sista II Sista (a Brooklyn-wide organization of young black and latina women makin moves)
"Even though our advisors felt we should first raise money, we decided to jump right into launching a summer program with no money and no infrastructure...."
"...one of our biggest challenges: creating an organizational structure that was in line with our vision of the society we wanted to create."
"At SIIS we feel that true social transformation is holistic, that change comes from inspiration, emotional and cultural expression, and a strong political message."
"As our work around violence has grown, we've divided into three areas: challenging the police around issues of sexual harassment and violence against young women of color; building an alternative from the police for women to turn to in cases of interpersonal violence; and creating solidarity with women facing violence in the Third World."
Question for us: What is the relationship between our structure, our message and our love?
From "Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex: Statement by Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence"
"We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but that create a society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and passionate reciprocity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to guaranteeing the survival and care of all peoples."
Question for us: What is a guarantee? What does passionate reciprocity look like for us?
From "Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice" by TransJustice, a project of the Audre Lorde Project (a community organizing center for LGBTTQT people of color in the NYC area)
"Gender policing has always been part of the United States' bloody history. State-sanctioned gender policing targets Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people first by dehumanizing our identities. It denies our basic right to gender self-determination, and considers our bodies to be property of the state."
Question for us: What is the relationship between sexual violence and the creation of (bodies as) property?
looking for your comments
love,
lex
From the introduction (by the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence Collective)
"The challenge women of color face in combatting personal AND state violence is to develo strategies for ending violence that DO assure safety for survivors of sexual/domestic violence and DO NOT strengthen our oppressive criminal justice system...The question that we ask as women of color is not how do we set up a model anti-violence program, but what will it take to end the violence against us?...Our work must be founded in a radical anaylsis and we must resist cooptation. Our work is not about opulating ethnicaly specific programs, not just about reparations for the past, not just about multicultural interventions, and not about reform. Our work is about justice and freedom."
Question for us: What will it take to end the violence against us?
From SisterSong's "The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice"
"Sistersong maintains that reproductive justice--the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls---will be achieved when women and girls have the economic, social and political powe and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for ourselves, our families, and our communities in all areas of our lives."
Question for us: Do we see ending sexual violence as a reproductive justice issue?
From "Four Generations in Resistance" by Dana Erekat
"As a Palestinian you know education is a vital weapon for the fight in the struggle, this is why the Israelis close the schools every other day and enter the school every other day. Your daughter runs home in fear but you keep sending her back knowing that education is the only way. Knowing that interference with education is a colonizers tactic for preventing the growth of society, you don't need a diploma to understand that: it is your lived reality. You keep on living with hopes of a free Palestine in the next generation. You give birth to a daughter, knowing she will continue the fight. New generations of Palestinian women are born resisting with their bodies, with their pens, and with their lives. Motherhood is an act of defiance in the midst of colonization."
Question for us: What relationships with pre-existing, and possible educational systems are we making?
From "Sistas Making Moves" by Sista II Sista (a Brooklyn-wide organization of young black and latina women makin moves)
"Even though our advisors felt we should first raise money, we decided to jump right into launching a summer program with no money and no infrastructure...."
"...one of our biggest challenges: creating an organizational structure that was in line with our vision of the society we wanted to create."
"At SIIS we feel that true social transformation is holistic, that change comes from inspiration, emotional and cultural expression, and a strong political message."
"As our work around violence has grown, we've divided into three areas: challenging the police around issues of sexual harassment and violence against young women of color; building an alternative from the police for women to turn to in cases of interpersonal violence; and creating solidarity with women facing violence in the Third World."
Question for us: What is the relationship between our structure, our message and our love?
From "Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex: Statement by Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence"
"We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but that create a society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and passionate reciprocity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to guaranteeing the survival and care of all peoples."
Question for us: What is a guarantee? What does passionate reciprocity look like for us?
From "Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice" by TransJustice, a project of the Audre Lorde Project (a community organizing center for LGBTTQT people of color in the NYC area)
"Gender policing has always been part of the United States' bloody history. State-sanctioned gender policing targets Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people first by dehumanizing our identities. It denies our basic right to gender self-determination, and considers our bodies to be property of the state."
Question for us: What is the relationship between sexual violence and the creation of (bodies as) property?
looking for your comments
love,
lex
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
On Common Sense Politics
Just something that Sista Angela said that I find useful for us:
On the simplistic "Bush vocabulary" as political discourse....
"It is seductive because it appears to require no effort to understand; it is dangerous because it erases everything that really matters."
Angela Davis in Abolition Democracy (2005)
What do you think?
On the simplistic "Bush vocabulary" as political discourse....
"It is seductive because it appears to require no effort to understand; it is dangerous because it erases everything that really matters."
Angela Davis in Abolition Democracy (2005)
What do you think?
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The Combahee River Collective Statement
Coming to an UBUNTU meeting near you: printouts of the groundbreaking, revolutionary and far from perfect statement by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. This is the founding document for the intersectional analyses of oppression that we develop and deconstruct and redevelop today.
Anyway...before I burst into a praise poem...this is the spot to post your thoughts about the document while and after you read. Post a comment!
love,
alexis
Anyway...before I burst into a praise poem...this is the spot to post your thoughts about the document while and after you read. Post a comment!
love,
alexis
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
"Listen to the Voices of the People"
Click on the article "Unlikey Activist" to see Caprice Brown, a black woman in a largely people of color led movement in Miami for housing rights speak up and speak out. I don't think this is particulary "unlikely" (but then again I often disagree with the way the Miami Herald characterizes folks), I do think this is an inspiring example of stregnth brilliance and...guess what? Black feminism!
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/interactive/
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/interactive/
Monday, September 25, 2006
and again the Lorde sayeth unto us....
“Even the form our creativity takes is often a class issue. Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper.”
Audre Lorde, "Age, Race, Class and Sex" (1980) in Sister Outsider
Audre Lorde, "Age, Race, Class and Sex" (1980) in Sister Outsider
Monday, September 18, 2006
and the Lorde sayeth
“Yet without community there is certainly no liberation, not future, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between me and my oppression.”
-The Cancer Journals 10/3/79
-The Cancer Journals 10/3/79
Sunday, September 10, 2006
June Jordan's Resistance List
Here's what June Jordan say characterizes the "spirit of resistance"
1. It feels terrific.
2. It knows it will prevail.
3. It’s immune to enemy assessment.
4. It agitates for one’s life, one’s soul.
5. It’s basically and ultimately collective.
6. and 7. IT FEELS TERRIFIC!
What you got? Make some lists of your own!
love,
lex
1. It feels terrific.
2. It knows it will prevail.
3. It’s immune to enemy assessment.
4. It agitates for one’s life, one’s soul.
5. It’s basically and ultimately collective.
6. and 7. IT FEELS TERRIFIC!
What you got? Make some lists of your own!
love,
lex
Friday, September 08, 2006
Diaspora Flow
Check out the beautiful imagery, vision, and committment of these Sri Lankan sistas Chamandika and Pradeepa!
I met Chamindika while I was in college and I still have one of her beautiful stickers on my trusty inkjet printer (source of all t-shirt designs and graffiti stickers).
"Celebrate the radiance of movement!"
www.diasporaflow.org
Let's talk about it!
love,
lex
I met Chamindika while I was in college and I still have one of her beautiful stickers on my trusty inkjet printer (source of all t-shirt designs and graffiti stickers).
"Celebrate the radiance of movement!"
www.diasporaflow.org
Let's talk about it!
love,
lex
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Revolution Memories
Check out this cool online book written by a black woman mixing anthropology with political economy with hip-hop phenomenology. This writing is dead serious and seriously funny at the same time. I recommend that you favorite page it and get a daily dose of the realness!
click here to read/listen/respond
http://www.geocities.com/revolutionmemories/
love,
lex
click here to read/listen/respond
http://www.geocities.com/revolutionmemories/
love,
lex
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
NO! by Aishah Simmons on Sale NOW!
Tell everyone!!!
NO! a profoundly brilliant film by Aishah Simmons on rape in the Black community
officially goes on sale at California Newsreel today!
Click here for info on buying the film!
http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0187
Please forward this to educators, activists and everyone you know for
two obvious reasons that i'll restate here
1. this film makes a revolutionary impact and is NEEDED in every community
2. Aishah deserves to be fully supported in continuing to do the brave
healing warrior work that she/we be doing
Every institution that you are affiliated with should own a copy of this film!!!!
loooove,
alexis
NO! a profoundly brilliant film by Aishah Simmons on rape in the Black community
officially goes on sale at California Newsreel today!
Click here for info on buying the film!
http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0187
Please forward this to educators, activists and everyone you know for
two obvious reasons that i'll restate here
1. this film makes a revolutionary impact and is NEEDED in every community
2. Aishah deserves to be fully supported in continuing to do the brave
healing warrior work that she/we be doing
Every institution that you are affiliated with should own a copy of this film!!!!
loooove,
alexis
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
every where is african woman (or) everypoemiwriteisalovepoemforthepeopleilove (or) this is an epic of monumental significance that should neva end
because i never chose the white doll
or the light doll
or the doll that was someone other than me
i am not a doll
because my song is magenta watermelon
the seed slick on my skin
is jagged and open
like the birth of cool water out my throat
thats my song
question: what is the color of beauty
answer: everywhere is africana woman
but what about this box called beauty
yea what about it
we are moonlight sista
tipsy like moon light
brilliant like moon light
wandering like moon light's
blooming skin
maybe beauty is the color of queen latifa
maybe not
maybe is
the sweet grass smoothed between zachari's
fingers and twisted into a basket
"here mama, put yo peaches in this"
is
the cylinder of hair (smoothed around
jurina's fingers) like a glowing orange flood
is
manju's palm flat against an opera back
is
kriti's fingers cupped under a mango chin
is
the moan that begins is rachels belly is
the freckle that smiles off mama nancy's cheek
is
(i'm not done...yet, but love is coming for you all)
light,
e!
or the light doll
or the doll that was someone other than me
i am not a doll
because my song is magenta watermelon
the seed slick on my skin
is jagged and open
like the birth of cool water out my throat
thats my song
question: what is the color of beauty
answer: everywhere is africana woman
but what about this box called beauty
yea what about it
we are moonlight sista
tipsy like moon light
brilliant like moon light
wandering like moon light's
blooming skin
maybe beauty is the color of queen latifa
maybe not
maybe is
the sweet grass smoothed between zachari's
fingers and twisted into a basket
"here mama, put yo peaches in this"
is
the cylinder of hair (smoothed around
jurina's fingers) like a glowing orange flood
is
manju's palm flat against an opera back
is
kriti's fingers cupped under a mango chin
is
the moan that begins is rachels belly is
the freckle that smiles off mama nancy's cheek
is
(i'm not done...yet, but love is coming for you all)
light,
e!
I remember JoAnne Little
On August 27 1974 JoAnne Little, a 20 year old black woman, killed a prison guard in who was sexually assaulting her. She had repeatedly resisted such attacks and ongoing sexual exploitation of her circumstances as the only woman in a man's jail. She was placed on death row. The details of the case speak volumes of our society's criminalization of black people, of women,of young people, and the poor. They speak of institutionalized rape and the particular vulnerability that comes with being black and a woman.
The story reminds us of another fight against rape, here on this ground. Angela Davis and other black feminists spoke up, forming a righteous and radical campaign to save JoAnne Little's life. Our struggle continues in their brave footprints...
The story reminds us of another fight against rape, here on this ground. Angela Davis and other black feminists spoke up, forming a righteous and radical campaign to save JoAnne Little's life. Our struggle continues in their brave footprints...
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Slaves Makin' Slaves?: A ?uestlove Mixtape
Das Kapital, Karl Marx, 1867
"Governmentality", Michel Foucault, 1978
"Do you want more?" The Roots 1995
The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective,
Antonio Benitez-Rojo, 1996
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty,
Dorothy Roberts, 1997
Making Men: Gender, Literary Authority and Women's Writing in
Caribbean Narrative, Belinda Edmonds, 1999
"Diaspora and the Passable Word", in The Practice of Diaspora, Brent
Edwards, 2003
"The Resistance of the Object: Aunt Hester's Scream" in In the Break,
Fred Moten, 2003
Oxford English Dictionary Entries: "diaspora", "disperse",
"immigrate", "produce", "production", "reproduce", "reproduction",
"terror", "trauma".
(read the archives of www.okayplayer.com or see
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,1689791,00.html?src=search&artist=%3Fuestlove
if by the end of the post the title still perplexes you)
I've been wanting to explain diaspora through an impossible sonic
planetary art installation. Here's how it goes. The next person who
tries to compare diasporas (like Jewish, Black, Caribbean,
Argentinian, Laotian) or equates diaspora with privileged migration or
(god-forbid) vacation becomes the sculpture. This person immediately
leaves whatever building we are in and stands in a public place
screaming. This person continues screaming until they drop dead
(while being fed through an IV to prolong this process). Just keeps
screaming. Can never stop screaming. And even then 1% of the rage,
pain and loss that characterizes what I mean when I say diaspora has
not been expressed. I assign this to the next contestant to save
myself from having live that scream myself.
Let's see if it works.
So last time (always) I was talking about the relationship between reproduction, oppression and the appropriation of the means of reproduction (like the photocopier.) Which makes sense...since I am obsessed with paper and ink, BUT even then I was compelled to refer to Meshell's "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape" so...given the presence of Moten and the advent of CD's called mixtapes at around the median publication date of the texts above...let's talk about this in terms of sound.
A remark: There are black people all over the world. If I don't hear them screaming it is only because I am blinded with the brilliance of their skin as it resists the marking of capitalism.
What is the relationship between reproduction, capital, race, diaspora and freedom? According to Marx capital reproduces itself through labor power, reproduces the capitalist character of the relations by reproducing the worker as a wage-earner. I think there is a silenced black woman somewhere in that statement saying what about what I make (enslaved, at home, on welfare NOT EARNING WAGES)? What about what I make? Babies marked and crossed out because with my race it's said I pass on oppression...like its natural and like I own it somewhere. What about what I make? The scream I take with stolen air naming this world that spins itself around the truth that I can be raped...so all can be raped...again and again and again.
The Roots always always include a hidden track on their records. In 1995 it was a sonic performance piece featuring Philadelphia spoken word poet Ursula Rucker called the "Unlocking". Some hip hop heads decide to gang-rape some girl. Some girl decides that this is not happening again. Some girl kills everyone with the stregnth of her words and the sound of her gun. There is a silenced black woman somewhere in here.
So why is it that Fred Moten, brilliantly explicating and riffing on the invaginated, screaming, gendered, impossible maternal moment that is the source of black radical performance that sceams value before/against exchange, does not ever say RAPE? Why is it that Antonio Benitez-Rojo claims that his is a non-sexist argument and then feminizes the Caribbean as a womb, inseminated by blood that gives and gives and gives and repeats and repeats and repeats into somesweet/nasty/gushy stuff that he finds "between the gnarled legs" of some old black women in Cuba and does not say...RAPE? Why is it that
even Belinda Edmonds, intent on not reproducing the feminized Caribbean landscape (but calling African-Americana, the Anglophone Caribbean and Africa "nations" quite easily) can talk about a "willing white woman" who is gang-raped, and a non-speaking black servant who can only be raped without pausing to tell us what do you mean by RAPE?
Belinda why when you introduce an original (and usually quite brilliant) idea do you say "I submit ________". What can your
submission mean here? Even Brent Edwatds cannot save us now. This is not a failure of translation. None of these are passable words for what is going on and on. The gulf that I am speaking across is shaped by repression, is the censored public secret that my body can be owned and used by someone else at any time. There is a silenced black woman
somewhere in here.
Listen. Diaspora is the STATE of RAPE. What is it about this violent, recurring, theft of livelihood, expropriation of land, walking on black women's bodies, over the possibility that we will create, that is silent even when present? Stand there. Keep screaming. Keep screaming. The character of capitalism witnessed and ignored again and again is rape. The experience of diaspora is the violent dispersal that scatters subjectivity, that disappears the subject; it is the trauma of rape. So how is the terror that is this global state contained?
Foucault says that governmentality is the mentality that has us think that the only thing to debate is how the government governs, deflecting any impulse to question the state (of things) itself. Therefore we are reproducing the state of rape by refusing to acknowledge it as such, as unnacceptable as a human relation. Can anyone hear this? Our dominant mode of relation on this planet is rape! Why should we be trying to understand this? As Edmonds points out even Lamming has accepted this violence (rape as such) as some precondition for decolonization. So what about what I make?
Talk to me. What can I say, what can I make that destroys the logic of the machine...that does not reproduce a relation that I cannot afford...a relation that we all silently survive?
How you sound? Will there ever be a sound structure on which this girl can stand? Let me know that you are listening...
"Governmentality", Michel Foucault, 1978
"Do you want more?" The Roots 1995
The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective,
Antonio Benitez-Rojo, 1996
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty,
Dorothy Roberts, 1997
Making Men: Gender, Literary Authority and Women's Writing in
Caribbean Narrative, Belinda Edmonds, 1999
"Diaspora and the Passable Word", in The Practice of Diaspora, Brent
Edwards, 2003
"The Resistance of the Object: Aunt Hester's Scream" in In the Break,
Fred Moten, 2003
Oxford English Dictionary Entries: "diaspora", "disperse",
"immigrate", "produce", "production", "reproduce", "reproduction",
"terror", "trauma".
(read the archives of www.okayplayer.com or see
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,1689791,00.html?src=search&artist=%3Fuestlove
if by the end of the post the title still perplexes you)
I've been wanting to explain diaspora through an impossible sonic
planetary art installation. Here's how it goes. The next person who
tries to compare diasporas (like Jewish, Black, Caribbean,
Argentinian, Laotian) or equates diaspora with privileged migration or
(god-forbid) vacation becomes the sculpture. This person immediately
leaves whatever building we are in and stands in a public place
screaming. This person continues screaming until they drop dead
(while being fed through an IV to prolong this process). Just keeps
screaming. Can never stop screaming. And even then 1% of the rage,
pain and loss that characterizes what I mean when I say diaspora has
not been expressed. I assign this to the next contestant to save
myself from having live that scream myself.
Let's see if it works.
So last time (always) I was talking about the relationship between reproduction, oppression and the appropriation of the means of reproduction (like the photocopier.) Which makes sense...since I am obsessed with paper and ink, BUT even then I was compelled to refer to Meshell's "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape" so...given the presence of Moten and the advent of CD's called mixtapes at around the median publication date of the texts above...let's talk about this in terms of sound.
A remark: There are black people all over the world. If I don't hear them screaming it is only because I am blinded with the brilliance of their skin as it resists the marking of capitalism.
What is the relationship between reproduction, capital, race, diaspora and freedom? According to Marx capital reproduces itself through labor power, reproduces the capitalist character of the relations by reproducing the worker as a wage-earner. I think there is a silenced black woman somewhere in that statement saying what about what I make (enslaved, at home, on welfare NOT EARNING WAGES)? What about what I make? Babies marked and crossed out because with my race it's said I pass on oppression...like its natural and like I own it somewhere. What about what I make? The scream I take with stolen air naming this world that spins itself around the truth that I can be raped...so all can be raped...again and again and again.
The Roots always always include a hidden track on their records. In 1995 it was a sonic performance piece featuring Philadelphia spoken word poet Ursula Rucker called the "Unlocking". Some hip hop heads decide to gang-rape some girl. Some girl decides that this is not happening again. Some girl kills everyone with the stregnth of her words and the sound of her gun. There is a silenced black woman somewhere in here.
So why is it that Fred Moten, brilliantly explicating and riffing on the invaginated, screaming, gendered, impossible maternal moment that is the source of black radical performance that sceams value before/against exchange, does not ever say RAPE? Why is it that Antonio Benitez-Rojo claims that his is a non-sexist argument and then feminizes the Caribbean as a womb, inseminated by blood that gives and gives and gives and repeats and repeats and repeats into somesweet/nasty/gushy stuff that he finds "between the gnarled legs" of some old black women in Cuba and does not say...RAPE? Why is it that
even Belinda Edmonds, intent on not reproducing the feminized Caribbean landscape (but calling African-Americana, the Anglophone Caribbean and Africa "nations" quite easily) can talk about a "willing white woman" who is gang-raped, and a non-speaking black servant who can only be raped without pausing to tell us what do you mean by RAPE?
Belinda why when you introduce an original (and usually quite brilliant) idea do you say "I submit ________". What can your
submission mean here? Even Brent Edwatds cannot save us now. This is not a failure of translation. None of these are passable words for what is going on and on. The gulf that I am speaking across is shaped by repression, is the censored public secret that my body can be owned and used by someone else at any time. There is a silenced black woman
somewhere in here.
Listen. Diaspora is the STATE of RAPE. What is it about this violent, recurring, theft of livelihood, expropriation of land, walking on black women's bodies, over the possibility that we will create, that is silent even when present? Stand there. Keep screaming. Keep screaming. The character of capitalism witnessed and ignored again and again is rape. The experience of diaspora is the violent dispersal that scatters subjectivity, that disappears the subject; it is the trauma of rape. So how is the terror that is this global state contained?
Foucault says that governmentality is the mentality that has us think that the only thing to debate is how the government governs, deflecting any impulse to question the state (of things) itself. Therefore we are reproducing the state of rape by refusing to acknowledge it as such, as unnacceptable as a human relation. Can anyone hear this? Our dominant mode of relation on this planet is rape! Why should we be trying to understand this? As Edmonds points out even Lamming has accepted this violence (rape as such) as some precondition for decolonization. So what about what I make?
Talk to me. What can I say, what can I make that destroys the logic of the machine...that does not reproduce a relation that I cannot afford...a relation that we all silently survive?
How you sound? Will there ever be a sound structure on which this girl can stand? Let me know that you are listening...
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