a glossary by ali's baby (written 03/2022-05/2022)
A→ afrosurrealism→ afrosurrealist expressionism (coined in 1988 by critic amiri baraka in his analysis of tha works of henry dumas [“dumas's power lay in his skill at creating an entirely different world organically connected to this one. the stories are fables; a mythological presence pervades. they are morality tales, magical, resonating dream emotions and images; shifting ambiguous terror, mystery, implied revelation. but they are also stories of real life, now or whenever, constructed in weirdness and poetry in which the contemporaneity of essential themes is clear” (see baraka, 1)], later short-handed to afrosurrealism by d. scot miller [w/ baraka’s blessing]) is a conceptual approach that distinctly separates from normative models of surrealist expression (just as tha negritude movement evolved frm nd differentiated itself from the surrealism of tha situationist international→ “european surrealism is empirical. African surrealism is mystical and metaphorical” -leopold senghor) in its commitment to visualizing, articulating nd realizing tha lived experience of tha other [it’s “revolutionary because it is surrealist, but itself is surrealist because it’s Black” -sarte, idk when who cares}; afrosurreal is an inclusive aesthetic that gives space to tha afro-asiatic (derived frm “Afro” → a shared language btwn Black, Brown, and Asian ppls tha world over-a redefinition of tha “third world” as defined by fanon), queer, nd indigenous as an inherently surreal subject position in tha wider machineries of identification in tha west…in contrast to other afro-diasporic aesthetic sensibilities such as afro-futurism, which relies upon models of science, technology, nd science fiction to speculate on Black possibilities for tha future, afrosurrealism is fixated on tha present; “There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has been around so long it is now the past. Afro-Surrealists expose this from a "future-past" called RIGHT NOW…Afrosurrealism is drifting into contemporary culture on a rowboat with no oars, entering the city to hunt down clues for the cure to this ancient, incurable disease called ‘western civilization.’ Or, as Ishmael Reed states, ‘We are mystical detectives about to make an arrest.’” (see miller, 114)...a manifesto, paraphrased frm miller’s original text, provides an aesthetic guideline;
Afrosurrealism is by nature multidisciplinary, crossing bounds of history, culture, artistic medium, nd critical theory.
Afrosurrealism presupposes that beyond this very visible world there is an invisible one, striving to manifest…tha afrosurrealist recognizes nature (specifically human nature) generates far more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce
Afrosurrealists restore tha cult of tha past, revisiting old ways w/ new ideas; symbols of colonialism are appropriated, magical possibilities are acknowledged, “madness” is framed as visitation frm tha gods→ “we take up tha obsessions of tha ancients nd kindle tha dis-ease, clearing tha murk of tha collective unconsciousness as it manifests in these dreams called culture” (see miller, 116)
Afrosurrealists use excess as tha only legitimate means of subversion nd hybridization as a form of disobedience→ afrosurrealists distort reality for emotional impact
Afrosurrealists strive for rococo (tha beautiful, tha sensuous, tha whimsical)...”there is no objective image. nd there is no way to objectively view the image itself”
tha Afrosurrealist life is fluid, filled w/ aliases nd census-defying classifications. It has no address or phone number, no single discipline or calling. Afrosurrealists are highly-paid short-term commodities (as opposed to poorly-paid long term ones, i.e. slaves) → “am i Black? or white? am i straight? or gay? controversey!” → afrosurrealism rejects tha quiet servitude that characterizes existing roles for African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx ppl, women, nd queer folx…”only through tha mixing, melding, nd cross-coversion of these supposed classifications can there be hope for liberation. afrosurrealism is intersexed, afro-asiatic, afro-cuban, mystic, silly, nd profound” (see miller, 116)
tha Afrosurrealist wears a mask while reading leopold senghor.
tha Afrosurrealist seeks definition in tha absurdity of a “post-racial” world.
in fashion nd theater, Afrosurrealists excavate tha remnants of this post-apocalypse w/ dandied flair, a smooth tongue, nd a heartless heart.
Afrosurrealists create sensuous gods to hunt down beautiful, collapsed icons.
In short, afrosurrealism makes manifest wat we as colonized ppl hav understood for a v long time now, that there is something v unreal going on- as fugitives within tha larger machineries of hegemonic identity, consumption, nd industrialization that make up our lived world- we recognize that there’s something missing here; we live in tha rubble, tha artifice of wat was taken, wat was stolen. can’t u feel it? they’ve left a hole in things. a series of gaps, erasures, migrations, lynchings, that hav left us unmoored (heh, un-moor-ed, git it? we hav fun here) within a larger, even mor terrifying hole of an always-already crumbling empire; if u think abt it too hard u start to see tha boats, crossing frm wat u once understood to be tha world into a new dimension of brutality nd terror; collapsed by ur bondage, ur atoms crushed by tha gravitational pull of this abyss-within-an-abyss as u emerge, irrevocably transformed frm ur journey- rendered abject nd then object by ur very existence. there is something wrong here.
B→ black [w]holes→ scholar evelynn hammonds finds purchase within tha fringe status of black female sexualities within tha wider constructions of white hegemony in her 1994 article black (w)holes nd tha geometry of Black female sexuality; quoting artist lorraine o’grady, “the female body in the west is not a unitary sign. rather, like a coin, it has an obverse nd a reverse: on the one side, it is white; on the other, not-white or, prototypically, black. tha two bodies cannot be separated, nor can one body be understood in isolation frm tha other in tha west’s metaphoric construction of ‘woman.’ white is wat woman is; not white (nd tha stereotypes not-white gathers in) is what she had better not be…tha not-white woman as well as tha not-white man are symbolically excluded from sexual difference. their function continues to be to cast tha difference of white men nd white women into sharper relief” (see hammonds, 1, seeing o’grady, 14). while attempting to address her own subjectivity within a normative queer modality of identification (this article was originally published in tha second special issue of d i f f e r e n c e s, an academic journal specializing in queer theory;
“when race is mentioned it is a limited notion devoid of complexities. Sometimes it is reduced to biology and other times referred to as a social construction. Rarely is it used as a ‘global sign,’ a ‘metalanguage,’ as tha ‘ultimate trope of difference, arbitrarily contrived to produce nd maintain relations of power nd suboordination’ (see higginbotham, 255)...in my reading, tha canonical terms nd categories of tha field; ‘lesbian’ ‘gay’ ‘butch’ ‘femme’ ‘sexuality’ nd ‘subjectivity’ are stripped of context in tha works of those theorizing abt these very categories, identities, nd subject positions. Each of these terms is defined w/ white as tha normative state of existence” (see hammonds, 127-128))
tha article is centered in recognizing tha critical gaps produced in normative formulations of queer subject), hammonds generates a mor complex, intersectional understanding of black female sexuality nd queerness. in her “wrestling w/ tha juxtaposed images of ‘white’ (read normal) nd ‘Black” (read not white nd abnormal) sexuality” (see hammonds, 138) she’s drawn to Black feminist author michele wallace’s use of tha black hole (in her 1990 book Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory) as a framework that illustrates the invisibility of Black creativity in general and Black female creativity specifically; “tha observer outside of tha hole sees it as a void, an empty place in space. however, it is not empty; it is a dense nd full place in space”...as a student of physics, hammonds comes to two conclusions in her analysis;
she first questions tha astrophysics of this metaphorical Black hole, how is tha presence of this dense place deduced nd manifested? hammonds reasons tha presence of a Black hole can be detected “by its effects on tha region of space where it is located. One way that physicists do this is by observing binary star systems…a binary star system is one that contains two bodies which orbit around each other under mutual gravitational attraction. In these systems one finds a visible, apparently ‘normal’, star in close orbit with another body such as a black hole, which is not seen optically. tha existence of tha black hole is inferred from tha fact that tha visible star is in orbit nd its shape is distorted in some way or it is detected by tha energy emanating from tha region in space around tha visible star that could not be produced by tha visible star alone…in tha case of Black female sexualities, this implies that we need to develop reading strategies that allow us to make visible tha distorting nd productive effects these sexualities produce when in relation to other, more visible sexualities” (see hammonds, 139)
next, she questions tha interiority of this 4-dimensional space→ wat exactly is it like inside a Black hole? “tha answer is that we must think in terms of a different geometry…rather than assuming that Black female sexualities are structured along an axis of normal nd perverse paralleling that of white women, we might find that for Black women a different geometry operates” (see hammonds, 139 again)
wat is revealed here is a set of reading tools to better define tha angles left obscured by normative constructions of racial nd sexual identity; a means of seeing wat has been left silent nd ignored, an understanding of Blackness, of queerness, that defies tired significations of biological or sexual difference nd instead relies upon complex relations of visibility nd articulation- it is here we find a means of better understanding tha topographies of tha hole in things, a reinterpretation of tha abyss as Black [w]hole, as a site of new nd previously obfuscated geometries frm which new understandings of gender, sexuality, subjectivity, nd personhood can b made manifest…
C→ coffle→ tha terrible spectacle of enslavement is revealed in tha brutal beating of aunt hester, recounted by her nephew, abolitionist frederick douglass, in tha opening chapter of his seminal narratives of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave; it is a generative event for tha author, and it is his witnessing of this act that establishes violence to the making of tha slave, “a generative act equivalent to the statement, ‘i was born’” (see hartman, 3). tha scene will not be recounted here, instead we will speak to its proliferation in our understanding of enslavement, tha ways in which it nd other scenes of brutality, of tha ravaged Black body is routine nd serve to-
“immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity-the oft-repeated or restored character of these accounts and our distance from them are signaled by the theatrical language usually resorted to in describing these instances-and especially because they reinforce the spectacular character of black suffering.” (see hartman, 3)
wat we must consider when see aunt hester, when we “see” tha larger shadow archive that is depictions of chattel slavery is how we are called to participate…as witnesses to confirm or deny Black sentience in tha face of unimaginable dimensions of terror, or as voyeurs fascinated with nd repelled by them. are we then called to empathize? a site of self-reflection? to “demand that this suffering be materialized nd evidenced by the display of the tortured body or endless recitations of the ghastly and the terrible” (see hartman, 4); is it possible to separate reiteration of trauma frm tha fetishizations nd narcissistic (mis)identifications that only serve to further remove tha other frm their own humanity? to better understand this critical gap between tha interiors of slave humanity nd tha reproductions of their subjugation hartman examines tha scenes in which “terror can hardly be discerned-”, looking away frm tha routine spectacularization of slavery nd toward tha mundane horrors of enslaved existence; tha ways in which tha very recognition of Black flesh acted to tether, bind, nd oppress under rubrics of pleasure. tha two-ness inherent to a slave’s existence (as both object [read: properpty] nd personhood [notions of primitive slave humanity to reifiy tha institution of slavery]) are thus examined through a lens of reform, consent, nd paternalism; “the barbarism of slavery did not express itself singularly in the constitution of slave as object but also in the forms of subjectivity and circumscribed humanity imputed to the enslaved” (see hartman, 6)...it is this v recognition of a slave humanity, constricted as it may be, nd tha slave’s alleged contentment//biologically predisposition for enslavement that further pushed tha exploitation of chattel slavery; we must now confront tha peculiar institution as a site of forced coercion nd biopolitical warfare, a reading of enslavement as subject position that weaponizes tha Black body against itself…nowhere is this mor evident than in tha spectacular worlds of tha auction block nd tha minstrel stage.
abolitionist john rankin, in his attempt to illustrate tha evils of slavery in a letter to his brother, renders tha preverse theatricality of tha coffle- a musical slave-procession forcibly performed at auctions- seeing it as demonstrative of tha callousness necessary to subjugate such a wretched ppl; as tha violins nd dancing diffused Black sufferance into spectacle, rankin affirms his goal to forge sentiment amongst his audience in his brutal reenactments of tha horrors of slavery; these attempts at epistolary identification increase in fervor, “so intent and determined is Rankin to establish that slaves possess the same nature and feelings as himself, and thereby establish the common humanity of all men on the basis of this extended suffering, that he literally narrates an imagined scenario in which he, along with his wife and child, is enslaved” (see hartman, 18). this culminating projection-this desperate attempt at divining wat was once (nd still is) so obscured- into tha enslaved body implies tha erasure of tha other within their own sufferance, “the ease of rankin’s empathetic identification is as much due to his good intentions as to the fungibility of the captive body” (see hartman, 19). it is here hartman stages an inquiry into tha staging of such violence→ beyond as evidence, what does this exposure of tha suffering body yield? does this not reinforce tha “thingly” quality of tha enslaved by reducing tha body to evidence in tha effort to establish tha humanity of tha enslaved? wat’s discernable here is tha precariousness of empathy wrt tha thin line between spectator (who joins in on tha fun) nd witness (who cooly, anthropologically observes) when talking abt these scenes of subjection (hey that’s tha name of tha book); rankin’s empathetic exercises at identification, though well intentioned, merely transplants himself in tha other stead, he must “supplant the Black captive to give expression to Black suffering & as consequence, the dilemma- the denial of Black sentience- is not attenuated but insatiated” (see hartman, 19) -highlighting tha dangers of such notions of intimacy, nd tha inevitability of such attempts at identification to center tha self at tha expense of tha slave’s suffering. wat is most observable within rankin’s letter (here treated as an archive of “scenes”, staged nd reenacted for an audience) is tha totality of pain present in enslavement-a site of identification in which tha slave’s humanity, for rankin, is most apparent nd most indentifiable; this identification fixes tha enslaved’s pained embodiement nd obfuscates their suffering in its attempted projection, exploiting tha spectacle of tha body in pain nd confirming tha inability to witness tha captive’s pain→ leaving tha captive body vulnerable to projections of other’s values (thus supplanting them nd confirming tha fungibility of their personhood), or as property→ “while the beaten and mutilated body presumably establishes the brute materiality of existence, the materiality of suffering regularly eludes recognition by virtue of the body's being replaced by other signs of value, as well as other bodies” (see hartman, 19). here, tha enslaved are rendered most visible in tha most grotesque dimensions of their day-to-day; their mutilated bodies serving as artifact of their own sentience nd displacement thru misguided notions of empathy…tha scene is set, curtains…
D→ debord (nd tha spectacle) → tha spectacle, as defined by French philosopher guy debord, is lesso an inundation of images or an archive and moreso a concretization of tha ways in which images mediate relations between people; the images produced by mass media, namely television, advertising, and film, create a pseudo-world which projects dynamics of tha real world, essentially supplanting our own reality as tha site of human progress; for Debord the spectacle is the moment upon which authentic lived experience is replaced with its commodified representation. This representation takes on a role analogous to religious totems and imagery, which has always used the sacred to justify “the cosmic and ontological ordering of things that best served the interests of the masters, expounding upon and embellishing what society could not deliver” (Debord, Thesis 25); in contrast to a religious totem, the pseudo-world depicted by the spectacle “depicts what society can deliver, but within that depiction what is permitted is rigidly distinguished from what is possible…it’s based on an ever more refined division of labor, an ever greater comminution of machine-governed gestures, and an ever-widening market” (Debord, 25). It is here, where the commodified world of the image has superseded all forms of relation, that Debord launches his critique; tha spectacle’s greatest feat, according to debord, is its ability to dissolve wider notions of cultural knowledge- constantly obfuscating tha past nd thus imploding any potential future beyond itself in its representation of a never-ending present; creating future-shocks out of tha refuges of an imagined past to imprison us within tha ad-nauseum of tha spectacle’s consumption; we, good Black ppl, know this well…our image, tha relationships between those images, Black as abject, as object, as monster, as beast of burden, as maternal mammy, hav always superseded tha mor true dimensions of our subjectivity; tha hole in things is reified, bolstered, nd produced by tha spectacle in this sense, tha axis upon which we are defined; our past nd future obfuscated by tha bondage of our image, of our pseudo-image as tha most lowly of things, ripped frm tha past of tha old world, incapable of a future beyond tha ever-present spectacle of our subjugation
E→ expression (read: negro) → here we turn to author zora neale hurston’s 1934 essay characteristics of negro expression to better define the aesthetic properties of Black expression away from notions of primivity previously prescribed to non-white cultural production; it is in hurston’s analysis we find crucial ground to productively bridge gaps in our understanding of African American vernacular english, dress, nd visual culture that examines tha processes of creolization inherent in Afro-diasporic practices of signification nd person-making;
drama→ to hurston, tha negro’s interpretation of tha english language is in terms of picture… “every phase of negro life is highly dramatized. no matter how joyful or how sad tha case there is sufficient poise for drama…everything is acted out…there is an impromptu ceremony always ready for every hour of life. no little moment passes unadorned…tha negro, even with detached words in his vocabulary- not evolved in him but transplanted on his tongue by contact- must add action to it to make it do” (see hurston, 24). it is thru these action-words we hav words such as “chop-axe”, “sitting-chair”, “cook-pot” because tha speaker has tha image of tha object in use in their head as they’re saying it… “everything is illustrated. so we can say tha white man thinks in a written language nd tha negro thinks in hieroglyphics” (again see hurston, 24)
will to adorn→ adornment, an essential tenet in afro-diasporic cultural production, does not “attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator” (see hurston, 25). Hurston refutes tha dominant thinking of etymologists of her time that frames african american cultural production as ultimately failing to include any distinctly African words into tha wider understanding of tha english dialect, an alleged signifier of tha negro’s low capacity for cultural innovation (remember tha dominant thinking of tha time framed Black aesthetic production as either outright examples of barbarism, anonymous boons of colonial expansion, exoticized artifacts of primitive craft, or naive pieces of folk art); hurston rejects this premise outright, noting that “he (tha negro) has made over a great part of the tongue to his liking and has had his revision accepted by the ruling class…the stark, trimmed phrases of the occident seem too bare for the voluptuous child of the sun, hence the adornment. it arises out of the same impulses as the wearing of jewelry and the making of sculpture-the urge to adorn'' (see hurston, 25). this urge to adorn, according to hurston, is illustrated in tha negro’s primary contribution to tha language;
metaphor//simile→ ex: i’ll beat you till: (a) rope like okra, (b) slack like lime, (c) smell like onions.
tha double descriptive→ ex: high-tall, low-down, kill-dead
verbal nouns→ ex: funeralize, bookooing around
angularity→ frm hurston, everything tha negro touches is angular; “in all african sculpture nd doctrine of any sort we find the same thing…anyone watching negro dancers will be struck by the same phenomon. every posture is another angle. pleasing, yes. but an effect achieved by the very means which an european strives to avoid” (see hurston, 26)
asymmetry→ “asymmetry is a definitive feature of Negro art…there is always rhythm, but it is the rhythm of segments. each unit has a rhythm of its own, but when the [w]hole is assembled it is lacking in symmetry” (see hurston, 26)
folklore→ “negro folklore is not a thing of the past. It is still in the making. it's great variety shows the adaptability of the Black man: nothing is too old or too new, domestic or foreign, high or low, for his use.”
originality→ tha normative understanding of African culture was one lacking in originality, an alleged symptom of tha Negro’s non-humanity; of lacking tha capacity for original, spontaneous creation because wat kan a beast of burden produce other than its weight in product? wat “fine culture” can be found in tha bottom of boats? wat does webster’s say abt soul? hurston argues that this politic of originality wrt Black subjectivity is one that ignores tha obsolescence of a “pure original” anything in a global scene fueled by cross-cultural exchange (of goods, of economics, of people): “it is obvious that to get back to original sources is much too difficult for any group to claim- what we really mean by ‘originality’ is the modification of ideas…the negro is a very original being…everything he touches is reinterpreted for his own use. He has modified the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly the religion of his new country” (see hurston, 27-28)
this is a surprise tool that will help us later…
F→ fusco, on ofili nd shit→ “rap ain’t nun but tha art of talking shit”- andre 3000. cuban-american artist coco fusco’s obsession with tha othered body as abject, as inhuman monster (ill leave debates on tha merits of this exercise at tha wayside, id rather things b challenging nd interesting than boring nd ‘good representation’) positions her as a perfect critic to unpack tha work of british painter chris ofili in her 2001 essay Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom. ofili gained an enfant terrible reputation for his intentionally crude depictions of Black cultural figures (nd Black women specifically, his representation intentionally plays w/ notions of colonial fetish, lips nd asses nd tongues nd hips abound) nd use of elephant dung in his paintings, thus his work cannot b abstracted frm tha v political context of his reception→ Black british artists viewed his success in tha fine art world as a result of him giving yt curators nd audiences tha depraved images of Black ppl that they not-so secretly lusted after- conversely white british artists simply attributed his success to his race (essentially waving him off as a diversity hire). ofili was, at best, blase wrt these criticisms- his winning of tha turner prize in ‘98 cemented him as one of tha (if not tha most) exciting painters of his time, in general this backlash was in line with tha criticism leveled at artists such as kara walker nd fusco herself→ artists who purposefully mined tha spectacularized abjectness of tha Black body…it is here fusco stages her analysis, noting a ‘tactile quality’ to ofili’s paintings; tha crude dots nd linework that resemble afro-indigenous visual practices (his use of shit in particular), tha layers of resin that create depth nd a potential mirror for self-reflection in its luminous materiality, tha clear visual homages to Black visual culture of tha 60s nd 70s (tha sun-ra esque fixation with space, tha use of pattern, psychedelic swirls, nd kool-aid colors that recall blaxploitation aesthetics→ pimp aesthetics abound in tha Captain Shit series, jumpsuits, afros, bejeweled canes nd ofc ofili’s obsession wit tha lascivious Black woman)→ ultimately placing his stereotypical depictions of Black ppl, nd Black women specifically, in art-historical context to tha works of manet nd picasso (in which tha Black female body is ground for geometric deconstruction nd demarcation [thru cubism, an aesthetic sensibility lifted frm afro-indigenous visual culture] [in picasso’s case] or ultimately invisibile in relation to Western representations of aesthetic beauty [re: manet]. fusco reframes tha criticisms leveled at ofili, nd his rendering of Black as abject, away from moralist concerns of representation nd notions of a heuristic process of visual investigation (read: a trial nd error exercise in Black representation that mines thru these tropes of depravity to reach transcendence, “good, politically-correct representation”) to tha dynamics of desire nd repulsion highlighted- tha ways in which ofili’s work plays into, criticizes, abstracts, nd rejects these historical paradigms, reasoning “the current neoformalist backlash in art criticism that reduces all questions of the relationship between Black art and identity politics to ‘political correctness’ forecloses the possibility of contextualizing ofili’s practice as part of history of aesthetic inquiry by Black artists into Blackness’ relation to modernity and to modernism” (see fusco, 7) [funnily enuf, ofili’s work has generally been detached frm a canon of Black expression by a majority of his audience- tha critics nd curators who appreciate his shit, often placing him in dialogue w/ a series of yt modernists famous for appropriating Afro-indgenuous art forms]. instead fusco views ofili’s paintings as a "struggle between versions of Blackness and versions of beauty that cannot always accommodate each other and even exclude one another” (see fusco, 7), seeing his depictions of Black bodies as a parodic reduction of Blackness into their ultimate signifiers of racial difference- hair, lips, nose, butts- creating an intentional visual correlation between these signifiers nd shit→ further pulling threads of association between excrement-tha most recently dead part of a living thing, a site of dirtiness nd potential disease to b flushed away- nd tha dimensions of racism that render Black ppl as similarly disposable, as similarly non-living; “the amount of colonial imagery associating Blacks with dirt, waste and excrement is nothing if not staggering, as is the 19th century preoccupation with illness, the association of odor with disease and symbolic rendering of Blacks as carriers of dirt and thus disease and thus degeneracy…excrement derives its subversive power within the history of Western art as the least abstractable substance in a society with a prevailing modernist aesthetic that privileges transcendence over the material ” (again see fusco, 7). fusco ties this visual dialectic between tropes of racial difference nd shit into tha wider canon of western philosophy nd artistic theory, this abstraction of excrement as both an artistic tool within tha canon of afro-indigeneity nd a symbol that highlights tha ways tha Black subject has been abstracted into tropes of depravity nd abjectness→ citing tha ways in which philosophers such as hegel (i like saying it like kegel, it’s funnier) hav rendered Black cultural production nd Black people as being incapable of such abstraction, only capable of producing propaganda or fetish; remember to hegel nd tha wider construction of western philosophy, Africa has no history, no role in tha grand narrative beyond being a footnote in tha west’s mission towards progress, nd thus is deemed incapable of progressing in its own right…ofili has turned tha most dirty thing imaginable into a site of articulation, abstracting shit into a symbol of Black racial essentialization nd fetishization; it is in this act of abstraction he proves hegel’s assumptions on tha limits of Black creativity as patently false, flipping an entire canon of modernist conceptions of Black cultural production nd visuality wrt artistic production on its head. for fusco, there is no other symbol that so clearly stands for both Black dehumanization nd tha relation of Black artistic endeavors to modernism.
G→ gumbo → Marlon T. Riggs was not cool. Riggs spent a majority of his adult life unpacking the complexities of his experience as a black gay man, drawing controversy with his seminal 1989 film Tongues Untied’s depiction of “pornographic” imagery drawing controversy. Tongues Untied combats silence, it exposes the exclusion faced by black gay men in both the gay community (which is majority white-centric) and in mainstream society. Riggs seeks to find the black gay image, one outside of white metrics of hypersexuality, perversion, or presumed weakness. In his analysis of Tongues Untied author E. Patrick Johnson notes the disillusionment felt by young black gay men forced into the closet, a silence that excluded Riggs, and others, from black hegemonic masculinity. This construction of masculinity,which operates parallel to white constructions of masculine dominance, eventually evolved into a hypermasculine “cool” as laid out by Bell Hooks in her 2003 book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. By distancing themselves from black hegemonic masculinity (and therefore white masculinity, which it parallels), Riggs sees himself and other black gay men as totally excommunicated from their culture. This constant feeling of exclusion, of not operating on the politic as one’s people, is viewed as a black hole in Tongues Untied; an inescapable void that entraps anything in its orbit, a void cut off from the rest of the world. The black hole functions as a metaphor for distance, but it is in the black hole in which new imaginaries for the black gay image can be birthed; a black gay construction that lies outside of the metrics of the cool and furthermore outside of settler sexualities. Through Johnson and Hook’s texts, along with Riggs’ own words, one can gather that constructions of non-heteronormative black sexualities should be perceived under its own geometry, non-parrallel from the normative lines laid out by white settler conventions of sexuality and black constructions of the “cool”. In We Real Cool Bell Hooks examines the many historical frameworks of black masculinity, from colonization to the “gangsta” culture of the noughties. In her analysis Hooks places White Supremacist values and structures as the main force that pushes constructions of black masculinity throughout history, with black men being left disillusioned from a lack of civil rights and equal pay. White Supremacy, in Hooks’ framework, is the line in which black masculinity is propelled by and also runs parallel with; African slaves “had to be taught to equate their higher status as men with the right to dominate women '' (Hooks, 2). While some Black men sought out their freedom to work and better protect their families (black women, specifically), “a large majority of black men took as their standard the dominator model set by white masters'' (Hooks, 4). This notion that black hegemonic masculinity runs parallel to white construction of dominance is interesting in the context of the Middle Passage; black men and women could never truly access the political position of “man” or “lady” because under slavery they weren’t human. After slavery ended black men and women assumed these white settler constructions of masculinity and feminitiy (respectively) in an effort to sort out and ultimately declare their own humanity…it is this aftermath riggs attempts to create his own lexicon upon tha traditional models of black masculinity, away frm domination nd towards multiplicity a gumbo -a site in which several definitions of sexuality nd gender expression can stew, mix, nd marinate…sum that’s “got a lil bit of everything in it”. (con’t’d on S)
H→ hauntology→ in his analysis on legendary trip hop artist tricky, critic ian penman turns a (albeit generous) side-eye to tha writing of critic greil marcus- his adoration of a certain strain of musical spokesperson (think gang of four, springsteen, tha everyman working class rocker or punker) that “some of us have never been swayed by, distrusted as being way literal in its approach, texturally meagre” (see fisher, seeing penman, 45) → wat marcus fails to engage with here- in his privileging of tha authentic voice, tha live performance, tha spontaneous- is production; this fixation on tha personified artist, in which tha voice acts as authentic embodied presence is- to critic mark fisher- music writing’s equivalent to derrida’s “metaphysics of presence” → where meaning is divined in its attachment to a body (in this metaphysics, writing is by contrast projected absence, deferment). wat fisher is attempting to unpack is an opposition between two modes of hearing//treating tha voice, as authentic presence or as recorded revenant. music writing prefers tha authentic (or tha artifice of authenticity) to tha synthetic, tha produced - a default emphasis on “‘the live show, the proper album, the Real song, the mature, the pure, the true, the proper, the intelligent’” (again, see fisher, seeing penman, 46) - repressing tha conditions upon which our access to these performance is made possible, tha technology of recording; this dedication to tha literal, to tha recorded human voice as text, prevents a critical encounter with texture “the grainy materiality of sound, sound as a medium in itself rather than as a carrier for Meaning” (see fisher, 44). here fisher turns to his framework of hauntology, also sampled frm derrida, explores tha ways in which being is not necessarily presence;
“ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be hauntology properly said to belong to the past. . . . Does then the ‘historical’ person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from death fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality. The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, at once they ‘return’ and make their apparitional debut…a spectrally deferred non-origin within grounding metaphysical terms such as history and identity” (see fisher, seeing buse nd scott, 44-45)
a temporal spectrality that fisher sees as a common sonic development in electronic music, specifically in tha disembodied vocal samples of burial, tha slowcore 30s pop of tha caretaker, nd tha general re-dreaming of british media culture frm tha 1950s-70s, “the lost public spaces of the so-called postwar consensus (a consensus that was terminated with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979)” (see fisher, 45) that characterized tha ghostbox music label→ an imperfect grasp at historical memory and presence that gains piquancy wrt electronic music- a long heralded signifier of tha future; sonic hauntology is not dealing with a crisis of textuality, of tha define, but of temporality, a crisis in which “the electronic sounds produced between the 50s-90s remain sonic signifiers of the future- and as such, they are signs that tha anticipated future never arrived” (see fisher, 45) -a paradoxical nostalgia for a lost future, “the problem of memory and its imperfect recovery...not so much that we are seduced by our memories of long ago, but that we cannot produce new memories” (see fisher, 45-46). sonic hauntology blurs contemporaneity w/ elements of tha past, but foreground these temporal disjunctures thru crackle, fuzz, nd noise. “culture’s modernist impetus succumbed to the terminal temporality of postmodernity…postmodernism is itself dominated by “the nostalgia mode”... a formal attachment to the techniques and formulas of the past, a consequence of a retreat from the modernist challenge of innovating cultural forms adequate to contemporary experience” (see fisher, 45-46) fisher views tha cultural displacement inherent in hauntology as confronting white culture with tha same temporal disjunction that define afrodiasporic experience; tha enslaved’s abduction frm tha known world of Africa “into the abstract space-time of capital…slaves were thus already in tha future…“Haiti’s ‘slave plantations (mostly sugarcane) were not a remainder of premodern societies, but models of efficient capitalist production; the discipline to which slaves were submitted served as an example for the discipline to which wage-laborers were later submitted in capitalist metropolises’ (Žižek 2009: 124). forcibly deprived of their history, the black slaves encountered “postmodernity” three hundred years ago: “the idea of slavery itself as an alien abduction . . . means that we’ve all been living in an alien-nation since the 18th century” (Eshun 1998: A[192])” (see fisher, 46), making afrofuturism nd hauntology two sides of tha same cultural phenomenon...fisher ties this break into space-time as in line wit afrofuturists aesthetics, a liberation of futurism frm master narratives of white modernity that exclude Black folks even in tha cultural imaging of tha future (sci-fi has always read as pedantically yt in that respect- there’s no war, no bombs, no hate, nd, coincidentally, absolutely few to no signs of a Black, Brown, or Indigenuous culture to b found), but i want to bring this framework to a wider construction of Black survivability, futurity, expression, nd culture; viewing tha abduction frm Africa (thus tha abudction of tha continent itself into tha surreal demarcations of “nations” nd “tribes” -colonial inventions that forces tha complex migrational patterns of Afro-indigenous life into static, codified boundaries of lands ripe for tha taking) as tha inception point of a temporal disjuncture frm a shared historicity, we kan understand all facets of Black cultural production (our food, our vernacular, our way of dress, our means of identification, nd especially our music nd visual art) as an exercise in futurity→ a making manifest of tha past to mourn tha lost futures of wat we once were nd wat we are prevented frm becoming//where tha terrors of tha middle passage, tha atomizing of our personhood into racialized other nd then object, are a cruel, unavoidable ghost who’s haunt is always-already happening…
I→ intellectual (read: colonized) → Frantz Fanon, in his deeply influential 1961 book Wretched of the Earth, beautifully articulated the process of decolonization as a simple process of “the last shall be first” (Fanon, 2), a liberation that fundamentally reorganizes and create a new human person from the old world of colonized. This process is always a violent one (in recognition of/response to the violence of the colonizer, which is always justified by the native’s alleged barbarism) and contends with a colonized subjectivity; one that is compartmentalized as either the native worker, who’s labor is recognized and exploited, and the colonized intellectual, who has assimilated into the colonized world as a demonstration for its progress (the colonized world has brought the primitive native into the light of the first world, rejoice!). Fanon examines the colonized intellectual throughout the second essay, titled On National Culture, critiquing their exoticized framing of Afro-Indigenous cultures; the colonized intellectual, specifically the colonized artist, is too reliant on cliches and relics of the native peoples, falling into the tropes of essentialization and compartmentalization that dictate the colonized world. Fanon argues that this essentialization of the native ignores national identity and cultural practices, boils culture down into tired custom, and ultimately places the colonized intellectual as out-of-step with their own peoples; it is here he argues that the colonized intellectual must instead find a decolonized nation not in the costumes of the past but in the fights for national liberation and independence that are happening in the present.
Fanon’s words on a National Culture and tha dangers of tha colonized intellectual elicits thoughts on the role and place of Black cultural production, both in context to the dominant theory of tha Black art of Fanon’s time (the francophonic Negritude framework, which he unpacks and critiques in this excerpt, and the Afro-American “New Negro” movement articulated in Dubois’ seminal Criteria for Negro Art) and in tha ways in which it applies to how Black art is characterized in tha now. Fanon notes in his exploration of the colonized individual an exoticization of the pre-colonial in an attempt to prove its cultural value in relation to Western production, attempting to synthesize a sort of common, almost universal, sense of the “Negro” (and I use that quotation purposefully, think “Negro” lesso as “period specific description of a Black person or persons” and more as “a sort of immutable subject position that is attempting to find purchase in its relation to a hegemonic [read, white] constructions of identity”); seeing these attempts at finding a universal Negro as analogous to the essentializing of the pre-colonial African into their colonized (and thus, enslaved) subjecthood, a continental identity for a Black future must consider the national, the distinct, in Fanon’s view, who ultimately frames any conceptualized return to a so called universalized, pre-colonial Black subjectivity as an unproductive exercise of cultural fetishization, mired in cliche and subject to orientalized pastiche. From this purview Fanon critiques the Negritude movement as one fixated on the exocitization of the affects of Black diasporic cultures, thus rendering those cultures into a romantic view of history that firmly places said cultures in the past.
This indictment of the Negritude and New Negro movement spells a shift in scholarly thinking around Blackness and reveals a subtle (and still menacing) blueprint of how Black art (and thus, people) were normatively constructed and consumed; even in the (still) deeply important works of the Black 1930s, both in the US and in France, we find an essentializing of Blackness into a well-worn performances of exoticization, in which the still-colonized Black in France (which Fanon is drawing from contextually as a West-Indian in the early 60s), the pre-colonial African (still trapped between the nowhere and nowhere, nothing and nothing of the Middle Passage ), and the newly emancipated African-American (in all his grand-spanking “new-ness”) are collapsed, or using Fanon’s language, compartmentalized into a singular Negroness. In this articulation of a universal Black, the past histories, cultures, and nations of the pre-colonial continent, the present fights for liberation, the identities previously erased, the cultures still being razed, are merely sites for potential relation across the continents, a means to an end in articulating a “new” Blackness; in this construction, the lives of the pre-colonial African, the culture that the colonized intellectual fetishizes to their no end, is nothing more than a project already-marked for death, a past that only has use here, in the present, in its demise…moreso a corpse than an articulated continental identity for the future.
J→ juba→ coded text of slave protest, using rhythm nd nonsense words as cover for critique, serving as a means to examine relations of captivity, appropriation, nd domination to address tha needs of tha enslaved. tha juba functions to pilfer tha dominant space, “making counterclaims about freedom, humanity, and the self but also as a sacralized and ancestral landscape” (see hartman, 72). tha juba is a form of everyday practices, texts of dislocation that allow tha enslaved to determine the possibilities or the impossibility of redress frm tha alienation nd exploitation inherent in enslaved life; a site of articulation that offers witness to tha violence of tha peculiar institution in tha preverse lines of their origin, nd it is in this witnessing they abandon notions of tha veracity of recollection or tha fallibility of memory→ “of concern here are the ways memory acts in the service of redress rather than an inventory of memory…this approach to memory confronts head-on the issues of dislocation, rupture, shock, and forgetting and the texture of its fragmented existence. The concern is not to recover the past but to underscore the loss inscribed in the social body and embedded in forms of practice” (see hartman, 73-75).
K→ keats (an ode to grecian urn) → the aesthetic and philosophical movement of Romanticism which characterized the early to mid 19th Century served as a response to the socio-political upheaval, burgeoning industrialization, and forth-coming capitalist alienation of the Enlightenment and the then-present Industrial Revolution; retreating from the politics of their age and into the recesses of their perception, poets addressed and critiqued this alienation in their calls towards a sort of spiritual and artistic unification with fundamental principles of nature and truth; the poet, and artistic practice in general, are a recurrent subject; the metaphysical bounds of sculpture, the immortal songs found in nature’s ephemerality, the principles of order and chaos that breathe life to tragedy, and ultimately the role of the poet in a society so disconnected from the truths he (that’s important, it’s always a he) finds so readily available yet still out of reach; the Romantic sub-divides, constantly pushing and pulling at the lines between his own mind, his perception, and his subject; taking a sort of legislative role between the worlds of his human concerns and the chaotic beauty of the natural world; it is in this in-between we find purchase…keats begins his analysis of the urn, and thus begins his engagement with the practice of sculpture, through vicarious identification; his curiosity for the lives of the figures represented and the worlds they occupy progress to a yearning to know and join them in their everyday, failing each time to fully supplant himself into their world; this search for vicarious experience ultimately leaves him wanting, shut out from the worlds depicted on the urn and left in a state of uncertainty; it is from this uncertainty that keats attempts to appreciate the worlds of the urn upon its own merits and terms, emphatically connecting to the scene yet seeing nothing but the emptiness of it’s inevitable ending; in these attempts, and failures, to engage keats ultimately concludes that the temporal immobility of the urn (i.e. the staticness of it’s figures in the ever changing flow of time) leaves it incapable of fully sustaining the minutiae of human experience, with the fragments depicted in its scenes allowing for keats to ponder the relationship between the figures and himself; keats’ engagement (or better yet, failure to engage with) lies in an inherent separation of subject and aesthetic form, in his attempt to empathize he cleaves the figures from its original contexts; for keats the scenes are merely sites to supplant his own perception…their history, the myths potentially depicted, the stories that were once told are rendered nonexistent under the north star of his attempts at identification. The aesthetic and philosophical movement of Romanticism that characterized the early to mid 19th Century served as a response to the socio-political upheaval, burgeoning industrialization, and forth-coming capitalist alienation of the Enlightenment and the then-present Industrial Revolution; retreating from the politics of their age and into the recesses of their perception, poets addressed and critiqued this alienation in their calls towards a sort of spiritual and artistic unification with fundamental principles of nature and truth. The poet, and artistic practice in general, are a recurrent subject; the metaphysical bounds of sculpture, the immortal songs found in nature’s ephemerality, the principles of order and chaos that breathe life to tragedy, and ultimately the role of the poet in a society so disconnected from the truths he (that’s important, it’s always a he) finds so readily available yet still out of reach. The Romantic sub-divides, constantly pushing and pulling at the lines between his own mind, his perception, and his subject; taking a sort of legislative role between the worlds of his human concerns and the chaotic beauty of the natural world. It is in this in-between we find purchase…
We are on a burning rock. We, as makers, are all too aware of the industrialized alienation that pushed the Romantics into the recesses of their imagination…like them our production has become abstracted from our being, our agency, from what we want to do, need to do; today we less so struggle with the anxieties of cultural degradation and loss that so plagued the Romantics and moreso with the inability of loss in a post-industrialized world. Everything is recorded, everything is quantified, and in this politick of categorization culture is well worn pastiche, punk fizzles out into dodgy retro, and progressivism masks neoliberal farce. We’ve been robbed of our collective ability for loss in an increasingly digital world, and in that world all potential futures are collapsed into the dialectics of capital and industry that only lead to further alienation; pushing us even further out of bounds of a potential future, it’s become so hard for us to imagine anything before or after or better than this…the traumas of the death machine are always-already here…So what are we left to do? In this cultural space between nowhere and nowhere, nothing and nothing…are we, like the Romantics, resigned to stew in the cracks between our subjectivity and subject? Constantly straining for a reunification we may no longer have the faculties to even imagine…
We, good Black people with keen memories, know this precipe, this lost future, the psychodrama of what’s already-always happening, all too well. It's the fulcrum of our subjectivity, the systems of empiricism that rendered the African to flesh to chattel, we have always existed in the post-modern. We’ve always been here, at this sort of event horizon of subject, object, and industry, and from this site we draw our poetry; the immortal songs whispered and forgotten in the bellies of boats, the languages razed, the dreams left forever deferred…it is here, we find poetry. In these hallowed absences, these erasures…it’s here we find space to stew into the liminality of the Middle Passage, the truths lost, that, like the Romantics, encourages and demands a similar unpacking of subjectivity of the Black person, of the human person.
Please do not misunderstand, this is no retreat from the present, we will not follow the Romantics into the luxuries of philosophical indulgence, we simply do not have time for that (WE ARE ON A BURNING ROCK). This is an invitation for cross-cultural analysis that uses the Romantic’s rejection of the empirical in the face of industrialized alienation as a method for unpacking the lines of subjectivity that those empiricisms encourage, discourage, reject, and reify; entering a similar analytical approach of sub-division of subject and perception to articulate a Black subjectivity that’s always dealt with these issues of disconnect from the natural. Here Romanticism is treated less so as literary aesthetic or artistic movement and more so as a methodology to better articulate the anxieties produced by modernity, the futures lost, and placing the inherently ephemeral nature of Blackness, Black personhood, and Black life//labor (in both an industrial and post-industrial context) into its purview; giving voice to the gaps produced by the immortal alienation of the Middle Passage and providing fertile ground for perpetual recontextualization of the Black subject in all of its dimensions, away from the rigid geometries of empiricism that once articulated Our personhood. This is an attempt at articulating a Black personhood that has always been modern, that’s always existed in the machineries of exploitation and alienation we all know so well, and finding productive methods of redressing within said personhood (read: praxis)...an invitation into the seas of doubt and non-origin in search of truth…
L→ legacy russell, glitch, nd making of tha new human person→ glitch refuses, nd for american curator nd writer legacy russell it is this foundational refusal, this digital “nope”, this embrace of malfunction that gives that space needed to “a naming nd claiming of multiple selves”. in her analysis of artist e. jane’s work she notices a dedication to multiplicity (“I’m a Black woman and expansive in my Blackness and my queerness as Blackness and queerness are always already expansive” -see “nope” by e. jane) that pushes against tha normatively flat readings of tha other, “who have traveled restlessly, gloriously, through narrow spaces” (see russell, 23); exemplified in jane’s digital alter ego mhysa (who has performed nd made work in multiple forms both on nd offline), a seizing of a multiplicitous self that is “marked by finding room to roam, and finding their range...think of the poet walt whitman’s 1892 poem ‘song of myself’: do i contradict myself? very well then i contradict myself, (i am large, i contain multitudes.)” (again, see russell 23) → giving space nd expressing tha right to being “large”, to contain many thing, unfixed frm tha mechanics of patriarchy that leave room for little else when it comes in contact w/ ytness;
Space is not just claimed by those exercising the “primary gaze” E. Jane speaks of, but is also made for them: space for becoming an unencumbered, range-full self and the agential complexity this provides is granted and protected for normative selves and the bodies they occupy. (again again, see russel 23)
wat we must consider here are tha ways in which this “primary gaze” flattens nd essentializes, wat complexities hav been left singular in their dimension with so lil room to explore; this flattening is present in all facet of supremacy, specifically colonialism nd imperialism→ how tha body kan be rendered subhuman in its positionality, biologically predisposed to tha lowliness of its station; violence is obviously key to this supremacy, domination is tha primary characteristic of both tha state nd tha patriarchal limitations of identities rendered discrepant within their gaze… “thus, envisioning what shape a sustainable future might take, finding safe ‘places to hide’ in addition to techniques that provide space for ourselves, is urgent…glitch is all about traversing along edges and stepping to the limits, those we occupy and push through, on our journey to defining ourselves. Glitch is also about claiming our right to complexity, to range, within and beyond the proverbial margins” (see russell, 24).
in tha spirit of carving out these spaces of a interiority nd multiplicity, glitch imbues tha digital with tha fantastical→ drawing upon tha internet not as a naive signification of utopia but as a site to play, perform, nd explore (in short a rejection of tha flattening constitutive of previous modes of identification nd exchange- algorithmically, online, nd socially/legally/historically, off-line) nd implies that tha institutions of domination lesso require an instagram-prompted “dismantling” but a mutiny. glitched bodies- those outside of tha canon of yt cis heteronormativity- tear at tha institution of tha body in its hacking of gender nd its commitment to multiplicity, “they cannot be programmed” (see russell, 26) → it proposes tha internet, in it’s infinitely expanding interiority- it’s worlds-within-worlds (JESUS WEPT! FOR THERE WERE NO MORE WORLDS TO CONQUER) -kan giv space for variance nd reflection; a claiming of digital space as a site to build on nd build with, rupturing tha recognized nd tha recognizable into new possibilities→ putting artist kate bornstein’s “when gender is a binary, it’s a battlefield. when you get rid of the binary, gender becomes a playground” within tha realms of possibilities provided by glitch, we recognize glitch’s etymological link (gletshn, yiddish, to slide) as an active refusal nd implication of a movement that triggers error within tha normative binaries of gender; a mode of non-performance, a “nope”, a pushback on tha mechanistic directive to function.
glitch prompts and glitch prevents. with this, glitch becomes a catalyst, opening up new pathways, allowing us to seize on new directions…where glitch meets feminism in a discourse that problematizes the construct of the body, it is important to call out the historical construction of gender as it intersects with a historical construction of race. the body is a social and cultural tool. because of this, the right to define what a body is, in addition to who can control these things called “bodies,” has never been meted out equally. (31)
when in conversation with hammonds’ reading tool of a black (w)hole, we a claiming of multiplicity, to a new axis of identification wrt personhood, to sexual difference, to gender who’s expanses bridge exciting pathways between tha infinitie interiority of tha digital nd tha infinite exteriority of space; a puncture within tha dimensionality of tha hole in things that breeds a personhood defined by resistance, by imperceptibility in relation to mor visible bodies, by a new geometry wholly within itself→ it is here resistance to tha immutable mechanistics of tha colonized world givs space for a (w)holly new human person…our boats are open, we sail them for everyone…
M→ tha myth of anonymity→ Western constructions of individualistic identity and overall racist biases of anthropologists and art historians hav left many pre-colonial African works anonymous; this anonymity was then further perpetuated by tired conversations of primitivism and the alleged “appeal” of the anonymous exotic African artist to collectors and dealers. This myth of anonymity is based in Western ignorance of African naming traditions, for example in the case of Yoruba people of Western Africa artistic authorship stands in contrast to the firm notions of identity found in the Western canon; names in Yoruba tradition were intrinsically tied to one’s essence and accomplishments, based in oral citation poetry known as the oriki. The oriki is less so based in one’s name, names are superfluous in the face of one reciting their history and accomplishments. thus, the West’s notions of individualistic identity wrt authorship led to art historians to incorrectly assuming that authorship was unimportant in Yoruban artistic practices, remaining ignorant to complex oral tradition of the oriki. we will take tha time here to define nd characterize aspects of Afro-indigenous visual expression to better illuminate tha aesthetic languages razed;
Innovation of form- implied by the range of African artistic traditions, with multiple artistic forms existing in relatively small areas throughout the continent.
Visual abstraction- works that exist outside of naturalistic representation in both bold and subtle ways, with an emphasis on visual boldness.
Parallel asymmetries- a combination of balanced composition and vital asymmetries; the rendering of the symmetrical parts of the body are often placed in parallel to asymmetrical lines and shapes.
Sculptural primacy- most African art is carved/molded/constructed into a three-dimensional form; from textiles being turned into tents to paintings being hung on building walls there is a turn to the three-dimensional.
Performance- the primary African art form. Community song and dancing, with highly personalized decorations; performers both perform with art and in essence become art. These performances are always in service of a communal goal; a send off, celebration, etc.
Humanism/Anthropomorphism- African art is focused on transforming and reconstituting the human body. The human body, spirit, essence, etc. is the primary subject of much African art, with animals even being adorned with humanistic traits such as jewelry and textiles.
Ensemble/Assemblage- works are rarely presented in isolation, they are assembled together. Many individual works composites of various materials. Seen in the elaborate assemblages of jewelry, patterns, body/face painting.
Multiplicity of meaning- artistic meaning in African artistic traditions are multiplicitous by nature, the continent’s artistic trend towards assemblage leads to multiple ephemera divining multiple non-contradictory meanings in the viewer. A single form is meant to show different things to different people depending on their status in the community.
N→ new negro (alain locke, gilroy, tha imaginary western modernity) → Influential New Negro critic Alain Locke’s vision of African American art stood in a then unprecedented space in the discourse of cultural critique; he was simultaneously influenced by and in conversation with other cultural thinkers while also standing apart as an advocate for Negro art. Locke intended to “historicize, analyze, and classify African American art and to position it in relation to both black experience and mainstream American culture.” (Calo, 91) According to author Mary Ann Calo, Locke sought for Negro artists to transcend out of folk traditions and into the realm of fine art, where their work can be in step with notions of an American nationalist mainstream aesthetic. This mainstream aesthetic that Locke strove towards, this sense of modernity, is at the heart of Paul Gilroy’s critique of cultural discourse. Paul Gilroy opens his 1993 book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness with a quote from French writer Edouard Glissant on the notion of modernity, where Glissant notes that the awareness of the modern and the knowledge of that awareness is a constant source of strength and anguish; this double consciousness, and the pitfalls of modernity that result, is at the root of both Gilroy’s opening chapter, The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity, and Mary Ann Calo’s Alain Locke and American Art Criticism. Calo and Gilroy examine the conflicts between cultural art criticism by black scholars and the notions of a national identity, specifically through the framework of English cultural studies and the work of influential black art critic Alain Locke. Gilroy’s critique of English cultural studies and of national modernity as a concept presents a framework for the contradictions that surround Locke’s cultural thinking on the place of African American in the aesthetic mainstream. Gilroy views modernity as a direct result of the racialized othering of black bodies; the discourse surrounding Western beauty and aesthetic judgment were born from the distortion of the black image and the credence gifted to theories of biologically based racial difference by scientific racism. The author frames the idea of an absolute Western identity as being born out of contrast to the racialized other; noting that the formation of national modernity is viewed as being birthed from its own imaginaries in lieu of being seen in relation to these racialized bodies. This idea of cultural absolutism is seen as detrimental to the cultural discourse produced by both black and white authors. For Gilroy, the concept of a purely homogenized Western culture in which the aesthetic visual traditions of the racial other must be transplanted into simply does not exist. This imaginary Western modernity serves as a sort of muse for Alain Locke in his cultural criticism; he is steeped in the idea of the American aesthetic mainstream and how African American art fits into it, and falls into the same notions of absolutism that Gilroy is critiquing. Locke, according to Calo, very much fits into critic Thomas Craven’s model for an authentic populist expression; one that is rooted in personal and communal experience. He seeks to uphold the cultural individuality of African American art while also placing it into the aesthetic standards of Euro-American modernity. Calo notes that this goal creates contradictions in Locke’s cultural criticism, seeing a tension with his “reconciliation of the racial with the national, of difference within unity, of the individual within the community” (see Calo, 94). She pulls from scholar Mark Helbling, who views Locke’s attempt to place the black artist into the canon of the imaginary Western modernity as in competition with “notions of pure art and the characteristic racialism in the domain of aesthetic theory” (see Calo, 94). Locke’s predilection towards bringing the art of the New Negro to an absolute national aesthetic lies in his view of American culture as a totality, as a culture inherently separate from the visual traditions of African American art. Calo acknowledges that Locke’s method of thinking about American modernity was very much in line with the cultural discourse of his era, in her retrospective view of Locke and his contemporaries she notes:
in their efforts to construct historical narratives, they assigned value to past traditions and privileged certain ideals as essential to the development of American art. They often struggled with the relationship of artistic form to content or subject, arriving at imperfect solutions that they nonetheless presented as the advanced guard of available choices in that historical moment (see Calo, 96).
Locke’s proclivity towards placing the art of his era into the canon of mainstream modernity is symptomatic of the overall cultural discourse era; this obsession with the imaginary notion of an absolute American aesthetic was simply a result of the theory of his time.
O→ olodumare→ The Yoruba are the most urban of African people, with their capital city of Ile Ife standing at the literal geographic center of the region. Ile-Ife was known as “the navel of the world” and through it the Yoruba spread their influence throughout Southwestern Nigeria, to this day thousands of cities claim direct descent to Ile-Ife. The descendents of Ile Ife did not see themselves as a singular group in the past, with the name “Yoruba” having its roots in the Oyo kingdom, who were once prominent in the region. British colonizers found similarities in language and culture between both groups and thus referred to them all as Yoruba. Ile-Ife is the site of the world’s creation in Yoruba mythology, where the gods Oduduwa and Obatala first descended when they created the earth and man, with Oduduwa himself becoming the first ruler, or oni, of Ile-Ife. The Yoruba view the world as having two major spheres of reality, the tangible world in which we live in and the wider metaphysical plane inhabited by the orishas; these planes of being are represented by the two halves of the calabash, or closed gourd.Calabashes are dried, hollowed-out gourds that were split down the middle to be used as kitchen utensils throughout Yorubaland, primarily as food containers with smaller gourds being used as bowls or even musical instruments. The calabash holds even deeper metaphysical meaning in its two halves, representing the two fundamental aspects of being in Yoruba cosmology; the male heavens and the female earth. The meeting of the spiritual and physical worlds made manifest by the calabash is the foundational framework for Yoruba constructions of mythology and community praxis; this dialectic of twoness, of the spiritual influencing and guiding the physical through objects such as the gourd and other divinatory processes, provided access to universal knowledge that stimulated the community towards a distinctly Yoruba aesthetic sensibility. Nigerian art historian Babatunde Lawal defines this construction of the male sky and the female earth through the two Yoruba sayings; “t’ako, t’abo, ejiwapo” (“the male and female in togetherness”) and “igba nla meiji soju dé’ra won” (“big gourd with two halves”), drawing a direct connection between “the life-producing potential of the couple-the source of the family” (Lawal, 25) with the supernatural forces that hold the cosmic gourd of the universe in place. This force is known as àse, a primordial source of energy governed by the Supreme Deity known as Olodumare, that upon which all Yoruba cosmology and cultural production is based; according to Lawal ase is the cosmological mechanism that “holds the gourd in space, enabling the sun and moon to shine, wind to blow, fire to burn, rain to fall, rivers to flow, and both living and nonliving things to exist” (Lawal, 25). As the Alase (“owner of ase'') Olodumare governs both aspects of the cosmic gourd through lesser gods known as orishas, who utilize ase to manipulate fundamental aspects of reality and nature on Olodumare’s behalf, with the Supreme Deity himself rarely creating directly; the deity Èsù-Elégba holding special place among orishas for his role as divine messenger between both major aspects of universe, acting as the link between Olodumare, the other spirits, and the Earth. Along with being the driving mechanism of the universe, ase is also essential in all aspects of Yoruba cultural production; it is the energy that is made tangible through art objects and special practices, such as masquerades, that allows the Yoruba to commune with orishas and call upon their supernatural powers to guide them through their everyday lives. Orishas are fundamental in Yoruba society and stand as a sort of unified theory for all facets of life, especially in art-making. All Yoruba artworks (and African artworks as a whole) are representative of at least one orisha and act as a sort of lightning rod between their ase and the physical world. In Yorubaland works of art are made out of a sense of reverence and exploration, to both honor their deities and serve as a means to divine ancestral histories and universal truths; this framework of art as a means of divine communication, reverence, and universal knowledge is true of the calabash. The closed gourd, like all pieces of Yoruba artwork, exist within a intricate system of community action brought upon by wider cosmological influences; Yoruba works operate along a dialectic of wider ethno-religious concepts of the universe at large. According to scholar Rowland Abiodun in his analysis of curator William Fagg, works of art in Yoruba culture are conceived “‘as four-dimensional objects in which the fourth or time dimension is dominant and in which matter is only the vehicle, or the outward and visible expression, of energy or life force'” (Abiodun, 69). This life force, known as ashe, is the primary catalyst in the creation and appreciation of Yoruba works, it is the source of all production on a universal scale and provides a criteria for works in which “‘energy and not matter, dynamic and not static being'” (Abiodun, 69) divines an artworks true meaning. These more esoteric frameworks of artistic expression read as mostly illegible under normative (re: western) notions of aesthetic representation and beauty. In the aftermaths of european colonization, African artworks pilfered and treated as purely anthropological objects; meaning was subtracted from aesthetic form to create a blanket image of African cultural production as fundamentally “primitive”. Art historian Suzanne Blier, in her text A History of Art in Africa, references a certain “myth of anonymity” in regards to how African art has been perceived throughout western art history; the countless works left anonymous by the west’s inherently individualistic sense of artistic identity and its rendering of African cultural production, and thus African peoples, as intrinsically illegible under any “normative” construction of canon. Under this gaze, the complex multiplicities of meaning that Blier notes as a core tenet of African art as whole is left to dust; for example, the calabash’s deep cosmological references to the universe at large, the Male Sky and the Female Earth, and the mother-child relationship is left almost completely erased under most frameworks of critique. As a result, thousands of years of visual culture have been left obfuscated at best and razed at worst; they’ve left a hole in things, a hole that we as makers, as Black makers specifically, must work to fill. We must redefine and recontextualize this lost information, these almost forgotten things. Like the Yoruba, it is essential to evaluate works of art upon more complex frameworks of meaning and form; to break from the confining notions of artistic consumption of the western canon and create new formats of appraisal based on similar dialectics of community, lived experience, craft, and most importantly, the ancestral.
P→ post-colonial internationalism, discrepant abstractions, nd tha works of aubrey williams → Guyanese painter aubrey williams’ paintings are immersed in tha ancient, tha indigenous -pulling frm tha sensuous, tha fragments of memory nd imagination of a mor mystical past thru a modernist commitment to tha practices of painting; reinterpreting tha modes of modernism as a site of critical reflection on tha relationship between art (as institution) nd Black cultural identity- breaking frm conformist, nd decicdely nationalistic, standards of Black artistic thought to a mor global conversation on Black identity in a cross-cultural context. williams’ engagement wit a postcolonial internationalism was centered in his introduction to abstract expressionism in 1956, communicating that tha aesthetic was not incompatible w/ artistic exploration of indigenous cultural resources in his early works- a part of a growing shift in modernizing Britain’s relationship w/ their newly liberated former colonies, yet critically is still v much considered separate frm tha north american orientation of british art in his meditations on tha displacement that so characterizes Black lived experience. separated frm his original sources of inspiration, tha culture of his native Guyana (which, like all African art, exists on complex wetweb of tha cosmological influence of tha gods, everyday practices, collective social movement, nd artistic cultural production→ tha multiplicitous, tha meanings on top of meanings, tha symbols on top of symbols, that figurative represent African life yet communes w/ tha divine), williams allows for a cross-cultural exchange in which tha figurative nd tha abstract are no longer mutually exclusive; forging dialogues between tha indigenous nd tha contemporary in a sort of stylistic code switching that bucks at tha artistic practices of his day, nd thus places him at an art-historical tangent→ rather than sinking into tha liminality of tha purely abstract or tha empiricism necessary in representing tropes of exoticized racial difference (which, beyond tha explicitly political nd propagandistic, was tha dominant mode of signification within a western artistic tradition, tha colonized intellectual rears their head), williams instead traces lines between tha poles of tha colonial project; forging an abstract expressionist aesthetic that requires intertextuality, an acceptance of multiple aesthetic nd national cultural stylings that inform a post-colonial Black identity. with a post-colonial formation of identity in mind, williams’ involvement w/ tha london-based Caribbean artists movement (CAM) in tha mid 1960s critically examined tha merits of a west-indian aesthetic within tha british art world→ opening up identifications of tha cut across national boundaries nd affiliations, an artistic reponse to Fanon’s call for a colonized identity defined in its intersections nd conflicts with tha colonizer- a decolonial practice in erasing tha hard demarcations of tha colonized world; “whereas many 20th-century nationalisms turned to the pre-colonial past as a resource with which to rebuild collective identity among formerly colonised peoples, the Caribbean predicament was shaped by the prior voiding and annulment of its heterogeneous ethnic ancestry in the official narratives of West Indian history. What was at stake in the search for ethnic ‘roots’ during the moment of decolonisation, which gave CAM its impetus, was nothing less than the modern restructuring of the colonial self” (see mercer, 192). inspired by tha survival of indigeneity within tha wider Guyanese aesthetic nd cultural landscape, williams nd CAM -instead of claiming of a west African origin consistent with demarcations of West-indian origineity- place tha regions’ ethnic/racial heterogeneity as a point for better understanding tha cross-cultural relationships that made tha Caribbean a modern zone of cross-cultural conversation nd convergence; arguing a construction of West-Indian identity that is neither strictly African or Indigenous→ scattering categories of identity within a relation of cross-cultural mixing, not in one specific space, but in tha spaces inbetween…they are “not substitutes or rivals for African origins, but enigmatic signifiers whose unreadability acknowledges unrepresentable losses” (see mercer, 196), a view of tha Caribbean as an abstraction of solid significations of difference, as evidence of wat’s been lost nd found…
Q→ q-tip, dilla, blind-alley, it don’t mean a thing, nd tha heterogeneous sound ideal (an introduction)→ Duke Ellington’s 1931 composition “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” stood in an extremely important time in the wider cultural purview, essentializing the dominant African American musical tradition of his time less than a decade after W.E.B. Dubois’ call for a conception of aesthetic beauty and appreciation that includes Black cultural production. Ellington’s composition speaks to multiple long-running standards in Black diasporic music, with fellow influential composer Olly Wilson conceptualizing said standards as “the heterogeneous sound ideal”, in which “a common approach to music making in which a kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound (timbre) is sought after in both vocal and instrumental music" (Wilson, 329). Wilson characterizes this sound ideal through his analysis of various motifs found in African music, noting two primary elements of the heterogeneous sound ideal on a sonic level, "first, it is reflected in the nature of the 'sound' texture of musical ensembles...the resultant qualities of sound produced when several instruments perform simultaneously…secondly, the heterogeneous sound ideal is reflected in the common usage of a wide range of timbres within a single line” (Wilson, 329); it is this attention to tone, to sonic texture, that reveals the crucial methodological throughline of Ellington’s work. Wilson notes in various performance practices in both pre-colonial Africa and present-day African American a certain organization of ensemble in which a “fixed rhythm group” (primarily made up of percussionists that maintain a defined rhythm) and a “variable rhythmic group” (in which the rhythm of various instruments remain in flux and ever changing), drawing a parallels to the parades of Sub-Saharan Africa to the jazz age through shared instruments, musical sensibilities, and, most importantly, vocal timbre. The musical elements of Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing” are given art historical, musical, and cultural context under this construction. sonically the track fits within Wilson’s description of a fixed/variable rhythm group, with the percussion keeping a fast-paced, syncopated, consistent rhythm while the horns (specifically the solo towards the end and the use of a plunger to produce a voice-like effect) and strings (which acts as a segue with its winding timbre, giving a vaudevillian style opening to the track; operating within the traditional use of stringed instruments in African musical processions, which was later parodied into the iconography of the minstrel show and then further reappropriated by musicians such as Ellington during the New Negro movement of the 1930s) have a more varied, improvisational approach, at times mimicing in the human voice in their sometimes harmonious, yet sometimes dissonant, wahs and doos. It’s precisely in this affectation that these almost onomatopoeic noises become a sort of language, a dialogue that features a certain predilection for ensemble-based improvisation between a some odd half dozen musicians, the fixed and variable rhythm group, that is distinctly African American; a sort of collective transmutation of African conceptions of timbre and rhythm, Anglo traditions of the marching band (which, according to Wilson, found particular purchase amongst the enslaved for its methodological connection to African traditions of parade and procession), and the very American caricatures of minstrelsy (performers like Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Josephine Baker played into, critiqued, and abstracted these harmful caricatures throughout the New Negro movement of the United States and the resulting Negritude movement of the displaced scholars of 20th Century France, at times playfully appealing to their audience’s prejudices to disguise moments of vulnerability, speak to their experiences as Black diasporic subjects, and reject notions of alleged Black cultural inferiority through their musical innovation). It is in the doo-wah of “Don’t Mean a Thing”, a vocalization of both the song’s rhythmic sensibilities and it’s attention to timbre, that Ellington articulates a creolization of the two poles of African American subjectivity, the old world of African and the brutally new world of the Americas (see glissant, “The Open Boat”), whose distinct sonic character both speaks to the traditions of the past and demonstrates a bold new one. thru wilson, we kan both define jazz as a musical tradition- its unique rhythmic nd timbral quality, its emphasis on improvisation -nd find a definition of jazz outside of tha rigid modalities of “genre”- which provides easy categorization wrt music consumption→ we turn to mark fisher’s analysis of music appraisal’s fixation on tha recorded as embodied being, as authentic voice, to giv a weighty prescription- that tha metaphysics of being that we assign to tha recorded extends to our understanding of tha tradition of genre; if we treat tha voice as an authentic presentation of being- which effaces a consideration of production nd method, tha means upon which that voice is recorded- we treat musical genre as taxonomy→ a biological system that can be classified thru those same embodied elements, in this case “loud toot toot thing + da, dadada, dadada, dada + improv + Black ppl (sumtimes, we are becoming a rare breed in fine jazz education) = jazz” → again, ignoring production, tha qualities of tha form of music that functions as a pedagogical tradition to be revised, rejected, appropriated; genre is not history or tradition or even a legacy of people within this rubric, issa cadaver ripe for autopsy (knives out!) - in a rejection of this flattening, we will now look at jazz lesso as a grouping of instruments or playing styles nd instead as a methodology- tracing wilson’s idea of a heterogeneous sound ideal to two of its clearest practitioners within tha last 3 decades; hip hop producers q-tip nd j-dilla. (con’t’d on u→ ummah)
R→ romare bearden nd why i kinda don’t like kehinde wiley→ seminal African american author nd critic Ralph Ellison, in his examination of bearden for the Massachusetts Review, states bearden’s work both brushes up against yet avoids tha tropes of exoticization nd anachronism that had plagued his contemporaries (read: fellow Black painters, not u) in his fervent adherence to tha art historical canon. he frames bearden as an artist that can only draw upon tha folk traditions of his culture to a certain extent, but ultimately unable to find a plastic Black expression to guide or a place him within tha larger canon; in response he places Black american life as subject, specifically life in tha rural south, through the aesthetic techniques and traditions of painting…even in his formal leaps beyond tha normative techniques of oil painting, his indelible use of collage, tha art-historical obsessive in Bearden is clear as day- his paintings recall tha geometric mastery of vermeer and de hooch (tha ways in which they can maintain their big shapes without sacrificing composition) nd a sense of organized fragmentation influenced by Chinese compositional techniques. tha photographs, in turn, pushes these references into tha technological language of bearden’s time, nd conceptually functions on two assumptions; that a photograph, when taken out of its original context, gains a unique plastic quality lacking in tha original and that certain qualities of artificiality must be retained in a work of art, so as not to conflate the reality of an artwork to the realities of everyday life. in short, bearden’s work- while undoubtedly paintings, relying on tha archive of canon to make productive sense of visual gaps in tha wider canon in relation to depictions of Black life- serve as projections; sites of representation that engages artistic production nd tha western canon (read: tha hole in things) as
“an open-ended semiotic system, a preexisting visual vocabulary that the artist must acknowledge and revise according to personal and social-historical imperatives…he created the montage paintings and photostat enlargements that comprised Projections by transforming fragments of art-historical reproductions and images from current magazines into unified compositions that reworked the spaces and structures of prior paintings. This technique, combined with narratives of black life, allowed Bearden to acknowledge the significance of the art-historical past even as he revised its forms to accommodate new representations of African American identity...each new creation is part of a series; the new work acknowledges the past even as it asserts its own difference. artistic style renounces its connection to a unique object or individual point of view to become a form of writing, a chain of signifiers in which each signifier possesses meaning through its relationship to already existing signifiers…style then, signifies both difference from the past and distinction within a continuous aesthetic tradition…these works resonate with the history of art, but the echo is not a simple repetition. it is a reworking of that history in order to discover that its spaces and structures are remarkably similar to the spaces and structures that belong to african american life and ritual...the humanist notion of form as a timeless universal element capable of establishing affinities and revising cultural heritage” (see glazer, 1).
that long ass block quote brings me to one kehinde wiley…okay im not gonna git into any lazy criticisms here, it’s gorgeous gorgeous work nd tha labor is there; that should always b acknowledged, nd any Black person working successfully within this sticky pit of muck nd mire we call “fine art” has my vote for a seat at tha table rlly, git ur money my nigga. but we must remember work is not ppl nd that tha stuff on tha wall rlly starts becoming magic when we all talk abt it, so let’s fuckin talk abt it; i don’t like kehinde wiley. nd that dislike has always been difficult to articulate beyond tha simple “portraiture doesn’t rlly do it for me sumtimes”. now, thru bearden semiotics of projection, my discomfort finds purchase; to b short, if bearden’s work is a politic of revision wiley’s is one of replacement→ like bearden, he pulls frm tha canon of tha old masters to realize a Black subject, but in a dandified air within the traditions of neoclassicism; jacques louise-david’s napoleon but with a nigga in camo, judith’s beheading with a Black woman as tha victor→ they’re heroic images, secure in their regality, strong, beautiful, healthy,“good representation” (not that we don’t need that) → i kan appreciate tha beauty of these things, i rlly kan, tha technique is flawless…where my appreciation falters is in his engagement with tha neoclassicist tradition wrt tha Black subject insofaras- i feel like he could b painting white ppl nd it’s basically operating within tha same tradition; i ask, beyond tha simple presence of Black ppl within this tradtion, where is tha reinvention????? how does this tradition, this archive of visuality, transform when Black is subject? in wiley’s visual languge, it doesn’t change much…feathers n caps r durags, military uniforms become tracksuits, it’s Blackness as commodity aesthetics nd cultural signifiers of (minimal) difference rather than Black as a fundamental reframing of notions of identity nd aesthetic beauty- in short, these read to me as an exercise in giving neoclassicist portraiture a neoliberal facelift→ it implies that we kan be slotted into tha wider historical understanding of western visual culture without much fuss, “all we need is more Black judges nd there’ll b less folx in jail” type beat…it’s fitting he did tha obama portrait honestly
S→ settler sexuality→ (con’t’d frm G→ gumbo) Scott Lauria Morgensen unpacks these notions of white hegemonic masculinity in his 2010 article Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities. In the text Morgensen applies the framework of homonationalism, an implicit relationship between LGBTQ rights and US imperialism, laid out by Jasbir Puar in her seminal work Terrorist Assemblages to analyze the sexual colonization of Indigenous peoples and their “diverse practices of gender and sexuality” (Morgensen, 106). Morgensen defines this sexual colonization as settler sexuality, “a white national heteronormativity that regulates Indigenous sexuality and gender by supplanting them with the sexual modernity of settler subjects”, noting that “settler definitions of modern sexuality became hegemonic for all Non-Natives, as well as for Native people who sought ties to sexual modernity” (Morgensen, 106). Throughout the text Morgensen pulls examples of how white sexual modernity was forced upon Indigenous communities throughout North America, pushing their more complex definitions of gender to the periphery. Under white settler sexuality non-white bodies are marked as primitive, or even non-human, projects onto which heternormative structures can be supplanted onto. This forced alignment with white constructions of sexuality mirror Hooks’ assessment of black masculinity. The colonial biopolitics of slavery and other white supremacist structures ensured that black men would always align with patriarchy for the sake of constructing their own identities. This construction of black and white hegemonic masculinity lies at the heart of Riggs’ work. As a black gay man Riggs is excluded from these normative frameworks; unlike his heterosexual counterparts he cannot rely on a model of domination to enforce his masculinty due to his sexuality and he is rejected from the white framework of “man” due to his race. Under these constructions of masculinity the black gay man is perceived as “an other on which to blame for the chronic identity crises afflicting the Black male psyche can be readily displaced; an indispensable Other that functions as the lowest common denominator of the abject, the baseline of transgression beyond which a Black Man is no longer a man, no longer Black” (Riggs, 782). In his chapter “The Pot is Brewing: Marlon T. Riggs’ Black Is...Black Ain’t” from his 2004 text Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity author E. Patrick Johnson analyzes Riggs’ views on authentic blackness in relation to class, gender, and queerness. Johnson examines the running trope of gumbo in Riggs’ final film Black Is...Black Ain’t, viewing it as a metaphor for the multiplicitous nature of blackness; a site in which absolute ideas of authenticity “delimit the possibilities of what blackness can be” (Johnson, 19) which is ultimately “counterproductive to the flavor of the roux that acts as the base of the gumbo that is ‘blackness’” (19). Riggs and other black gay men are erased from the purview of authenticity due to the misogynistic and homophobic constructions of black hegemonic masculinity (as set by settler constructions of white patriarchy), a framework in which “the black woman exists solely for reproducing the race and thus become the black man’s possession and object of his desire, then the black homosexual represents sexuality run amuck-a perversion that threatens the very basis of black heteronormative masculinity” (Johnson, 36). Under the normative structures of black hegemonic masculinity, or the “cool” as defined by Hooks, Riggs feels disenfranchised from his own community; unable to access the domination model set out by settler sexuality and labeled a perversion. According to Johnson the black gay man is perceived as a threat black hegemonic masculinity’s alignment with white constructions of the nuclear family and must be “contained such that the image of the black family, and particularly that of the black heterosexual man, appear ‘normal’ in the eyes of whites” (Johnson, 37). Through these work we can see that the constructions of hegemonic masculinity is inherently a colonial project that places non-White bodies onto a heteronormative axis in which “normal” (human) and “primitive” (preverse) are the endpoints; this axis is the line upon which black hegemonic masculinity strives to emulate and ultimately mirrors. Alienated by the dogma of authenticity surrounding black hegemonic masculinity, black gay men exist in the imaginaries and purviews of those who perceive them. Black gay men should not be held under these structure of hegemonic masculinity, nobody in should; to place black gay man on the proverbial normative axis of “normal” and “preverse” is to render them invisibile, without an identity. Left unmoored from normative frameworks of masculine identity black gay men are left illegible, but this illegibility offers sites of exploration and possibility; to view constructions of black gay masculinity as separate from these notions of black hegemonic masculinty and settler sexuality. This exploration leads one to ask how do black gay men fit into normative constructions of masculinity within the gay community? According to Jasbir Puar while some white gay men “object to the suggestion that queer identities, like their ‘less radical’ counterparts, homosexual, gay, and lesbian identities, are also implicated in ascendant white American national formations, preferring to see queerness as singularly trangressive of identity norms” (Puar, 21-22) in reality it this identification with transgression that “is precisely the term by which queerness narrates its own sexual exceptionalism” (Puar, 22). White queer modalities operate in alignment with the same white national formation that rendered black people as non-human, once again excluding black gay men from a normative costructive of a queer identity. Regardless of the framework-black, white, gay- black gay men are erased, viewed as inhuman or as a threat simply for their race and their refusal to operate in heteronormative dominator construction of masculinity. It seems the black gay man is only visible in his erasure; in his stereotyping as a snap queen, a fetish object, a perversion; robbed of a construction of masculinity that takes their own geometries and identities into account, a masculinity that can be an ingredient in Riggs’ proverbial gumbo, a recognition of their queerness→ an articulation of identity that offers a method upon which black gay men are able to live under their own axes of definition; separate from hegemonic masculinity’s axis of heternormative domination while acknowledging their multifaceted identities as black men. Through seeing black gay male masculinity through the framework of a black hole one can truly view a blackness that defies any definition, a blackness that operates outside of normative modalities and express itself through its own geometry; unburdened by notions of the cool.
T→ tinsley, Blk atlantic, queer atlantic→ Omise’eke Tinsely questions the purported “newness” of black queer studies in academia in her text Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middile Passage. Tinsley illustrates the history of same-sex relationships that occurred between enslaved people during the Middle Passage and the plantation, confronting tha erasure of queerness that often occurs in discourses surrounding Black history; further tying these queer subjectivities into tha wider canon of Afro-indigenous modes of vernacular, citing tha Haitian word mati (female lover) etymological ties to mate, or shipmate. for tinsley, tha horrors of tha middle passage, bodies stacked on top of bodies until they are rendered ungendered flesh, serves as a womb from which a queer atlantic kan be derived→ crafting a symbiotic relationship between tha sexual fluidity that is inherent in queerness nd tha depths of tha ocean floor; citing Paul Gilroy’s model of a fluid black identity, unmoored both physically and ontologically from any possible cultural definition, to forge a definition of a transnational black queerness that has been long ignored in the discourse- a direct confrontation with tha idea of a “resistant Black queerness as a new fashion-a glitzy, postmodern invention borrowed and adapted from Euro American queer theory” (see tinsley, 193). this notion of a “resistant Black queerness” is symptomatic of a politic of silence that has long encumbered intercommunity notions of sexuality, privacy, respectability, nd awareness for African Americans→ pulling frm Black feminist scholar evelyn brooks higginbotham, we kan define a yt settler construction of “manhood” nd especially “womanhood” as a homogenous one that positions tha other along axes of race (“a highly contested representation of relations of power between social categories by which individuals are identified nd identify themselves” [see higginbotham, 253) nd gender, which is always constructed along yt patriarchal lines of identification. to divine tha root of this politic of silence we examine tha 1855 case of state of missouri v. celia, which officially ruled Black women as outside of tha formal rubric of “woman” (“since racially based justifications of slavery stood at the core of southern law, race relations, and social etiquette in general, then proof of ‘womanhood’ did not rest on a common female essence, shared culture, or mere physical appearance…it is interesting then that the power of race as a metalanguage that transcends and masks real differences lies in the remarkable and longstanding success with which it unites whites of disparate economic positions against Blacks” [see higginbotham, 258-259]); this formal exclusion frm tha social category of “lady” that characterized tha antebellum south nd tha ‘dignified’ north lies in tha historically yt canon of hegemonic constructions of gender nd sexuality- an axis within which tha puritanical stands on one end nd tha promiscuous on tha other→ “Black women’s bodies epitomized centuries-long european perceptions of Africans as primitive, animal-like, and savage” (higginbotham, 263) nd in an effort to combat those tropes, we, good Black ppl, adhered to similar constructions of sexual difference nd gender following our liberation frm slavery; tha Black middle class specifically→ an adherence to a boderline victorian sense of morality nd virtue that “was perceived as crucial not only to the protection and upward mobility of Black women but of the race as a whole” (see higginbotham, 266). this prescription to morality was expressed along decidedly christian lines of virtuous nd sinful expression, a construction of a valorized self that would find a place in tha kingdom of god nd heaven above (read, a piece of tha economic, social, nd legal benefits denied to them by yts) while dooming tha aberrant, tha non-virtuous (read: “fast”, “loose”, gay) to hell below→ “racial uplift, while invoking a discursive ground on which to explode negative stereotypes of Black women, remained locked within hegemonic articulations of gender, class, and sexuality” (see higginbotham, 271).
U→ ummah→ (con’t’d frm Q) we begin to see these threads (yes, that was all an intro, this is my book, i do wat i want, cue uzi) in tha larger canon of jazz, specifically in tha composers who rejected tha label outright (charles mingus, when asked “what is jazz music” famously responded, “i don’t know, and i don’t care”); jazz, nd blues for that matter, were not codified musical traditions with tropes or specific instrumentation, it was a means of making w/ ties to both american nd African music methods that made purchase in tha heterogeneous; tha doubling of ensemble, tha unfixing of rhythm into improvisation nd then bacc again…here we quote legendary African american author nd jazz critic ralph ellison, originally used to describe tha work of jazz musician charlie christian, to find better conceptual ground for tha groove defined “jazz”;
each true jazz moment…springs from a contest in which each artist challenges all the rest; each solo flight, or improvisation represents (like the successive canvases of a painter) a definition of his identity: as an individual, as a member of the collectivity, and as a link in the chain of tradition. thus, because jazz finds its very life in an endless improvisation upon traditional materials, the jazzman must first lose his identity even as he finds it (see glazer, seeing ellison, 411)
jazz, for ellison, is not a geometric proof or playing style but a methodological embrace of nd then re-application onto tradition - a site where tha performer loses himself within tha ensemble, strikes at tha canon of musical innovation, nd find himself in his improvisation upon tha original form (“nothing is too old or too new” -zora neale hurston, SURPRISE! tol u we’d use it later). tha jazz tradition is not one set in its aesthetics or in a fixation on technical mastery, it’d b limiting to ascribe such trite metrics of artistic success for a tradition so expansive-rather than looking at jazz as embodied presence of tha live band, tha ensemble, i invite u to look at jazz as a tradition that finds itself within its own redefinition; with this in mind, wat kan be a greater jazz moment, a better retrofitting upon tha traditional form of jazz, than making jazz without a single analog instrument?
now we get to talk abt tha ummah (yay! im excited i kan write this in my sleep) a collective founded by tribe called quest frontman kamaal fareed, aka q-tip, tribe dj ali-shaheed muhammad, nd, ofc, tha late great james yancey aka j-dilla (u liv on forever, we luv u), nd occasionally, producer raphael saadiq (producer of toni, tony, tone, he deserves his own book one day so we won’t touch on him much) nd r&b funk god d’angelo, who’s work became tha driving force of a resurgence in jazz musicality in tha hip-hop nd r&b scenes of tha 1990s nd 2000s along w/ ?uestlove of tha roots, we turn to ?uest’s 2014 interview w/ tha red bull music academy to better illustrate their connection to tha wider jazz tradition;
so, ‘92 to ‘97, the fourth age, which I call the renaissance period, at least it was the renaissance for the East Coast. So you had cats like [DJ] Premier, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, Shaheed, Diamond D, digging in their parents’ record collections for jazz records. And there’s one particular break that Tip and Ali used to fine effect, was “Blind Alley,” of which... [moves back to the couch]...so when “Blind Alley” was initially used in ‘89, ‘88, by Big Daddy Kane, it was a straight-forward break. So what happens in the renaissance period of hip-hop is now people are chopping breaks and almost making up new grooves. So you don’t have to take 16 bars of a song. You can now take a smaller portion of it and make it different. So pretty much what I consider the heartbeat, or the pulse, of that initial renaissance period, in the early ‘90s, was based on Tip and Ali chopping this break up.
tip nd ali’s flip of blind alley is just one example in a discography characterized by radical reformations of musical composition thru sampling; creating exciting new compositions nd arrangements out of tha digitized fragments of old- it is in tha sampling of tha emotions’ blind alley that givs q-tip his jazz moment, pushing tha rhythmic measure to fit within his improvisation upon tha older form; but here, tha improvisation is not a solo or a mere change in tempo→ tha actual melodic nd percussive elements of tha original hav been re-spliced, abstracted frm their original forms- looped nd then arranged with other sampled fragments to form a wholly new composition; throughout tribe’s discography samples frm multiple artists dip nd dive arnd tha layered kicks provided by tip nd engineer bob power (sometimes using as many as three kicks to produce one sound, “tha double descriptive→ ex: high-tall, low-down, kill-dead”), collapsing multiple decades of music history nd tradition within their sampled chords nd instrumentation. wat connects tip nd ali to “jazz” as a musical tradition is a clear commitment to tha heterogeneous sound ideal; a fixed rhythm group, rich in its bassy percussion that provides both rhythmic definition for nd timbral contrast to tha sampled fragments of horns, keys, basslines, nd vocals-whose diversity in instrumental style, pitch, historical context, nd texture provides variation in melodic pitch nd instrumentation (“asymmetry is a definitive feature of Negro art…there is always rhythm, but it is the rhythm of segments. each unit has a rhythm of its own, but when the [w]hole is assembled it is lacking in symmetry” [see hurston, 26])
w/ tha technological capability to sample multiple musical elements frm all corners of tha lexicon of popular music, tha sampler (in contrast to ellison’s jazzman) does mor than lose themselves within tradition to find themselves again- for tha sampler, time nd musical canon itself “is plastic, stretchable and prophetic—it is, in other words, a technologised time, in which past and future are subject to ceaseless de- and recomposition” (see fisher, 47), forging new musical possibilities thru tha dyschonization of past tradition into their newly rearranged present→ no one exemplifies tha sample’s recompositional powers in a hip-hop context quite like j-dilla, his innovation upon tha form is indelible in its experimentation; for a lack of a better word, dilla’s beats breathe -precise in their articulation but loose in their rhythmic sensibility, tha works of dilla elevated tip’s breaking of tha 16-bar structure to new heights; chops no longer than a micro-second, forming entire musical passages out of seemingly nascent, almost inaudible shifts in dynamic nd tone to create a full musical phrase→ it is in this reconstruction that tha sampler find themselves within tha tradition of tha jazzman nd his ensemble-but not tha live, embodied big bands of tha 30s, 40s, nd 50s or even tha experimentation of tha 60s nd 70s (fusion is still jazz btw wynton marsalis, let ur pants sag a bit my nigga) but in tha phonographic haunt of their fragmented disembodiment; tha crackles nd pops of digitized fuzz, tha compositions clipped exactly on an off note nd then picked up again by a sample of tha right one- we’re made distinctly aware of tha fact that we are engaging with a revenant, a piece of a past ensemble erupting into tha present→ if tha jazzman loses himself in tradition just to find himself thru improvisation than tha sampler finds themselves thru tha disembodiment of tha historically traditional into new forms, working within tha haunt of tradition while, like tha jazzman, boldly forging their own musical path -crafting previously undiscovered melodic revisions nd rearrangements, new passes nd phrases, into tha groove we define as “jazz” thru its digitzed haunt.
V→ violence→ French-West Indian political philosopher Frantz Fanon unpacks the essential violence necessary in a decolonial project and the formation of a national culture from the formerly and still colonized in these excerpts from his deeply influential 1961 book Damnes de la Terre (Wretched of the Earth, seriously, it cannot be stressed how important this work and this thinker is within the canon of post-colonial studies, he’s the godfather of how we currently theorize a decolonial movement). Seeing decolonization as only complete in its total transition from an older, more brutal world into one in which the last goes first, Fanon argues that the colonized world is one of compartmentalization, of forced definition (what is any colonial project [or a capitalist one for that matter] if not a politick of forced definition?), reasoning this compartmentalized world as “the backbone on which the decolonized society is reorganized” (see Fanon, 3) only in it’s violent penetration of the colonized. Further unpacking this compartmentalization, Fanon recognizes the unassailable fact that the colonized are essentialized as another, more primitive, species, and once this illusion is shattered within the mind of the colonized-violence is the only natural conclusion to gain subjectivity and liberation; “I (the colonized subject) am no longer uneasy in his presence. In reality, to hell with him (the settler)...I am already preparing to waylay him in such a way that soon he will have no other solution but to flee” (see Fanon, 10). violence as an act of person-making, violence as a natural, human reaction to oppression, and most importantly, a commitment to showing tha enemy as dead or dying or in decay…
W→ wangechi mutu, image as shit→ kenyan artist wangechi mutu’s collages exist between states of decay nd generative, between tha sensuous nd tha grotesque- pulling frm nd combining imagery frm multiple avenues of mass media culture to expose tha surreality of tha misrepresentations of Black women that punctuate western visual culture; tha ways of seeing that exoticize Black women into tha realm of tha non-human (as dutiful yet invisible observer, see olympia, or lecherous vixen). mutu likens her mining of these themes to farmers examining tha stool of their livestock to root out potential diseases nd health prblms→ mutu similarly pulls frm//at tha objectified nd voyeuristic cultures of pornography to find common ground between disparate visual cultures wrt their treatment of tha Black female subject; collaging pin-ups with multiple photos of African women in various stages of cultural adornment (African textiles nd jewelry, ceremonial headdresses nd scarves, niqabs) to create a montage→ just as signs of difference (hair, nose, lips, hips, buttocks) were used to codify the hierarchies of biological racism that rendered Black women as hypersexualized objects of fetishization, they hav also coded these complex cultural signifiers of tradition, religion, nd history as similarly exotic -nd in sum cases, depraved. this pictorial blurring of tha cultural sacred, tha traditional, tha pornographic, nd tha libidinous realizes these incredibly complex nd almost fantastical Black female subjects throughout her work- they are multiplicitous in their depiction, with many eyes, mouths, hands, never remaining static in their collaged materiality; she effaces separations between tha biological nd tha mechanical- figures made up of these gorgeously multi-colored, fungi-like spores melt into motor engines…it makes sumthing truly unreal out tha muck of our visual culture, a beautiful sense of collage that makes clear in its sheer strangeness- it’s obvious discontinuity frm anything we could describe as a “person”- tha utter ridiculousness of these objectified portrayals in comparison to tha real internal complexities- of race, of gender, of history- that define Black female experience. mutu encourages her audience to confront this gap between tha flattened image of tha fetishized Black woman nd tha intricacies of lived experience; drawing out questions on tha signifiers of difference that force tha audience to reexamine their own prejudiced nd (ultimately) limiting definitions of racial identity- in describing tha white-faced figure in 2002 work riding Death in my sleep;
“In that particular body of work, I intended on having people come up with descriptions for these females that got them into a tangle. So if you start by saying she’s not black, I would say, what’s black? Well, her skin is this colour, and I would say, she could be albino, and they would say, well, her mouth is this size, and I would say, do all black people have that kind of mouth? I’d run into all these non-scientific, ludicrous racial stereotypes. In Kenya, where 99.9% of the people are black, it’s irrelevant to describe anybody that way. You have to be more specific. So coming from that position to America where everything, at any given moment, could be seen from a racial perspective, I wanted to mess with those definitive, illogical and irrational descriptions that have been used to oppress people for so long.” (see enright)
critics who claim mutu is primarily concerned w/ tha grotesque miss tha obvious confrontation, tha potential redressing, present within her collages→ yes, she mines tha shit of our culture, tha voyeuristic, id even partially agree nd say she plays w/ tha grotesque throughout her work- collaging tha exploitative imagery of pornography, tha senusous nd multi-colored facets of biological life nd nature, nd tha technological- creating strange figures to diagnose an even stranger visual culture riddled with misogynoir nd objectification…it is in this absurd beauty, beautiful in its absurdity- absurd because it is beautiful, a beauty that challenges tha definitive logics that produced said visual culture, that mutu creates sum beyond tha grotesque…
“I was at school at Cooper Union, that’s where the grasp I have on contemporary art started. The teachers were rigorous, well-read and brilliant…But we would have discussions about art and one of the worst words you could say in class was “beautiful.” I remember thinking, What in heaven’s name is wrong with this word and why do people get a rash every time they hear ‘beauty’ or ‘beautiful’? I went from questioning to resenting why no one was willing to discuss why we couldn’t utter the word. I believe the reason is because beauty was actually available to them, their culture decides for the whole world what is beautiful, how beauty should evolve, where it begins and ends. So they were rebelling against the very thing that had protected them. They didn’t want to use the term “beauty” because they owned it. Maybe “beauty” is a sensitive and politicized word for people who have a hard time describing their own culture at this particular point because of the hierarchy colonization has set for things. It’s not something they want to reject because they’re still fighting to have it. If your entire history of art and your language and your culture are considered to be primitive, maybe you’ll fight for the idea of something being beautiful.” (again, see enright)
is tha absurd beauty of mutu’s collages a reclamation of beauty rendered primitive nd then object? an interrogation into tha visual cultures of mass media to divine beauty out of tha most lowly of recesses? if u asked mutu yourself, she’d probably wouldn’t hav an answer; she is aware of her position as an internationally recognized artist (“I went to Yale and someone else went to Columbia and we’re sitting on this panel and we’re not representing the diversity of women and their issues. We’re actually preaching to the choir.” [again, again, see enright]) nd takes no thought to critic saying she’s “changing the nature of African art”; she makes out of a sense of futurity, a sense of imagination that inspires cultural exchange nd new modes of definition nd (for tha sake of tha metaphor) digestion…“I try to consider my place in making sure these ideas exist and that they’ll be pushed forward into our thinking about each other in the future. Sometimes I think about it in a very stylized sci-fi way; at other times it’s about the survival of a people and how much work it takes, from so many angles, to come through colonization with a distinct idea of how you would like to be defined, as opposed to how others have defined you” (again, again, and again, see enright)...
X→ (untitled), 1993 by el anatsui) → in a 1994 interview with Nigerian artist chika okeke, seminal Ghananian artist el anatsui traces thru tha aesthetic nd historical recesses of his sculptural practice; seeing his use of eroding nd assemblaging of both material (such as tha hacked n slashed quality of his wood sculpture, such as untitled, 1993, nd his famous use of bottle caps in his sculptures) nd history. anatsui rejects tha implication that chattel slavery was a terminal event, a project that had a definitive historical end, nd instead works to express tha ways in it functions as a continuous event- ever unfolding- in tha present under different guises (he specifically cites tha stifling economic conditions that push many Africans to migrate to tha West as sign of slavery always-already happening→ tha social, political, nd culturla aftermaths that push nd pull tha Afro-diasporic experience globally). throughout his oeuvre, anatsui frames these aftermath thru tha lens of migration- highlighting aesthetic differences between visual cultures (placing various symbols frm different peoples to discover textural differences that “say something about the people who used or produced them” [see okeke, 35]) while maintaining a sense of intermixing that implies tha making nd remaking of cultural relations inherent to migrational Afro-indigeneity; a project he sees as directly combatting tha intellectual sabotage of Africa by western scholarship…
“You have a situation that makes it possible for only people who are in charge of scholarship, or the dissemination of information, to tell the story of Africa. These people of course are usually outsiders and are bound to present Africa from their own selective perspectives. Their books therefore not only obscure, but also distort and deny the real story of Africa.” (see okeke, 36)
anatsui’s symbology intentionally confounds in its jagged geometries nd syncretic mix of pattern frm various West African visual cultures, a commitment to indecipherability, to tha imperceptible that forces his viewer, like egyptologists deciphering tha rosetta stone, to decipher for an ancestral truth nd frustratingly come up empty; he denies a legible written history nd instead projects an image of illegibility that mirrors tha erasure of traditions that constitute post-colonial African life→ mining for a sort of oral tradition in tha ways in which his symbols “speak” to tha differences nd affinities between pre-colonial African visual culture, one that can be amended, slashed, rearranged, nd flattened to better divine tha incalculable loss constitutive of this intellectual sabotage (read: tha hole in things).
Y→ Ψ(t1)=U(t2,t1)Ψ(t2)+U(t1,t2)Ψ(t2), t1<t2, an introduction to atlanta (con’t’d frm Z) →Ψ(t1)=U(t2,t1)Ψ(t2)+U(t1,t2)Ψ(t2), t1<t2 is a generalized formula for tha Akan perception of time as opposed to tha eurocentric formula Ψ(t2)=U(t2,,t1)Ψ(t1), t2>t, which proposes time as linear nd static in its propagation; a start at tha vanishing point of zero time that becomes a constant forward march to endtime…Ψ(t1)=U(t2,t1)Ψ(t2)+U(t1,t2)Ψ(t2), t1<t2 proposes that a “propagation of the physical system from time t1 to time t2 is also dependent on the paths from the present back to the past” (see imani, 106), a means of conceptualizing time as a feedback loop in which “the meaning of the past and its character is partially constructed and reconstructed from the interaction between that past and the present” (again see imani, 106)...tha past is not static, it is always encroaching into tha present in an attempt to b divined→ tha ancestral is always there, waiting to be made manifest…u kan just see it if u try hard enuf…
atlanta is weird…but beyond that it’s striking in its contemporaneity; recent Black pop-culture nd social media snafus r faithfully reapplied nd parodied, celebrities appear as themselves, even tha fact that it’s a show abt a rapper produced by a rapper displays a connection to our world, right now in tha present- tha wider cultural context wrt present African american life, music, nd culture is necessary reading material for tha text of atlanta nd it achieves its weirdness thru it’s rupturing of our conventional reality → a night at a strib club becomes an all-or-nothing footrace (there’s even a goddamn freeze-frame) with disgraced football star michael vick, michael jackson is not michael jackson he’s actually a guy named benny hope nd also might b this other guy named teddy perkins (did i mention they’re brothers?), a blunt in tha parking lot of tha club becomes a shootout as an invisible car drives by, alligators sleep in tha guest room…tha entire show operates on a sense of dream logic, comedy, parody, terror, nd sudden tragedy that breaks tha illusion of verisimilitude, when describing tha show i think it’s best to channel baraka again; “they are morality tales, magical, resonating dream emotions and images; shifting ambiguous terror, mystery, implied revelation. but they are also stories of real life, now or whenever” (see baraka, seen by miller, seeing dumas, i saw them all in A); tha afrosurrealist world atlanta throws its characters into are stories that reveal profound truths, past haunts, previously unseen deceptions, abject terror, tha ridiculous nd silly, even moments of tru transcendence (that alligator scene in tha season 2 opener, incredible) that still, in their surreality, communicates sumthing truly singular abt our world outside of tha tv…atlanta lesso has a defined plot thru it’s three seasons (at tha time of writing this season 4 is comin up nd 3 has a few eps left), but it’s setup of two cousins, (glover’s earn marks, who’s trying to manage his older cousin alfred, brilliantly played by brian tyree henry, despite their lack of opportunity, industry connections, nd earn’s perpetual fumbling of his responsibilities) trying to come up off of viral rap stardom frm poverty provides tha conceptual ground for both its commitment to reality nd tha following shattering of that reality; tha real human drama of survival that’s at tha core of tha show is punctured by tha surreal because tha show understands that tha positionality of needing to survive inherently puts one out of step w/ tha normative-that tha means of survival is an unequally distributed commodity nd those denied access are forced into tha margins of life→ tha weirdness of atlanta takes that nd, thru its afrosurrealness, makes it a marginalization frm reality itself.
in season 3, tha main characters are tha closest they’ve ever been to tru-blu fame nd fortune; alfred, atlanta’s beating heart, is a straight up rap star at this point, who’s fame has moved tha show’s scope away frm tha titular city to tha global market of rap stardom- travelling thru europe nd once again encountering tha strangely profound that punctuated tha previous seasons. tha need for survival that characterized tha afrosurreality of tha first two seasons is no longer a necessity for our characters, they’ve never been closer to achieving their dreams of financial stability nd it is in this stability season 3 makes its haunt known; tha allure of ytness, of aligning class interest nd changing social status that threatens to push tha main characters, al particularly, away frm their authentic selves→ in amsterdam, an apparition of al’s mother accosts him into recognizing tha ways in which his newfound comfort hav inoculated him frm tha truth, tha real financial responsibilities that come with being a celebrity nd tha importance of authentic support in an industry that encourages his ambivalence; “nigga all day i’ve been telling you what you needed to hear not what the fuck you wanted to hear, no, if you don’t have that you’re fucking white…your friends let you wear that shit hat, they don’t pay for shit, you got family handling tha most important part of your finances, my nigga your future? All of em got a vested interest in you not seeing the truth”...her warning serves as tha diptych to E’s warning in tha dream, that ytness is a curse that blinds, that allows for wat ought be seen to go unseen…like wat liam neeson said in tha latest episode (yes, tha actual liam neeson, talking abt that one time he rlly rlly wanted to kill a nigga) “the best and worst part about being white is we don’t have to learn anything if we don’t want to”→ it’s here tha vignettes dovetails into tha thematic core of tha main storyline- tha ways in which ytness functions as a willing ambivalence that poisons in its invisibility; it lets mothers exploit their foster kids with no regard, it runs away frm accoutability, it (in al’s case) turns u into a commodity- ur life into a series of social nd ofc financial transactions, it renders tha past as a fable- a curiosity, it neglects, it represses, nd, most importantly, it must b dragged into tha light nd forced to pay tf up thru tha ever-present haunting of tha past→ tha cruel unavoidable ghost of slavery that E prophesied has chosen a new target, tha children of tha sun know it all too well by now…it must now extend it’s haunt to tha non-believers, those who shut their eyes to its spectral presence in tha present; tha ghost of sylvia that shocks miles out of apathy, tha persistent sheniqua- her ancestors behind her-demanding she gets wats owed, tha echoes of slave labor nd tha glee of emancipation (nd revenge) that permeate loquareeous’ story; for atlanta, these vignettes are not simple side-quests or anthologies, they are tha metastasizing of wat happens when tha characters close their eyes -tha revelatory truths of Black liberation (sylvia frm miles’ servitude, loquareeous frm tha yt moms child-slave labor camp, nd for sheniqua, in her restitution) that tha character’s recent success has blinded them frm seeing- tha radical dreams of sovereignty that break tha curse of blindness…it’s wat tha show sees when it’s asleep, violently trying to awake itself frm tha dream of ytness.
Z→ zzzzzzzz, shhhh! they’re sleeping, on tha afrosurreality of Atlanta, season 3, nd wat we see when we close our eyes→
"The First World is the Old World, the world of my parents from which they fled. The Second World is the New World which they sought, which they found, where I came to be. The Third World is our world as it is now, in the making, the future being born. And the Fourth World, my child, that is my world. The world I see when I close my eyes..." -jack kirby
tha third season of atlanta, a deeply afrosurreal half hour of comedy created by nd starring multi-hyphenate donald glover (glover also serves as tha executive producer, head writer, nd showrunner), has been punctuated by these vignette-like episodes that take place away frm tha main narrative -tha main characters never appear, tha new characters introduced never reappear (save for one, we’ll git to him), nd there is no connection between tha vignettes or to tha main plot story-wise; this discoherence may lead one to place these episodes out of sync with tha overall thematic web of tha season, framing them as purely anthological- tha season’s been criticized for de-centering tha main characters nd failing to develop much narratively (as if tha show isn’t plagued by tha decentering of its Black female characters [it’s v much a great, deeply intelligent show made by rlly intelligent Black men who are, unfortunately, only writing abt//for Black men {w/ a few exceptions, i fucking luv that drake episode it’s underrated, when it is done it’s done well but it’s not done enuf}, its emblematic of a lot shit wrt donald’s track record re: Black women nd honestly we kan appreciate tha good nd acknowledge tha bad nd both exist nd are valid nd we kan b nuanced nd blah blah blah blah ugitit], nd again, does straightforward narrative seem like tha point of this show???? ) (wow, sorry, tangent, bacc on track), tha vingettes- “three slaps”, “the big payback”, and “trini 2 de bon” conceptually trace three separate stories of Black freedom frm tha haunt of slavery; beginning w/ a short vignette-within-tha-vignette featuring a Black nd a yt guy fishing in lake lanier- tha yt guy (e, earn, or earnest…coincidently glover’s characters name[its totally not a coincidence]) explains that tha lake was once a town until tha state government built a dam nd flooded it, a town full of self-governing Black folks that were “almost white” → further expounding that ytness is not an identity fixed to visual significations of race, it is a dominant class of aligning financial, social, nd political interest that one buys into or out of regardless of race- “with enough blood and money anyone can be white…but the thing about being white is, it blinds you…cold whiteness, you’re hypothermic. you lose logic. you see the blood and think someone else is bleeding”...we will now briefly summarize tha three vignettes:
three slaps→ *warning, descriptions of child abuse both here nd in tha episode itself if wanna watch tha show now, i will try to b as brief as possible three slaps is a one part “get out!” homage, two parts tragic biopic, three parts emancipation fantasy inspired by tha tragic deaths of ciera, abigail, jeremiah, devonte, hannah, and markis hart; a young kid, loquareeous, gets swept up into tha foster care of two yt women after a yt saviorism gone wrong (his teacher catches his mother whuppin him after he misbehaves in class nd lands in tha principals)- nd then is forced to participate, along with their three other adopted Black children, in their granola girlboss fantasy, selling homegrown produce at tha farmer’s market nd fixing up their dilapidated house frm scratch→ it’s quickly revealed that loquareeous (renamed larry) has been adopted by a couple that’ve turn tha foster care system into a racket for unpaid labor, with tha kids having to do a majority of tha day-to-day house nd yardwork with 0 access to a formal education or social interaction outside of tha home; after a too-observant-for-her-own-good social worker threatens to report tha parents (nd get’s killed for it) -seeing no way out that doesn’t involve a jail sentence tha couple packs up tha kids nd leave, preparing to commit murder-suicide. as they let their dog out at a rest stop (cuz yes, ofc, killing tha fucking dog is worse than ur kids) they briefly consider why no one ever tried to stop them. tha kids realize wat they’re up to nd, right before they kan drive their car into tha haunted lake lanier, nd escape…loquareeous returns home nd sees a news report on tha other kids before casually changing tha channel to american dad, tha floorboards start creaking nd cut to black…we then cut to earn, glover’s character, waking up in a european hotel room, where tha main plot of tha season is set; implying that three slaps along with tha other vignettes are, in actuality, earn’s dreams as he tours throughout europe with tha rest of tha cast…
the big payback→ standard upper middle class yt guy nd podcast enthusiast marshall picks up his daughter frm his recently separated wife. after dropping her off at school, he hears abt a recent legal case in which a Black man sued a tesla investor for his ancestors once owning his ancestors during slavery- essentially setting tha legal precendent for reparations in tha united states. as he arrives at his office, he notices his fellow yt co-workers frantically researching their ancestry in an effort to confirm that they’re “safe” frm having to pay reparations (this is tha greatest chappelle show skit that’s not a chappelle show skit) → eventually a woman named sheniqua serves him a lawsuit proving his ancestors were indeed slaveowners, demanding restitution for tha enslavement of her great-great-grandmother nd grandfather. marshall attempts to brush off tha lawsuit but once sheniqua starts following him at work (most of his Black co-workers are, shockingly, missing for sum reason…), demanding her money, he tries to contest tha lawsuit (ignoring tha advice of a Black co-worker, who tells him to apologize nd giv her however much he can) until his wife officially calls to divorce him -not wanting to b associated with him anymore (he essentially has a “i owned slaves” target painted on his bacc now). after checking into a hotel, marshall meets a man at tha bar in a similar position, E (tha same yt guy frm tha lake, connecting three slaps to the big payback), who encourages marshall to let go of tha idea of slavery as a past event that has nothing to do with tha present; surmising that now that tha history of slavery, which has always been avoidable for yt ppl, has a monetary value, tha yt world must reckon with sum Black ppl hav always known…that slavery is not a historical curiosity, it’s a “cruel, unavoidable ghost that haunts us in way that we can’t see”, he tells marshall that everything is gonna b fine nd that thanks to this payback yt ppl are now free frm tha notion of slavery as a terminal event, they kan see tha haunt now…he pats marshalls leg, goes to tha pool, nd shoots himself in tha head. we cut to marshall some time later, working at a restaurant nd restituting a portion of salary to sheniqua; we notice that tha back of house staff is still mostly people of color, despite tha massive shift in economic power implied by reparations finally happening- marcus bring a dish to a well-dressed Black family, we pan out to reveal that tha entirety of tha waitstaff if yt nd all of tha diners are Black…
trini 2 de bon→ just as a package lands on their front door with a stern knock a wealthy yt couple, miles nd bronwyn, discovers that their stalwart trinidadian nanny sylvia has passed away, forcing them to take up more of tha day-to-day labor wrt their son sebastian, with whom sylvia clearly had a deep, almost familial bond to. they decide to bring sebastian to sylvia’s funeral as they see it as a “teachable moment” regarding death, hoping to bring him some form of closure on her passing. thru spending mor nd mor time with their son, who they clearly don’t see much of thanks to their vague demanding yt ppl jobs, they realize that thru osmosis he’s started to pick up on nd adopt a lot of sylvia’s trinidadian culture; rejecting their cooking for being too bland nd even speaking in patois at tha funeral. miles tries to figure where tha package came frm, nd confirms that his doorman didn’t see anyone drop it off…he defers it twice nd each time it returns with a stern knock at his front door. bronwyn, clearly turned off by tha emotional labor her son requires nd tha obvious culture shock, suggests a mor “metropolitan” nanny for tha future. at sylvia’s funeral, her daughter grabs tha mic nd voices her resentment towards her mother’s absence for most of her life; condemning sylvia’s dedication to nannying for similar wealthy yt families throughout her life despite her kid’s need for regular emotional support (we meet another yt child brought up by sylvia at tha funeral, he exclusively speaks in patois, he’s played by chet hanks, it’s complicated) -a fight soon erupts, sylvia’s sister tries to join her in tha coffin, niggas r screaming- nd as miles, bronwyn, nd bash try to leave an attendee explains that tha open conflict, tha drama of it all, is their way of expressing grief- “this is how we sad” he simply states. a final knock reaches tha apartment, miles opens tha package nd realizes that they’re photos of sebastian nd sylvia frm his school’s family picture day- as miles looks down tha hallway, lamenting his absence in his son’s life, we kan faintly hear sylvia singing -her work here is done…
(con’t’d on Y)
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