Black Sunday E-chat Sun Nov 1, 2015
Soo, uh yea ... blackness anyone :)
She was on here.. but I don't see her picture at the bottom no more. I mean I have a couple little thoughts i can share whenever (but I don't have to start)
yeah let's start and she can jump in
go ahead xach and i will build off of you. i just coming from off the road...tryna get my mind right
hi im here ready and willing lol
As i have been trying to imagine my diss project I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between practices of anti blackness and the manifold responses of communities of black people in place (for example Seattle)
so what I have come to understand is that blackness is not ONLY a product of systemic inequality as it flows from arrangements of chattel slavery, but also an outcome of the ways in which black people elaborate individual and communal identities in order to challenge that anti blackness
what Im trying to say is that I very much think about blackness interns of 'place' making …
finally, I learned from my nana, that part of the importance of church service (exceeding the purely religious) is going to the physical place of the church in order to be around other blackpeople in place and share experiences to produce something meaningful for ourselves..
i love how your nana’s memory is part of your archive
I completely feel you, Xach. Blackness is both the conditions (of state-sanctioned violence, racial capitalism, chattel slavery, (settler) colonialisms, and white heteropatriarchy) that have rendered bodies black (as the embodiments of epitomized pathology or commodities in a state of social death) as well as that which moves against and, to build off of Fred Moten, object to and messes up and messes with these conditions; or, to build off of Sara Clark Kaplan, puts these conditions into crisis; or, to build off of Spillers, moves towards something else to be.
I really appreciate that peace of wisdom from your grandmother.
yes especially as it relates so much to the idea of doing Black Sunday
& the way you are talking about blackness as place making... I been feeling that too, especially as I have been trying to think through "the ghetto" on various scales and think through black gender as geographic, or rather the geographies of black gender, which are the geopolitics of black life and death.
word .. I think that many of the tools for my Black Studies project necessarily have to come from outside of academe
in that sense for me the logic of gender is key to how black bodies are understood (in, out of, and) as places.
YAsss, ok so many thoughts! can I ask a question (just to push convo)
i really wanna hear more about how you are thinking blackness and place-making, Xach.
word.. I can say more.. but first, Im wondering if you could say more about a "logic of gender" esp. as it relates to blackness/ black place
So, some of my latest work is focused on the way in which imaginaries of the ghetto, and the ghetto as a geographic stereotype (ala McKittrick), as various places, as an embodiment (ghettoness) become central to black U.S. politics after 1965. At this moment, the national attention (in the form of the Federal government) overwhelmingly shifts from the imaginaries of the black segregated rural south to black northern ghettos. Here we see the expansion on ideas that reflect that very notions of the pathology of the ghetto as any place where black people are is also key site of surveilling, documenting, and constructing black gendered pathology as the cause of black poverty and a whole host of social issues. Moynihan for example was talking very directly about "ghettos" and the fact that at that time black middle class people were "forced" to live next to poor black people in the ghetto. This spatial organization of black people in one space meant, for Moynihan, that the black middle class was overly influenced by the black poor’s lack of (heteronormative) social structure. I feel like I am missing pieces, but I also think about ghettoness as some kind of gendered imaginary that is about what naturalizes black people to supposedly exist in dilapidated places and how even despite class differentation ghettoness becomes central to blackness (a.k.a. the black middle class being marked by the black poor).
Essentially in all this, I am trying to trace how performances of ghettoness are always deeply gendered in how they are read whether as pathologically cisgendered, violent black hypermasculinity or sexually excessive, uncouth, rude black femininity.
But it's also like black people are what makes the places dilapidatedbecause of their gendered and sexual pathology as it is framed through white heternormative disciplining, pathologizing, and surveiling lense.
yeah, its like Black people carry a certain kind of pathologized space with them!
Yes! I also am thinking about it in the sense that (Judith) Butler metaphorizes non-normative (gendered) bodies as regulated to spaces of abjection, but black people are LITERALLY regulated to abject spaces because they are marked as improperly gendered... and white people feel like they gotta keep themselves physically away from that shit (even as they compulsively need to consume black ghettoness).
Exactly. The ghetto isn't a fixed place, it’s where ever (gender deviant) black people are and they are dilapidated because of this gender deviance.
Furthermore, (and then imma step back so other people can step up) gender is not universal. It is MADE IN PLACE through specific material relations that exceed the white heteronormative binary in so many ways: whether we are thinking the implication of Spillers saying that ungendering means to displace people from their social roles, in which case ungendering is deeply tied to making over indigenous African people into black commodities, and dispossessing them of their gendered roles in place, in the lands of their birth and ancestry; or if we are thinking the various kinds of queer/trans roles folks play in societies across space/time, if we emphasize that these aren’t uniformly universal roles, but speak to specific roles in specific geohistorical places/moments; or if we are thinking the ways in which black people as commodities is a type of gendering at the scale of the globe in the 15th century on… These are different gendered roles in relation to different scales of place -- the role one plays in one’s family, community, city, state, globe, etc. The ghetto is a specific site of making black gender, and black gender is part of the making of ghettos as places. For me it is so necessary to understand how gender is a socio-geographic role at various scales, which I think speaks back to what Xach was saying about blackness being both the structures of violence and the responses to it. At the scale of the state we are variously ungendered, commodified, hypersexualized, marked as deviant, and then we have our own gendered roles at different scales, in the black church, in specific black communities, in the ghetto (which necessarily interfaces with the state too, but as Mckittrick emphasizes are also sites of a black sense of place, and I would add a black sense of gender).
i was reading recently this book Black Women Against the Land Grab by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry and it talks about boundary making in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil and in it Perry goes into depth about how boundaries are created to mark the favela as signified by Blackness, and vice versa, and the ways in which the state and civil society establish the boundaries that circumscribe the favela
and the policing that must exist to secure and insure these boundaries (i'd like us to mark policing as something to discuss in terms of Blackness and gender...). I also want to bring up
that for me this intimacy and intrinsic connection between Blackness and gender is brought forth in an amazing way by Hortense Spillers in Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe (I'm currently re-reading it for an essay). Blackness is inaugurated via slavery but at that same moment (the moment of the enslavement Spillers talks about of African bodies by the Portuguese) when Blackness is engendered
they are also gendered (I’m trying to think if these two things are instantiated simultaneously). Black bodies are placed into a European epistemological frame...placed into the Law of the Father (and all that psychoanalytic stuff that I still gotta mine)
Blackness as improperly gendered and policing, gender, and boundary (re)production resonate deeply with me
yes! (un)gendered through enslavement. slavery was a gendering process!
and then pathologies are produced by the gaps...the internal contradictions between Blackness and White gender
placed into through being placed out of it
I want to be specific about WHERE Spillers tells us engendering takes place
xach can you elaborate. and i want to hear from lekeisha also
It is precisely in Middle Passage that Spillers theorizes Ungendering building off of the Freadian notion of the 'oceanic' as the in-between space
i thought of it as the moment of encounter between the slave and the master
so maybe i've been understanding it differently
re: the moment of encounter v. middle passage but i think its happening all along the encounter and the route...in spillers. but I’ll be revisiting that essay soon for an essay i’m writing.
(p.s. i love the depth of spillers' writing in MBPM and what we each differently take from it)
xach, i'm interested in this idea of the oceanic
maybe we can read MBPM together and discuss it soon for one of our conversations?
hmmm. Kumi, when you asked Xach to elaborate, I first thought of the slave ship... or even taking it to Stephanie smallwood, for her it is in the slave castle where African captives are made into black commodities.
yes. i think that would be dope, kumi
I REALLY like this question of WHERE and therefore HOW have black bodies been gendered and identifying the specific material practices, socio-geographic relations, and the specific places.
To be clear I'm not saying that its not always happening (blackness and engendering) but rather that the oceanic represents an important site precisely because of the ship as a scale of technology regulating the placement of African/European bodies relative to one another
but also because as Spillers writes, on any given day the captive African would not know exactly where they are
mmmm, yes Xach. The transaltantic slave trade and the slave ship as disorientation in/of plae is key to making over (variously gendered) African peoples (coming from various social structures) into black ungendered commodified flesh. It is a not knowing of where one literally is and where one IS in terms of social relations -- what role is there to have in this place when one is an object in a floating ship.
i am still trying to think thru 'the ghetto" and Kelley and Keeling's use of 'ghettocentric' identity and ghettocentricism.
Alright, Ill step back a little
what kelley text are you referencing lekeisha? yo' mama?
is/how is geography central to how you are thinking horror, lekeisha?
yeh it is. I am thinking about ghettocentirc horror films of early 90s in relation to deindustrialization
i would wanna hear what you are taking from keeling, cause i haven't engaged her as deeply as i need to to think the ghetto. i been mostly using spillers, mckittrick, and ferguson... keeling in a more cursory way
well i am still figuring it out myself
you all don't have to pause
i will interject when i can. my thoughts are slow
xach and kumi, i did not mean to shut ya'll down if i did when i said to "give lekeisha time" i dropped the "I subject" in my sentences like i tend to do
anyway, i am also thinking about how the horror of contamination and contagion are racialized in place (AID, Ebola, Slave Revolts)
oooohh. That's real interesting, Lekeisha. Can you say more?
I like how you seem to be thinking about horror in terms of the "cinematic" rather than just cinema.
I need more keeling too! in particular It seems to me that 'affection' and 'affect' could help us make connections between constructions and policing of gender and 'ghetto' spaces
Xach, can you say more too about how you think affect can help to unpack the construction/policing of gender and ghetto spaces? Because I feel like this is what Kumi was pointing to earlier, which I am really just now getting -- that ghettos and black gender are dually constructed and both are constructed through policing.
Yea, I feel like I'm hearing that from Kumi too, but also don't want to misinterpret/get it twisted
And i am thinking off of that, how they are constructed in relation to each other through policing. Ferguson has this whole chapter in Aberrations, where he does a rewrite/critique of Foucault to talk about how black sexuality comes into knowledge through surveillance of populations in 20th century ghettos, not through 18th century confessions of individuals. Although i am sure there are other historiogeographic moments through which we can locate black sexuality as coming into knowledge (ala Somerville).
for me, Keeling uses "Affection" through Bergson (if I'm recalling properly) to point to the skin itself a particular kind of social construction in relation to subject formation… I'm hearing that there is something about the body/EMBODIMENT at play in ghetto, surveillance, policing, and gender
yes that was what i was tryna say, in part, earlier kai
sorry im abt to start driving so ill be in and out
I'm having trouble here (can't make the thought complete) but what Im trying to say is that Keeling has helped to think about the relationship between kinds of space (i.e. physical and mental) and how that artificial split (mental/physical) is central to structures of anti blackness (i.e. slavery)
just getting to your point regarding ferguson, black sexuality, Kai
kai azania: hmmm. I was following you, Xach from affect, to body, to ghetto (which is really interesting). I got lost a little around "the artificial split." Are you saying that affect is what makes black ghettoness feel/"be" "real"... ??
don't trip re "artificial split".. to be honest its probably all wrong ( as in I'm still trying to assimilate/work on the thought)
Affect is the naturalizing mechanism, so to speak…
But ill leave it at this, it comes from something in Marx/historical materials that I'm working through (but this is a tangent/personal problem)
like a lightbulb moment for me here
Im gonna step back tho and try to collect my thoughts.. I feel we have a lot here to unpack/return too
ooh this illusory mental/physical split is interesting to me (re: what xach said)
makes me think abt a similar mirroring split bw the metaphysical and physical
and the secular and spiritual. its fitting we're having this convo on Black Sunday
hmm. that's interesting. haha. right. black sunday on sunday
what xach said abt the artificial split in mckittrick
(which i actually think might be really interesting to think in relation to moten/fred ops... cause his work is definitely not secular)
i dont think anything is secular
Kumi you are helping to locate/understand some of the stakes around meta/physical
fred moten has a critique in an essay abt the idea that Black theory could be secular or disembodied. ill try to find it and send it to yall
i would like to hear, when you can, what's central to how you think blackness kumi and lekeisha... from your own aside...
yes. hmmm. i don't know which one that is. but that makes sense given his other work
sure i can add thoughts later
hey so just to respect everyone's time... it has been an hour. and since we started late (MY FAULT!)... we could wrap up and add to this later... and mull over it and come back with more thoughts/more fully formed thoughts
or we can keep going... i just wanna respect that people said they could only be here for an hour and it's almost been two (including the waiting)
and it's been 1 hour of conversation
I need to hop off just cuz I need to eat and rest
this was awesome, challenging, and and awesomely challenging
i would really love for kumi to drop some afropess knowledge. cause i feel like i engage but would love to hear more. and xach the various ways you are thinking place making. and lekeisha i am captivated by this idea of horror as cinematic.
and i really like this idea of black gendered geographies... or black physicialities... or something... that could potentially be our theme, in a way that already lends towards the work we are already doing...
This all sounds excellent Kai
*and i would like to hear more from kumi about the ways i feel like she extends afropessimism in all our conversations. and is doing black feminist afropessimism (if that is something that resonates with you kumi)... cause i think you bring a gendered analysis that is sometimes not centered in other deployments of afropessimism (though i may be wrong)
yaaaay! we are accomplished.
you all can write my prospectus lol
i will have more to say once i think ion it more
engaging with Black feminist theory and Afropessimism will be central to my research. i’m interested in the gaps and contradictions
is it okay with everyone if we sign off and i can put this in a google doc and we can each come back to it.
yes i know you do keisha! and i am really excited to hear it.
p.s. we gotta help each other to write our shit! cause all of ya'lls work is really exciting to me and we can push each other. that's what writing groups be good for... or just having room to talk through your ideas with folks who know your field
i also have several thoughts imma put in an email about how something that came up in the discussion kumi, xach, and i had about this being a space to help us do our own work, not necessarily make extra work... even though we do wanna collaborate
it's what i thought when lea said she can't take it on. and i completely support her not taking on the application writing process. but we really just tryna get some money so we can do what we want to (including living expenses) and i feel like we can all benefit from that even if we all can't be involved in the application writing process
ok. night night all. thanks for showing up (physically, spiritually, and metaphysically) and we will follow up soon. eat, rest, get work done and take care of yourselves black people!
also, sorry to do this lame artist stuff, but this is our collective
https://soundcloud.com/xyz-x
new music is uploaded, and I'm gonna put one more piece up there for the tumblr mockup
just wanted to share with y'all
thanks to each of y'all for taking the time/energy to teach me something today!
yooooo thanks for sharing x. i am sure excited to hear your new stuff
i concur with you... thank you to everyone. it was really dope
