So, blackness anew, blackness as a/temporal, in and out of place and time putting pressure on meaning and that against which meaning is made. We see again and again how, in and out of the United States (as my point of departure and arrival), girl doesn’t mean “girl” but, for example, “prostitute” or “felon,”12 boy doesn’t mean “boy,” but “Hulk Hogan” or “gunman,” “thug” or “urban youth.” We see that mother doesn’t mean “mother,” but “felon” and “defender” and/or “birther of terror” and not one of the principal grounds of terrors multiple and quotidian enactments.14 We see that child is not “child,” and a Coast Guard cutter becomes, in Brathwaite’s hands, a Coast Guard gutter— not a rescue or a medical ship but a carrier of coffins, a coffle, and so on.
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake : On Blackness and Being,
