Black Studies: In the Wake

2019

In this essay, I provide a synthesis of three authors at the forefront of black studies: Hortense Spillers, Calvin Warren, and Alexander Weheliye (respectively). This essay has three primary objectives. The first objective is descriptive. I use Spillers' thesis on the metaphysics of antiblackness to frame the essay and offer a description of the current institutions and how they proactively work to erase black being and many integral parts of black culture. The second objective is expository. I offer an explanation (using the thesis of Calvin Warren) as to why antiblackness exists as it does and how it is perpetuated in the status quo as such, contending that the infusion of political thinking into academic spaces hijacks rhetoric and weaponizes it against black bodies. The third objective is speculative. I offer Alexander Weheliye's strategy as a potential mode of resistance to the current world order. Using Weheliye's analysis of diaspora, I theorize that a weaponization of black studies in academic spaces through a strategic move to subsume other forms of knowledge could potentially cause a rupture in the fabric of rhetorical humanism. The contents of this essay are the intellectual property of the authors that I cite, and I take no credit for the creation of these ideas. The purpose of this work is to draw a useful connection between three influential black studies authors and apply it to the issue of rhetorical antiblackness in academic spaces.

Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 2017

In the Wake operates using a central theoretical metaphor that is diffuse in its application and meaning: one of ships, of boughs, of cresting waves, and of the ocean. Each chapter is named after a different maritime fixture or feature: “The Wake,” “The Ship,” “The Hold,” and, then finally, “The Weather.” These dictive choices cement the bedrock of Sharpe’s intellectual work in the echoes, reverberations, and derivative oppressive regimes that have emerged in the aftermath of chattel slavery.

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, 2022

“…we, Black people everywhere and anywhere we are, still produce in, into, and through the wake an insistence on existing: we insist Black being into the wake.” – Christina Sharpe, In the Wake (2016) In this paper, I introduce Christina Sharpe’s conceptualizations of wake and wake work, as they pertain to archiving the experiences of Blackness to better understand how the archive and archives are vital for those living and working in the wake of slavery. I am particularly interested in the wake work conducted both in literary works (speculative fiction) and at information sites (community archives). To that end, I closely examine archives as they are presented in literature so as to explicate how these archival narratives created by Black authors perform wake work. Moreover, I make the connection between literary wake work, that which is performed by Black speculative fiction writers, and information wake work, that which is performed by Black community archivists, before delving into an analysis of the physical act of creating archives as the wake work of Black archivists. This investigation of wake work and archive(s) is meant to articulate Black life through a multidisciplinary lens, one that merges scholarship in Black studies, archives, information, and literature. My interrogation of archiving Blackness centers on the concepts of “wake” and “wake work,” and how they can be used to characterize the act of archiving the histories and the futures of Black people as an intervention towards coloring and diversifying the archival record.

I will argue in this paper that the Black radical tradition needs to become fully conscious of it-self in order frame a radical black studies alterity perspective within the Black radical tradition (King, 2007; Robinson, 1983/2000). First, I will provide a quick historical development of the Black Radical tradition through Robinson’s Black Marxism, where he traces the Black radical tradition from the 16th century to the present. Second, this will take us to the 1960s-1960s of transnationalism, and anti-imperialism of black freedom fighters Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Huey Newton, Malcolm X, MLK Jr, and how this time was an opportune time for both black, natives and the global take advantage of that moment. I will utilize Wynter’s and Weheliye’s work to understand how black studies came to be and the possibilities it presented us and why its essential to a black centric episteme . Third, I will intervene on the debates about Afro-Pessimism and where it stands in the pantheon of black critical thought. Making concessions that the scholarly works of Frank Wilderson III and Jared Sexton rejuvenated younger peoples interest in Africana Studies, Black Studies and Critical social theory, and infused different interpretation of Fanon, nonetheless Afro-Pessimism I argue is a misinterpretation, of Frantz Fanon work in totality, and misrecognition agency and relationality in his writing. Thereby, limiting the truly radical possibility of using a pessimist reading of the universe. We should look to Wynter’s and Gordon’s Fanon, rather than the “political ontology” of Agamben reading of Fanon in Wilkerson’s III, and Sexton work. Last, but not least, and I will attempt to also undo the abuse of the colonial order that by looking at Wynter’s Black studies alterity perspective pedagogy to understand do we as black people along with red, Latino and native people of the world bring a closure to the current episteme? To concertize our discussion of Black studies I will use Joyce E. King’s (2007) work of “Critical Studyin’” which ties together all the critical ideas in this paper into a comprehensive framework from the position of the liminal. How did we get here? Why is fanon and Wynter important to understand the situation we are in currently? Why black studies? These questions and answers are grounded in a black studies perspective. This is grounded in the sociocultural and historical experience of the liminality of African-descent people (King, 2006). As intellectuals, we have a role to play, just as we have done in the past by being on the ground by articulating a order by creating new cultural codes aside of the natural biological ones that exist. Agreeing with Wynter “Black Studies is really in the forefront of the battle against ‘Man’ and for the human, and to begin to put it forward in that re-conception.

For nearly four-hundred years, blacks in North America have survived under conditions of oppression or in environments where they are required to assimilate into communities that have historically served the predominantly white privileged culture. This thesis examined the results of black needs to assimilate into the predominantly and historically powerful white American culture that often believes it understands what best serves the needs of blacks, without having ever been subject itself to historically evolved black survival culture and values. Unfortunately for blacks, over the centuries the black socio-economic development emulates more of a survival culture and identity that is unequal to white privileged culture and identity. Blacks have neither the economic nor the political power in North America to accumulate the wealth or socio-economic status of the privileged white Americans, and remain disadvantaged unless they can redeem black identity through assimilation. The unique black survival culture has its own communication styles and interpersonal relation values. For blacks to exist comfortably in predominantly white communities, their communication styles and interpersonal relational styles may be exhibited briefly, but ultimately blacks must assimilate into white culture to obtain acceptance. Although diversity and inclusion have both emerged as popular concepts for white Americans, they address only the inclusive behaviors and diversity for the physical and legal identity of blacks. The evolutionary black survival strategies of unique interpersonal and communication styles remain inappropriate for integration into white culture; consequently, black identity and culture will only be tolerated by whites for a second and exhibited by blacks for a mere second more.

2019

2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Black studies reader / Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, Claudine Michel, editors. p. cm. ISBN 0-415-94553-4 (hardback)-ISBN 0-415-94554-2 (pbk.) 1. African Americans-Study and teaching. 2. African Americans-History. 3. African Americans-Social conditions. I.