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to be a problem outcast subjectivity in black literature in the making to be a problem outcast subjectivity in black literature in the making home syllabus events productions jump to navigation to be free november 10 2007 posted by alexis in uncategorized add a comment greetings class as a compromise i am moving our investigation of falling between the cracks to accompany our discussion of the spread magazine piece and natasha tretheway s bellocq s ophelia next week for this week i am re posting two posts that i wrote while rereading michelle cliff s free enterprise almost a year ago to provide you with some info as to my relationship to the text alongside these questions which came up in my more recent rereading what does this work of historical fiction by michelle cliff tell us about history what connections does she make between the repressed histories of black women freedom fighters arawak ancestors and repressed memories of sexual violence in this text what does this text have to say about the political function of art what does free mean in this text what does enterprise mean what is mary ellen pleasant s argument with john brown what do you think about her assertion that black people have a capital right to ownership of the united states what do you think of the intergenerational relationship between malcolm x and mary ellen pleasant here what is cliff doing with space bedrooms bottletrees caves quarantine camps holds of ships maroonages on cliffs asylums in this text december 24th 2006 specters of the caribbean see the ghost of annie christmas roots kamau brathwaite 1957 1973 soulscript june jordan 1969 beyond master conception sylvia wynter 1992 feminist genealogies colonial legacies democratic futures m jacqui alexander and chandra talpade mohanty 1993 free enterprise michelle cliff 1993 black girl talk the black girls sistervision press 1994 bread out of stone dionne brand 1994 culture as actuality the pope must be drunk sylvia wynter 1995 immigrant acts lisa lowe 1997 ghostly matters avery gordon 1997 scenes of subjection saidiya hartman 1997 q a queer in asian america david eng and alice y hom 1998 time square red times square blue samuel r delaney 1998 the prisoner s wife asha bandele 1999 refasioning futures david scott 1999 thinking space mike crang and nigel thrift 2000 queer diasporas cindy patton and benigno sanchez eppler 2000 wayward reproductions alys weinbaum 2004 specters of the atlantic ian baucom 2005 black empire michelle stephens 2005 writing in a letter in the wet air framed by her bottle tree with her other hand holding her piece of a tapestry to the battle lost caribbean born conspirator for an armed revolution by enslaved people in the us annie christmas in michelle cliff s imagining relating of her story writes this is the story i do not tell and indeed all was lost the plot was discovered and annie cross dressing and blacked up was attached to a chain gang of about to be enslaved fugitives and marched through the woods i type this from and when she was discovered to be who she was a light skinned black woman her captors forced her fellow captors to gang rape her her vagina her mouth all was lost the enslaved masses never recieved the weapons all was lost the war to free the slaves happened on some very different terms and as one of the unnamed characters in free enterprise explains there is free and then there s free the one that this character cooking some wild animal in an alley got is clearly the lesser of the two and annie christmas never went back to the caribbean and annie christmas never joined her mentor mary ellen pleasant who continued to work for the other freedom and nobody told malcolm x that when he talked about by any means necessary when he talked about self defense he was citing these women and ida b wells too and so black power came to mean some masculinist militarist raping thing so all was lost or was it david scott says that our freedom is not a sham but that the liberal project the moving back and forth between economic individualistic expression and political restraint is what have come to know as freedom that we may as well either admit it or fight the normalization of such a definition of freedom that needs scare quotes and needs waking up lisa lowe and ian baucom both invoke benjaminian emergency to reveal the normal as deadly and to make something new emerge and i say something is lost what is lost is present in what avery gordon would call a haunting what cannot fit into coherence is my presence here speaking annie christmas s name nativity in her desecrated mouth because i too have a story that i do not tell if the drowning of slaves jumping overboard or being dumped for insurance money is the thing that haunts the glissantian project and the thing that indeed haunts the characters of free enterprise and beloved and on and on and down and down floating up is another set of questions for me first what about this haunted water and how specific can i be about it because here is the thing i am fine with these transatlantic hauntings or at least i admit them and rage against them i have stood in ghana and shuddered at the cruel persistance of the gray waves at the walls of elmina i have even rejected the atlantic side of anguilla not the side where i learned to swim as the place where people drown of the coarse sand and crude waves of the time where i remember once sinking unnoticed and sputtering betrayal while my parents turned away secure in my ability to get over if not to vanquish my fears but the only reason that i have afforded this rage articulation the only moments that i can afford to reject that dominant ocean are while loving to a fault the caribbean sea i have made the caribbean sea into the place where i am held floating watching while grandma paints faith into the sky above rendevous bay i have made the waves that embrace and release my legs during thousands of long walks talking to myself into the refrain of a song about something that lasts forever if the atlantic brought slavery the caribbean embraced survival if the atlantic threatens to break me and then forget about it the caribbean is a ritual is a sacrement to my breathing a simply binary non dialectical that i stay sane by not problematizing but i know the story of the zong i know that slaves named with a certain value wynter calls it the pieza baucom traces as the impetus of the finance capital that the novel trains us to believe in were dumped off of the coast of jamaica and i know momma says you better know exactly where jamaica is jamaica is surrounded on all sides by the caribbean sea which means if they emptied the zong of the coast of jamaica those bones those chains those screams those exploding lungs are there are here are in the caribbean sea so i see that i have tried to deny the fluidity of water to make walls to do violence to the caribbean sea by making it a nation state by making it a thing that will always affirm me always make me feel at home provide continuity and somehow not leak out into the the world that i have been trying to defend it from this desire for a myth has made me very specific it has made me ask michele stephens if when she talks about conversation between the caribbean and north america if that is neccessarily trans atlantic because though c l r james and marcus garvey and claude mckay may have taken boats up the coast now the american eagle stops in puerto rico for immigration and flies up over the caribbean sea maybe over the gulf to the us and insane protectionism over the caribbean sea aside i still think this makes a difference i am completely convinced by the story that stephens tells about masculinity and black internationalism at the time of the hegemony of the nation when the us was a place from which caribbean intellectuals could think about a ship of state as a response to europe when there were no caribbean nations which is different from flying away besides the class differences that belinda edomdson and carole boyce davies point out from these actual nations after the failure of federation haunted by the joke of caricom knowing the violence that nationalism means and knowing the us s policies to make nation mean that rape will keep turning into a metaphor about land that gets re enacted on the bodies of women there is a difference if stil haunted flight from the nation means we can make something new means we don t have to keep making the same thing because when water can t even be water the world is a prison and as asha bandele makes clear love in the face of prison means everything has to change everything so that means that i have to take on the challenge that mohanty and alexander make in the name of transnational feminist solidarities the nation is not the name of my limits my birth is not seperate from my embattlement and baptism for me and for the world i m questioning is still a dangerous thing december 25th 2006 annie christmas today for some reason i am thinking of annie christmas the name taken by a revolutionary black woman survivor who was an instrumental part in the radical black freedom mission 1859 that is usually attributed to john brown the orignal annie christmas was a legendary black woman warrior a cross between a momma messiah and john henry as the story goes and this annie christmas took on her name and called herself inheriting an imperative to struggle for her people annie christmas moved to the united states from the caribbean after surviving incest and conspired with mary ann shadd and mary ellen pleasant and yes john brown to arm us slaves and create a free black state after the plan was discovered she suffered further sexual abuse at the hands of her captors she finally escaped and her story has passed on and been passed over and here in michelle cliff s brilliant work of historical fiction about annie christmas mary ellen pleasant et al free enterprise read it she insists that we have to become talking books our stories of resistance our dreams and the visions that we act upon like our experiences of violence are often repressed today i am proud of and waiting for and in love with our stories our visions our actions our histories talk it on older posts search admin controls log in to be a problem an online course in radical literature making welcome this is the online home of a course entitled to be a problem outcast subjectivity and black literary production as audre lorde june jordan and fred moten teach us all knowledge belongs to the people this is an effort to steal the force out of mechanisms through which the private university privileges itself as a site of knowledge production since we all know that learning happens everywhere this free online version of a course that will be taught this fall at duke university invites you to participate in an interactive process of reading and creating look for bi weekly posts on the materials listed and weekly writing assignments please read and write along with us take advantage of this opportunity to havethe infinitely divided attention of a queerblackradical nerd for three months if you d like to participate please send your email address and a sentence about your intention to brokenbeautifulpress gmail com blogroll bethology biolog brokenbeautiful press butterfly s voice drop off the key fabulosa mujer kameelah writes kelly s letter to you l azzurrocorvo little black book no snow here paperback museum problematic serenity archives november 2007 october 2007 september 2007 august 2007 recent posts to be free to be re a d to be here to be open to be real recent comments samstory on welcome day 1 idm on welcome day 1 delbert on to be real djesanfrancisco on welcome day 1 iresha on to be here feeds full comments blog at wordpress com top subscribe subscribed to be a problem sign me up already have a wordpress com account log in now privacy to be a problem subscribe subscribed sign up log in report 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