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State University of New York Press - Michael Datcher

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101 pages

English

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Animating Black and Brown Liberation introduces a vital new tool for reading American literatures. Rooted in both ancient Egyptian ideas about life and cutting-edge theories of animacy, or levels of aliveness, this tool—ankhing—enables Michael Datcher to examine the ways African American and Latinx literatures respond to and ultimately work to resist hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and state-sponsored oppression. Weaving together close readings and politically informed philosophical reflection, Datcher considers the work of writer-activists Toni Cade Bambara, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, June Jordan, Salvador Plascencia, and Ishmael Reed, in light of theoretical interventions by Jane Bennett, Mel Y. Chen, Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire, and Erica R. Edwards. How, he asks, can cultural production positively influence Black and Brown material conditions and mobilize collective action "off the page"? How can art-based counterpublics provide a foundation for Black and Brown community organizing? What emerges from Datcher's innovative analysis is a frank assessment of the links between embodied experiences of racialization, as well as a distinctive vision of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature as a repository of emancipatory strategies with real-world applications.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Animacy Matters

1. A Matter of Body and Soul in The People of Paper and Mumbo Jumbo

2. Heroes and Hieroglyphics of the Flesh in The Salt Eaters and Heroes and Saints

3. Animating Anthologies and Firing the Canon in This Bridge Called My Back and June Jordan's Poetry for the People

4. Wanda Coleman and Kamau Daáood Sing the Blues for the Black Body

Coda: The World Stage Performance Gallery Moves

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

USA

United States of America

Ethnic studies

États-Unis

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 avril 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438473413
Langue	English

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Animating Black and Brown Liberation
Animating Black and Brown Liberation
A Theory of American Literatures
MICHAEL DATCHER
Cover art: Francisco Letelier.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Datcher, Michael, 1967– author.
Title: Animating black and brown liberation : a theory of American literatures / Michael Datcher.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018020076 | ISBN 9781438473390 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438473406 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438473413 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: American literature—Social aspects. | Liberty in literature. | Power (Social sciences) in literature. | Liberalism in literature. | American literature—African American authors—History and criticism. | American literature—Hispanic American authors—History and criticism. | Agent (Philosophy) | Hegemony—United States.
Classification: LCC PS169.L5 D38 2019 | DDC 810.9/3552—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020076
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Animacy Matters
1 A Matter of Body and Soul in The People of Paper and Mumbo Jumbo
2 Heroes and Hieroglyphics of the Flesh in The Salt Eaters and Heroes and Saints
3 Animating Anthologies and Firing the Canon in This Bridge Called My Back and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People
4 Wanda Coleman and Kamau Daáood Sing the Blues for the Black Body
Coda: The World Stage Performance Gallery Moves
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank Drs. Erica R. Edwards, Vorris L. Nunley, and Tiffany A. López for their intellectual guidance and professional support, which were invaluable in the creation of this book. You have my most sincere gratitude and respect. I would like to thank Dr. Barbara Christian for believing in me enough to spend time with me as an undergraduate and for lighting the flame that now burns in this book. I am so grateful for June Jordan for demonstrating how an engaged artist and public intellectual goes about the people’s work with a spirit of love. I am also grateful of Dr. Marci R. McMahon and two anonymous reviewers whose cogent insight considerably improved this manuscript. Dr. Monica A. Coleman provided an inspiring example of the scholarly life for which I was a beneficiary. I am thankful for Loyola Marymount University and the University of California Riverside for their institutional support. A special nod goes to the World Stage Performance Gallery co-founders Billy Higgins and Kamau Daáood for demonstrating and promoting excellence in the arts for the Black community and the world, to Executive Director Dwight Trible for continuing and elevating their vision through exemplary leadership, and to the members of the World Stage Anansi Writer’s Workshop whose consistent output of excellent literary cultural production is a constant source of inspiration. I am grateful for the love and support that I have received from my mother Gladys Steen, my father Norman Avery, my sister Cynthia Datcher, and my brother Elgin Datcher. My young feminist daughters Eyerusalem Coleman-Kitch and Harlem Coleman-Datcher inspire me with their extraordinary courage, boundless creativity, and fierce commitment to the empowerment of girls and women: I am honored to be your father. Lastly, I am deeply grateful for the wise Latina playwright, actor and educator Carmen Bordas O’Connor, my soulmate who loves me like she knows love is a verb.
Introduction
Animacy Matters
La facultad is the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant “sensing,” a quick perception arrived at by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is, behind which feelings reside/hide. The one possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world. 1
—Gloria Anzaldúa
Why the pathology of race was so dominant a part of Western consciousness or what might be done to change that character was of less concern than how Black peoples might survive the encounter. 2
—Cedric Robinson
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality … We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force. 3
—Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Liberation Vibrations
Why are embodied Black and Brown subjects (operating as racialized matter for this discussion), too often the targets of irrational violence? In particular, why are alarming numbers of unarmed Black subjects met with lethal force while interacting with the State-sponsored security apparatus? Why is lethal violence against Black and Brown racialized matter insufficiently punished? Why don’t Black and Brown lives matter?
On August 3, 2013, the aforementioned questions animated a lively forum at Vibrations, a Black-owned, grassroots cultural center in Inglewood, California. 4 Housed in a storefront on busy Manchester Boulevard, Vibrations serves a working-class neighborhood with a primarily African-American and Latinx population. The cultural center regularly hosts poetry readings, sociopolitical study groups, book signings, musical performances, lectures, and community discussions. The August 3, 2013, forum was an intergenerational discussion and information-sharing session in response to challenges facing local and national African-American and Latinx communities, including, but not limited to (1) the February 26, 2012, Sanford, Florida, killing of unarmed Black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by 28-year-old mixed-race Latino George Zimmerman, and the subsequent not guilty verdicts received by Zimmerman; (2) the “school-to-prison pipeline” 5 in African American and Latinx neighborhoods; (3) intergenerational miscommunication in African-American and Latinx communities, and the delimiting effects on social justice organizing work resulting from this miscommunication.
Another type of lively forum occurred on November 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. The outdoor rally addressed questions similar to the Vibrations forum. The intergenerational discussion and rally was a response to the forthcoming indictment decision regarding Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson who shot unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, was a rally speaker. When a media-feed announced the non-indictment decision, a distraught McSpadden said to the crowd, “Everybody wants me to be calm. Do they know how those bullets hit my son? What they did to his body as they entered his body? Nobody had to live through what I had to live through … They still don’t care. They’re never gonna care.” 6
It is significant that McSpadden’s comments focused on the impact of State violence on her son’s Black body. The Black mother’s interrogatives (“Do they know how those bullets hit my son? What they did to his body as they entered his body?”) are an acknowledgment that the attack was an assault on an embodied Black subject, on Black matter. McSpadden recognized that the assault on her son’s Black life was a “careless” assault, evidenced by her statements, “They still don’t care. They’re never gonna care.” This perceived careless sentiment is echoed by other rally participants who can be heard shouting, “They don’t care about us.” “They don’t care about us,” can be read as the State does not value Black life: Black embodied matter does not matter.
Taken collectively, McSpadden’s response, and those of rally members, echo concerns by some in the African-American community that the perceived, relatively low value of Black life is contributing to the startling phenomena of unarmed Black men being killed by the State’s security apparatus. In 2014, State security forces killed the following unarmed Black men: Ezell Ford, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Rumain Brisbon, and Charly “Africa” Leundeu Keunang. 7 The State’s security apparatus’s aggressive assault on unarmed Black male bodies has overshadowed its problematic relationship with Black female bodies. In July 2015 alone, five Black women (Raynette Turner, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Kindra Chapman, and Sandra Bland) died in jail while under the supervision of United States jailers. 8 It was only after the online #SayHerName hashtag campaign emerged that Sandra Bland’s case began to garner nationwide media attention. 9
In the sovereign power 10 context, this study will analyze best practices, strategies, and challenges related to Black and Latinx subjects’ sociopolitical and economic liberation, including gender’s liberatory impact. The project will explore how the State’s hegemonic efforts to push Black subjects toward bare life provides the framework for the State’s efforts to push Latinx subjects and other marginalized