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As I was watering stuff this morning, I started thinking of that interview with Frank B. Wilderson III. https://mg.co.za/friday/2020-07-02-part-iii-afropessimism-and-rituals-of-anti-black-violence/?fbclid=IwAR23dEOgf6NtC8waC2sAodhiKUoY2wR1ZtTvvsd9NkHE7mbfu-YMUkoYY34&&fbclid=IwAR23dEOgf6NtC8waC2sAodhiKUoY2wR1ZtTvvsd9NkHE7mbfu-YMUkoYY34&__twitter_impression=true
I like interviews. They create ways for readers to engage authors and ideas.
Sylvia Wynter's conversations with David Scott, Katherine McKittrick, and Greg Thomas—three separate ones!—helped me read her work.
Sylvia Wynter's conversations with David Scott, Katherine McKittrick, and Greg Thomas—three separate ones!—helped me read her work.
The interviews on The Public Archive blog have enriched my thinking in many ways.
https://thepublicarchive.com/?page_id=3001
https://thepublicarchive.com/?page_id=3001
Reading Spivak's interviews helped me think with her.
And I'm still asking Aaron Bady to publish a book of his multiple interviews with African authors.
I love interviews.
And I'm still asking Aaron Bady to publish a book of his multiple interviews with African authors.
I love interviews.
And a final shoutout to Canisia Lubrin's conversation with Dionne Brand, which is fun and deep—deep, as the young ones say! https://quillandquire.com/omni/qa-canisia-lubrin-speaks-to-dionne-brand-about-her-two-new-books-the-blue-clerk-and-theory/
So I was thinking about Wilderson's interview, and was stopped by a question about how Afropessimism has been received.
"One of the criticisms against Afropessimism is that it originates in the US academy and that it is only applicable or exclusive to the Global North (not in the Global South where there is a Black majority context). What do you say to this?"
I do not like this question.
I do not like this question.
I like names.
Which people have leveled this criticism?
What are their names?
Where are they?
Who are they?
I do not like this question. At. All.
Which people have leveled this criticism?
What are their names?
Where are they?
Who are they?
I do not like this question. At. All.
I dislike Wilderson's answer even more than I dislike the question.
"That is a form of sophistry that is coming from people who want to demonise Afropessimism through ad hominem attacks rather than engaging and interrogating its first principles and assumptive logic."
Again, I ask, which people?
Again, I ask, which people?
Who are these people that the interviewer and Wilderson know? Who are these people who are such poor readers and thinkers that they can only attack Wilderson, and not the ideas in Afropessimism?
And then I thought, fair enough. There are people who attack Wilderson and not Afropessimism.
I'll let that go.
I'll let that go.
But then I thought.
(But is a dangerous word.)
But then I thought: if you publish a memoir that has the SAME title as a school of thought, what are you inviting?
(But is a dangerous word.)
But then I thought: if you publish a memoir that has the SAME title as a school of thought, what are you inviting?
What are you inviting?
Is a critique of the memoir—its stye, its method, its narrative, its organization, its affects—an ad hominem attack?
How are we to read and assess this hybrid memoir-as-theory work?
(It is not the first such work in the history of writing.)
Is a critique of the memoir—its stye, its method, its narrative, its organization, its affects—an ad hominem attack?
How are we to read and assess this hybrid memoir-as-theory work?
(It is not the first such work in the history of writing.)
And if I say, Wilderson, the gender and sexual politics of your memoir are patriarchal as fuck. And heteronormative as shit.
Have I attacked the person or the memoir? The person or the theory? The memoir or the theory?
Which is it?
Have I attacked the person or the memoir? The person or the theory? The memoir or the theory?
Which is it?
And if I say, the working class South Africans in the memoir are props. And the only South African who gets any intellectual and aesthetic credit is Nadine Gordimer.
Read the memoir. This is true.
We can disagree. But it is true.
What, then, have I read or misread?
Read the memoir. This is true.
We can disagree. But it is true.
What, then, have I read or misread?
But then I decided to let it go.
Because I have things to plant, things to weed, beans to boil, and tea to drink.
Because I have things to plant, things to weed, beans to boil, and tea to drink.
But then.
(But is a dangerous word.)
I read this interview.
Me, who TRAINED originally as an African Americanist. I read this interview. Me. An expert in the Harlem Renaissance. Me. I read this interview.
(But is a dangerous word.)
I read this interview.
Me, who TRAINED originally as an African Americanist. I read this interview. Me. An expert in the Harlem Renaissance. Me. I read this interview.
And I learn, in this interview—more implied than said—that Africans are "rejecting" thinking from "the Global North."
And I pause.
And I pause again.
And if Afropessimism represents something, let us say Africans are rejecting thinking from Black North America.
And I paused.
And I pause.
And I pause again.
And if Afropessimism represents something, let us say Africans are rejecting thinking from Black North America.
And I paused.
Synecdoche is a useful word.
And I thought of the many people I know across many African countries who study and teach Audre Lorde and bell hooks and Hortense Spillers and Saidiya Hartman and W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston and Christina Sharpe and Henry Louis Gates and and and.
Flip through an MA or PhD thesis from Africa that addresses blackness and you will see a rich bibliography FULL of thinking from Black North America.
Full.
Full.
Spend a little bit of time online, and you will encounter many people from "the Global South" begging for pdfs from the Global North, because library access here is not great.
Pay attention to what is requested.
Pay attention to what is requested.
Ask, casually, how many Africans have read or studied Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and Ntozake Shange and Tayari Jones and Claudia Rankine and Zora Neale Hurston and and and.
And if it's "the greatest hits," let's admit that books are expensive, and let it go.
And if it's "the greatest hits," let's admit that books are expensive, and let it go.
So I thought about this implicit claim that Africans are rejecting Afropessism because Africans reject thinking from the Black Global North.
(As though Christopher Ouma's body of work is not in deep conversation with Paul Gilroy.)
(As though Christopher Ouma's body of work is not in deep conversation with Paul Gilroy.)
And I was still watering plants.
And then I got even more interested in the interview.
And you mostly don't want me to get interested, because I am a fucking good reader.
And you mostly don't want me to get interested, because I am a fucking good reader.
And I thought about that memoir I had read. And what it had done with gender and sexuality. In its bildung form.
(A refrain: "I was not yet an Afropessimist.")
(A refrain: "I was not yet an Afropessimist.")
And I thought about Wilderson's response to a question about Black feminism.
"My work, in particular, and I would say Afropessimism in general, is influenced by one stratum of Black feminism. I’m thinking of the work of Saidiya Hartman, Joy James, Christina Sharpe, Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers and Zakkiyah Iman Jackson"
And I laughed.
And I laughed.
And I laughed because I have read and studied these thinkers, and I call some of them friends and acquaintances.
And I know, with bonedeep conviction, that if Wilderson had taken these Black feminists seriously, there's no fucking way he'd have written many of those sentences he wrote about gender and sexuality.
Absolutely no fucking way.
A list is not engagement.
Absolutely no fucking way.
A list is not engagement.
And then I wondered, as I do, about engagement.
You find the idea of African Pessimism in African writing that begins in the 1950s.
You find the idea of African Pessimism in African writing that begins in the 1950s.
It is not the same thing as Afropessimism, though I would argue that it is structured by the same conditions of colonial modernity.
It's one thing to say Afropessimism works through a set of ideas through particular archives and thinkers and, in that way, is not really the same as African Pessimism.
I'm okay with that.
It's another thing to pretty much ignore a body of work that shares a name.
I'm okay with that.
It's another thing to pretty much ignore a body of work that shares a name.
If some Africans are salty, perhaps that accounts for some of it.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
And I was still watering plants.
And I was interested.
And you don't want me interested. Or you do. Up to you.
And I was interested.
And you don't want me interested. Or you do. Up to you.
And then I thought, if Africans are being accused of disengaging with Black North America, where is Wilderson's own engagement with African thinkers?
Mbembe doesn't count.
Mbembe doesn't count.
Which contemporary thinkers on the continent is he reading and engaging?
Which ones?
How is he engaging them?
Should we expect some reciprocity?
Or does this thing go one way?
Which ones?
How is he engaging them?
Should we expect some reciprocity?
Or does this thing go one way?
Because, you see, I work across geohistories.
And when I work on Afro-Caribbean authors, I try to engage Afro-Caribbean scholarship. Access will always be a problem. I no longer apologize for what I can neither find nor afford.
And when I work on Afro-Caribbean authors, I try to engage Afro-Caribbean scholarship. Access will always be a problem. I no longer apologize for what I can neither find nor afford.
When I work on U.S. or Canadian authors, I try to engage scholarship from those places. I try to think with it.
When I work on African authors, I try to engage African thinkers.
Because geohistory matters. And the Black diaspora work I do is frottage and suture.
Rub & Sew.
When I work on African authors, I try to engage African thinkers.
Because geohistory matters. And the Black diaspora work I do is frottage and suture.
Rub & Sew.
And then I had a final thought: it's dangerous to imagine you incarnate a theory.
And if people do not like the memoir for whatever reason, that says nothing about their engagement with Afropessimism.
And if people do not like the memoir for whatever reason, that says nothing about their engagement with Afropessimism.
And I would very much appreciate the people who line up to DEFEND Afropessimism to stop.
It's not a cult.
It's a body of thinking that lives alongside other bodies of thinking.
We work across difference if our shared goal is freedom.
It's not a cult.
It's a body of thinking that lives alongside other bodies of thinking.
We work across difference if our shared goal is freedom.
And then the plants were watered and I came in to write this thread.
