November 2, 2016 - 12:19
There are many things that I want us to read. I would like to teach my own class, and pick books because I love books, and the hole some feel could be filled if we read the right books and thought different thoughts. I am very tired and I have many books for us to read. We should stop reading a book per week, and instead read a few, and have supplementary texts, we could spend time on ourselves. We should be reading "the wretched of the earth" and "black skin white masks" WITH "the book of salt" wow, what beautiful thoughts could be thought. if only. I do not have the time to make scans of these books so I apologize. This morning I was reading some things that make me cry, but fill me up, I wish these courses could do the same. I am not a professor but I want to be one. I don't know how hard it is to make a syllabus, but I know what I know, and there's no place for that here, no time for me to make a place for it here.
"Reparations suggests a conceptually coherent loss. The loss of land, the loss of labor power, etc. In other words, there has to be some form of articulation between the party that has lost and the party that has gained for reparations to make sense. No such articulation exists between Blacks and the world. This is, ironically, precisely why I support the Reparations Movement; but my emphasis, my energies, my points of attention are on the word “Movement” and not on the word “Reparation.” I support the movement because I know it is a movement toward the end of the world; a movement toward a catastrophe in epistemological coherence and institutional integrity—I support the movement aspect of it because I know that repair is impossible; and any struggle that can act as a stick up artist to the world, demanding all that it cannot give( which is everything ), is a movement toward something so blindingly new that it cannot be imagined. This is the only thing that will save us."
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“[They say to us], You, Black person, must demonstrate to me that I am unethical in my actions. Yet, they wouldn’t hold any other paradigm of oppression to that high of a bar. They wouldn’t say that the White French people living in Algeria have to be destroyed because they are unethical in their actions. They would say that they have to be destroyed because they are present, because they are here. They wouldn’t say, ‘Well you know, there’s some good capitalists and some bad capitalists.’ They would say, ‘the capitalist as a category has to be destroyed’. What freaks them out about an analysis of anti-Blackness is that this applies to the category of the Human, which means that they have to be destroyed regardless of their performance, or of their morality, and that they occupy a place of power that is completely unethical, regardless of what they do. And they’re not going to do that. Because what are they trying to do? They’re trying to build a better world. What are we trying to do? We’re trying to destroy the world. Two irreconcilable projects.”
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here is the original radio podcast of the attached interview for those of us who prefer auditory learning:
https://imixwhatilike.org/2014/10/01/frankwildersonandantiblackness-2/
Comments
thank you so much. these
Submitted by Franny on November 2, 2016 - 22:18 Permalink
thank you so much. these works are so valuable, i also wish we could work in this kind of theory
xoxo
Submitted by bluish on November 3, 2016 - 00:12 Permalink
thank you franny, love you franny <3
im with you
Submitted by me.mae.i on November 3, 2016 - 11:14 Permalink
first off, i admire your connection with books. i used to have that. but i lost it and im working very hard to get it back.
secondly, the quote i pasted below from your post is resonating so much with me. there is no repair. and i feel like we approach class sometimes as if we have the answers and are excluded from the trauma, which makes it worst. there is so much violence that happens in our classes, and there's nothing we can do to solve that. but we can create and re-envision. we can hold onto art and move in the directions that that takes us....
so thank you amaka, again, for your sight, intellect, and understanding.
I support the movement because I know it is a movement toward the end of the world; a movement toward a catastrophe in epistemological coherence and institutional integrity—I support the movement aspect of it because I know that repair is impossible; and any struggle that can act as a stick up artist to the world, demanding all that it cannot give( which is everything ), is a movement toward something so blindingly new that it cannot be imagined. This is the only thing that will save us."
Wonderful. Powerful and
Submitted by Serendip Guest (not verified) on November 3, 2016 - 14:22 Permalink
Wonderful. Powerful and absolutely needed. Love the idea of feeling full and reading WITH.