Syllabi-Sustainability

Women’s Studies 400- Sowing Seeds of Change: Environmental Justice, Feminism, and Globalization

Syllabus*August 5, 2008

Instructor Moya Z. Bailey, Department of Women’s Studies

Class meets:

Office Hours: by appointment only

Email: mzbaile@emory.edu (Use this address only, all email will be read between 9-5 on weekdays)

Prerequisites

WS 100

Course Description

This course will invite students to explore the connections between globalization, westernization, environmental racism, consumption, and global activist movements. We will look at water, land, and people as sites of inquiry, where these issues play out. Students

Goals and Objectives

Students will

• Learn about global environmental justice issues
• Familiarize themselves with global resistance movements
• Develop their own theories about these issues
• Present their research to the larger community
• Offer solutions and insights into the issues of environmental justice

Required Texts

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

E-reserve Readings

Requirements

1. Weekly blog post and response (20%)
2. Active participation in class discussions (15%) (preparation, reading books/articles, attendance, etc.)
3. Activist research project (20%)
4. Dissemination Project (25%)
5. Assigned discussion leadership (15%)
6. Sustainable classroom efforts (5%)

Class Blog

All students will post 11 weekly blog entries that reflect their reaction to the required reading material and shows a connection to larger issues happening in the world. You will be graded on the evolution of your responses over the course of the class as well as your ability to draw parallels between class material and local/global events. Each entry should be at least two paragraphs. Blog entries must be posted no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesdays. Students must also comment on another classmate’s entry once a week. By the end of the semester students must have 11 posts and 11 responses. Students are expected to read each others responses. Students who go beyond this minimum may receive extra credit. FYI- Blogs are a public forum so other people from around the world can drop in our class conversations and will. Be prepared for this.

Class Participation

Students must participate in classroom discussions. To do so students must be present. Students can miss one class without penalty. Students must submit in writing their reason for being absent before it occurs and must still turn in the week’s assignment. Any absence beyond one will result in a percentage decrease from your class participation grade. Tardiness is unacceptable. Excessive tardiness will result in a percentage decrease from your class participation grade.

Activist Research Project

Students must research an activist movement from around the globe that is grounded in issues of the environment, globalization, or consumerism. This could include the No Logo Campaign, movements around water in India. Early in the semester students will submit a proposal on their possible research project and at the end of the semester a presentation on their findings. I will meet with each student to discuss the dimensions of the presentation as they develop. You will be graded on your ability to connect class material to your research in your presentation.

Class Assignments

All assignments are detailed on the syllabus or on the web. Late work will receive a letter grade deduction for each day it is late. It is your responsibility to alert me in writing (an e-mail) when you will miss class and how you intend to make up the lost time.

• Grocery Field-Trip: Students will travel to a grocery store in the immediate Emory area and also travel to a grocery story in the Atlanta University Center area. Students will compare prices and quality.
• Research Proposal: Students will submit a one page write up of their research project.

Dissemination Project

As a class we will discuss ways to disseminate the material generated through the course to the greater Emory community. The blog is a component of this but students may elect to do a mini symposium on campus, meet with Emory trustees, invite a guest to campus to speak about these issues, make a video, etc. The class will delegate responsibility to all members of the class and evaluate each other’s performance.

Assigned Discussion Reading

During the semester student pairs will be assigned one day to facilitate a class discussion. You are responsible for guiding the class through the assigned reading for that day as well as fostering discussion for an hour of class time. You should also integrate blog comments and/or related information from the media. Provide a bio sketch of the authors of the articles you are assigned including a list of their major works, theoretical perspectives, and critiques of their work. Students may sign up for a day on the class calendar. You may use handouts, powerpoint, or a medium of your choice to engage the class.

Sustainable Classroom Efforts

We will attempt to tread a little lighter on the planet, at least in the context of this classroom. Papers, assignments, and grades will be submitted electronically and you are encourages to use both sides of the page if you prefer for print assignments and handouts. Recycling backs of paper is encouraged, as well as students’ suggestions of other sustainable practices that can be employed in the class.

Extra Credit

Students may attend events detailed on the Class Calendar for this class and write a two page reflection on the event. Other extra credit opportunities will be announced in class.

Grades

A 100 – 94

A- 93 – 90

B+ 89 – 87

B 86 – 84

B- 83 – 80

C+ 79 – 76

C 75 – 73

C- 72 – 70

D 69 – 64

F 64 – Below

Any students who feel they may need academic adjustments and/or accommodations should speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact the Office of Disability Services.

Academic Honesty and Classroom integrity

Students are expected to be familiar with the Academic Honesty policy of the college. If you have any questions, be sure to come see me during office hours or send me an email. You are also expected to be respectful of your classmates. Many of the issues discussed are highly contested and your opinions will often differ so it is important that everyone is courteous with their contention.

Reading and Discussion Schedule

1. Introduction (Week 1)
1. Hey! How are you? Who are you? Why are you here?
2. Syllabus
2. The Scope (Weeks 2-5)
1. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler chapters 1-6
2. Story of Stuff
3. Parable of the Sower chapters 7-10
4. The Globetrotting Sneaker by Cynthia Enloe
5. Parable of the Sower chapters 11-14
3. Water (Weeks 6)
1. Scientists Warn of Depletion of Ocean Fish in 40 Years http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-11/2006-11-02-voa61.cfm?CFID=21934462&CFTOKEN=62741429
2. 150 'dead zones' counted in oceans U.N. report warns of nitrogen runoff killing fisheries http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
3. Water Wars by Vandana Shiva (selected chapters)
4. Land (Weeks 7-8)
1. Haunani-Kay Trask. 1999. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Revised Edition. (Selected Chapters)
2. Snipp, “The First Americans.”
3. LaDuke. “Nuclear Waste: Dumping on the Indians.”
4. Pulido, Laura. 2000. “Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(1): 12-40.
5. Clapp, Jennifer. 2001. Toxic Exports: The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, chapters 1, 2 and 7 (40 pages).
6. Anderton, D., A. Anderson, et al. (1994). "Environmental Equity: The Demographics of Dumping." Demography 31(2): 229-248. (E).
7. Research project proposal
5. People (Weeks 9-10)
1. Deafness and Disability—Forgotten Components of Environmental Justice: Illustrated by the Case of Local Agenda 21 in South Wales by Andrew Charles and Huw Thomas
2. Winona LaDuke, “Mothers of Our Nation: Indigenous Women Address the World” (1995)
3. Yang, Tseming “International Environmental Protection, Human Rights and the North South Divide,” from Justice and Natural Resources (2002)
4. Garwal, Anil, Narain, Sunita and Aharma, Anju. “The Global Commons and Environmental Justice – Climate Change,” from Environmental Justice, Discourses in International Political Economy (2002).
5. Zarsky, Lyuba “Global Reach: Human Rights and Environment in the Framework of Corporate Accountability” from Human Rights and the Environment, Conflicts and Norms in a Globalizing World.” (2002).
6. Women and toxic waste protests: Race, class and gender as resources of resistance by Celene Krauss
7. John Lie, "From Agrarian Patriarchy to Patriarchal Capitalism: Gendered Capitalism Industrialization in Korea," in Valentine Moghadam, ed., Patriarchy and Economic Development: Women's Positions at the End of the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
8. “No Remedy for the Inuit: Accountability for Environmental Harms under U.S. and International Law.” by Anne E. Lucas
9. Mortality Rates in Appalachian Coal Mining Counties: 24 Years Behind the Nation by Michael Hendryx Environmental Justice. March 2008, 1(1): 5-11
6. Dissemination Project (Weeks 11-14)
7. Presentations and Projects Due (Week 15)

2nd Annual Community Writing Intensive

Because When and Where We Enter...

...the entire human race enters with us.

Posted at elle who got it from Nora who got it in circulation because Kendra Tappin, a Firewalker/Afrofuturist/Womanist/artist/activist/comrade put it out there.

Hell yes.

Give it another push please, as Kendra requested. Forward to at least ONE other person you know.

(X-posted @ Waiting 2 Speak)

Dear Friends,

On Wednesday, June 25 a 20-year-old black woman was raped and robbed in her apartment in Philadelphia. A man forced himself into her apartment and once he was inside he called up two of his friends. After four hours the three men left. The victim was left to walk a mile alone to the closest police station where she reported the crime. The woman’s next-door neighbor has said that she saw the initial intrusion and heard the screaming but that she went to bed and did nothing. Other neighbors reported that they also heard the woman’s screams but that they did nothing.

Twenty-four hours before this incident a 48 year-old woman was raped just a few blocks away. She was lying in her bed when an unknown man intruded into her home. He raped her and he stabbed her in her neck. Police say that they do not believe the two crimes are related or that any of the same men are involved.

I have been silent on this issue, but this morning I woke to a note from a friend who reminded me of the powerful ways in which our silence condemns us.

I am writing you this letter because I know we must do the telling even if we feel afraid, anxious or alone. I am writing this letter to urge you to take up this issue as though you or your family member were the victim, and because I am troubled.

I am troubled because there seems to be an epidemic of violence, sexual violence, against black women. I am troubled because this country’s history is replete with instances of violence against black women, denigration of black women, sexual violation of black women and then turning a blind eye those crimes. Presently I am reminded of:


• The acquittal of R. Kelley

• Megan Williams, a 20 year old black woman in West Virginia who was kidnapped and gang raped by 6 other people, three of whom were women, forced to eat animal feces and insulted with racial slurs.

• A 35 year old black woman in Miami, Florida living in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects who was gang raped by up to 10 men. For three hours the men beat and raped her. They also forced her to perform oral sex on her 12 year-old son whom they also beat and doused with household chemicals. Several months after the crime 4 teenagers, aged14-18, were arrested and charged in relation to the crime.

• The New Jersey 4, black lesbians ages 19, 20, 20 and 24 who were sentenced to prison terms ranging between 3 to 11 years because they defended themselves against a physical and sexual assault from a man who held them down, choked them, spat on them, pulled out their hair from their scalps all because these women are lesbians.

• A conversation with a friend who was distressed because she had heard signs of domestic violence in her neighbor’s apartment but did not know what to do. She was anxious about calling the a hotline because she didn’t think they would offer real alternatives, and she was anxious about calling the police because she thought they’re presence would exacerbate the situation.

• My interaction with a visibly pregnant woman in East Palo Alto with whom l sat and spoke on the street corner after seeing her walking and sobbing, hearing her engaged in a public shouting match with her boyfriend, and noticing black and blue bruises on her arms.

I am troubled by these cases because they reflect, I think, what seems to be an epidemic of violence against black women, little action on the part of our communities and the police/judicial system to protect them, and few strategies for how we might respond.

I am troubled because of the rate at which crimes of sexual and physical violence against black women seem to be occurring. Thinking about it I wonder:

• Why are these crimes happening?

• Is it that black women are being sexually assaulted with more frequency or is it that more cases are being reported?

• Why is it that crimes of sexual violence against black women, particularly as they are happening in such high instances, do not spark movements in our communities like the one to free the Jena 6? See for instance see the case of the New Jersey 4.

• Do these cases just serve as flash and puff for the media but nothing else?

• Is it that black women are quite simply expendable?

• What are we to do?

• For instance, I am for abolishing the prison industry, but how do we hold our communities and these men accountable in the interim when we do not as yet have the means set in place to do so?

I am deeply frustrated, traumatized and pained by the continued disregard for black women’s lives. But a sister-friend has reminded me that it is imperative that we transform our rage and frustration into a vision for action and that it is the power of all of us together that makes us brave.

I am asking you all to be courageous.

I am asking you to read Audre Lorde’s essay “Need,”* a trenchant call to end violence against black women, and her poem ”A Litany for Survival,” a reminder that our silence will not save us. I have attached both pieces. Audre Lorde wrote “Need” in 1979 when 12 black women in Boston were killed in the space of 4 months, but the police and the media ignored the killings claiming that these women were mostly prostitutes. Audre Lorde’s essay and poem are tools for our liberation and creation of a space for community action and healing to protect black women. Her powerful essay provides creative ways that we can respond to gendered violence.

Please read these pieces and share them with at least one other person.

Please sit and talk with people in your community to strategize and brainstorm ways that you could respond to sexual violence or any other kind of violence in our communities.

Please create ways to end gendered and sexual violence against women.

With love, love and more love,

Kendra

Kendra Tappin, Stanford University

"Only the black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole...race enters with me.'"

Anna Julia Cooper
1892

What We NEED or Too Important: Transforming Silence and Violence into Action and Power

"I wrote it because I wanted to talk abut blackwomanslaughter in a way that could not be unfelt or ignored by anyone who heard it with a hope perhaps of each one of us doing something within our immediate living to change to change this destruction."

"We are too important to each other to waste ourselves in silence."
- Audre Lorde in a prefatory essay to Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices


In 1979 Barbara Smith sent Audre Lorde a news clipping via snail mail. Yet another black woman in her community in Roxbury had been found dead. Over these four months, during which 12 black women were killed in the black nieghborhods of Boston, black feminists, led by black lesbian feminists built a coalitional movement to respond, using public art, poetry, self-defense, publishing and political education. Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel were editing what would become the foundation black feminist collection, Conditions 5: The Black Women's Issue. Audre Lorde wrote Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices in response to this wave of murders. The energy and analysis forged in the words and promises exchanged between black feminists at that moment grew into a broad movement that lives, waiting and growing in those of us hungry for the words that were never meant to survive.

This past Monday, not yet 30 years after Barbara Smith's letter to Audre Lorde, Moya sent an email with a link to a news story:

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/take_action&id=6227125

This woman is black
so her blood is shed into silence.

A building full of neighbors heard the screams of this survivor while she was being sexual assaulted in her home, but were at a loss to actually act against this violence in their community. They didn't know how to respond, they didn't want to believe what was happening. So they kept their doors closed. They went to sleep.

This story is important for a number of reasons. As Moya points out it is yet another instance of silence within the black community about violence against a black woman coming on the heels of Megan Williams, Dunbar Village, R. Kelley's Acquittal and more. This is what breaks our backs.

I also think this story, literal silence in the moment of violence, is important for what it demonstrates more generally. Our silence, as oppressed communities about the gendered violence that disproportionately impacts our communities is glaring, harmful, devastating. We generally really feel that in a racist police state, and individualist capitalist state, a fear-filled falling apart place we don't have the resources to respond to violence even when we hear it happening, on the news and in our buildings every night.

But if we have each other, we do have what we need to take care of each other, hold each other accountable, keep each other safe and whole. If we have each other we do.

And I say, thank the Lorde, we have in Need a resource for transformation and a means to open us these impossible conversations about the real costs of gendered violence in our communities. The task of the poet is to say the unsayable, and Audre Lorde, may she never be forgotten, literally gives us the tools to open our mouths.

The UBUNTU Artistic Respons committee which convened in Durham, North Carolina in the midst of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, used Need (in addition to other poems and the documentary NO! by Aishah Simmons) to break open rooms of people and to instigate real discussions about the impact of gendered violence against black women WITHIN black communities, at the hands of other black people.

When my father, a person professionally trained and personally prone to debate and argument, read Need he had no arguments to make. He told me that reading the piece was simply a moment in his education. He compared it to a moment in high school when he watched a film that documented all the shaven hair, all the bodily ashes, all the teeth and bones of the victims of the Nazi holocaust. He said that a mass of violence, an unimaginable horror had become visible and real to him in Audre Lorde's words. He said there was no question about whether this was true, whether it was relevant, whether it impacted him. He said now I know. The only question is what we do.

This is the Summer of Our Lorde, when we transform silence into action and power. I want to ask us to read and share Need available for download via:http://letterstoaudre.wordpress.com/need-end-violence-against-women-of-color-now/

with everyone we can share it with. Let us read it with other women in our communities, let us print our copies and give them to our families. Let us build a fire of healing that can ignite our communities into the conversations we need in order to build the trust, connection and analysis that we need to work together for survival, safety and love in our communities.

love always (in the hands of Audre),
lex

p.s. and please draw on me personally or firewalkers generally as a space to discuss and process this transformation

Andrea Hairston's Mindscape

X-Posted @ Waiting 2 Speak--but I'm wondering if the women walking here might have read it, might have ideas on it, are as fascinated by the story she told as I am. I'm still digesting it...

"We still yearn for a Metatheory, a God who never lies, whose simple, absolute truth will guide us from nothing to everything without once falling down. Unfortunately truths are false and lies are true. Anything we are absolutely certain of doesn't matter and everything that truly matters is uncertain."
~~Vera Xa Lalafia

Finished. Really, really liked it. And since I am still stuck in the Lull and am apparently incapable of constructing a coherent paragraph much less a review essay, here are the bullet points. (Never fear--no spoilers ahead). Mindscape:

• Confirms for me that the best hard sci-fi is the kind that openly lusts for magical realism and leaps of fantasy.
  
  
• Confirms that science fiction looks very different when it takes takes seriously 1) that a hero can be female and still sexy, violent, flawed, vulnerable and triumphant 2) a female hero of color can be all of these without being junglefied or mammied 3) people of color can play roles that aren't just witty, "ethnic throwback" sidekicks or helplessly tormented victims.
  
  
• POC humanity can be fundamental parts of the plot without the story collapsing into racial polemics, masochistic Afrocentricity, ambiguous mestizaje, or a melting pot of Latinidad. Translation? The history, culture, politics, and, hell, the people-dom of people of African, Latina/o and Native American descent should not only be a part of the story that is told but that people-dom should be critiqued and created with the same rigor as majority (Anglo or European) societies. That means asking what is it that poc nickname God? Was it the color of their skin only? Was the rhythm of the drums/beat/scratch? Was it the distribution of political and social power between men and women, elders and age-grades? Was it the lyric and spiritual? The curve of clay forms? Was it a kind of prayer or a way of speaking? And where do you then place histories of slavery and genocide, how do your characters feel that as spectre even as they walk in worlds three, four or five thousand years ahead of today?
  
  
• You don't have to say your characters are any color for them to be that color. (Proof again that putting the humanity of people of color into sci-fi is more than just taking a brown crayon to your cookie-cutter hero or heroine)
  
  
• Just because you don't give your characters a color doesn't make them "everyman" or "everywoman" (Proof again....)
  
  
• Gender is as much a myth as race and should be interrogated and respected just as is explained above. Sexuality is the same deal. And the absolute best sci-fi out right now is flipping both of those way on their head and them thrusting them into another dimension before bringing them back and commiting them to paper.
  
  
• Ooooooh on the way that really, really good sci-fi can take things that are absolutely normal today, magnify them, and make them absolutely otherworldly and yet frighteningly prescient. (I can't say more without spoiling...but ooooohhhhhh!)
  
  
• Ooooooh on the way that afrofuturism deplores the happy ending. After all: "Anything we are absolutely certain of doesn't matter and everything that truly matters is uncertain."
  
  

That is all, at least until I am a real writer again. If you have free time, read the book. If I had free time I would start a TechnoAfroCats Book Collective or distro (yay, I just learned what that is!) or something.

Hmm. Actually, interesting thought. I might have to consider that....

Feminists Must Heal the Wounds of Racism

http://www.afrolezproductions.com/blog/feminists-must-heal-the-wounds-of-racism/

by Aishah Shahidah Simmons

June 9, 2008

Dear Sisters ~

I'm writing self-identified second wave and third wave White feminists, who have expressed a commitment to ending sexism and racism, about their public uncritical support of Hillary Clinton. Granted my letter could be perceived as a moot point because she conceded on Saturday, June 7, 2008. However, for me, a hard core unapologetic third wave Black feminist lesbian (who's the daughter of a second wave Black feminist), it's not a moot point because while it is about Hillary Clinton's campaign, for me it's about my deep and profound betrayal that I've personally and politically experienced during the primaries, especially the last few months of the campaign.

I was appalled by the fact that when the going got very rough and tough, that Clinton and her campaign became blatantly racist. I was very alarmed when White feminists (not to be confused with women who supported Hillary Clinton) who supported Clinton didn't publicly critique her racism, while continuing to support her campaign. I'm not talking about the pundits who didn't support her and critiqued her. I'm not talking about feminists of all races who supported Obama who critiqued her. I'm talking about White feminists who supported Clinton critiquing her in a way to encourage her to be the best candidate that she could be, which I hope would mean not to run a racist campaign.

It's important for me to share that in the beginning of the primaries I supported two white men – Kucinich and Edwards – based on their political platforms which radically spoke to those issues which are near and dear to my Spirit and Soul. I share this because it's important to note that I didn't run to the primaries supporting either the (White) woman candidate or the African-American (man) candidate because I thought their platforms were too centrist, based on how I view the world. If I could have my way, based on the candidates running in the democratic primaries, I would've put Kucinich in the Oval Office. When the last two Democratic candidates standing were both Clinton and Obama, I supported Obama.

I don't want to get into why I ultimately, whole heartedly supported Obama and why folks whole heartedly supported Clinton during the Democratic primaries. That for me is not the issue, in this letter, per se.

The concern for me is that I longed to hear from progressive, anti-racist White feminists who publicly supported Clinton but also publicly took stands against her and her campaign's racism. I felt and feel many of her supporters (who know the vicious hertories and contemporary realities of the intersections of race and gender in this country) were complicit as she and her campaign fanned the fires of racism, which like sexism, is deeply entrenched into the very fibers of the founding of this country.

I was also struck by the fact that there wasn't much (if any) anger/outrage/public critiques expressed, by White feminists who supported Clinton, when Fox News Commentator Bill O'Reilly said he didn't have enough information to go to a lynching party for Michelle Obama, just yet. I was struck by the fact that in all of the justifiable and critically needed conversations and fact finding on sexism in the media, that not too much was documented, by White feminists, about how Michelle Obama has been (and continues to be) treated, which is both sexist and racist. To paraphrase the infamous words of the great African-American suffragist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, "Ain't Michelle Obama a woman too?"

It appeared to me that the desire, on the part of so many White feminists to have a (White) woman in the oval office superceded anything, including racism. It really felt like a repeat of the racist (White—because as we should all know there were Black ones too) suffragists.

The painful irony about all of this is that those of us who support Obama and challenge sexism pay the awful price for bringing ants to the party. One clear cut example is with Salamishah Tillet, a hardcore unapologetic third wave Black feminist who supports Obama. In spite of her concrete financial and foot soldier support of Obama, her allegiance/loyalty has been ridiculously questioned and challenged because she dared to talk and write about the critical importance that sexism and the non-negotiable need for gender equity be key components in Obama's platform and talking points. (Read some of the sexist and racist comments following her two essays "All the Men Are Black, All the Women Are White, and Some of Us Vote: A Remix" and "Obama and the 'Women Question" which are featured on BlackProf.com and TheRoot.com).

Salamishah Tillet, like too many feminists of Color who precede her and who are her contemporaries, walked and walks that tightrope of both literally living at and challenging the intersections of race and gender in a White and male supremacist society without the support from other marginalized groups – men of Color and White women. For me the primaries really magnified this reality. I was so tired of and enraged by any real analysis about the intersections of identities. I was deeply pained by both too many (not all) men of Color and White women's lack of concern about the lack of intersectional analysis in the media. I was beyond frustrated that if we, feminists of Color, critiqued sexism of men of Color, our race loyalty was called into question and if we critiqued racism of White women, our feminism was called into question.

I'm struck by the fact that in 2008, woman is still equated with White and African-American is equated with man… In the infamous words of Barbara Smith, Gloria (Akasha) Hull and Patricia Bell Scott timeless anthology "But Some of Us are Brave…"

My herstory has consistently shown me that too often feminists of Color have literally taken risks that men of Color and White women haven't dared to take because they thought it wasn't in their interests while not understanding that if we centralize all of the margins, then all of us will be free from oppression.

I try to envision what it would've meant during the Democratic primaries if those of us who supported Clinton or Obama compassionately privately and publicly challenged and encouraged both them to address racism and sexism in the United States.

I thought the goal for feminism was to work towards creating a world where there is equality for all not just White women.

When I heard Hillary Clinton's speech on Saturday, June 7, 2008, I literally said to myself and to my inner circle "Oh my Goddess, where was this Hillary Clinton months ago?" I know for a fact that it would've been a lot harder for me to be so adamant in my support of Barack Obama had Hillary Clinton's campaign actively used the language that she used on Saturday, June 7, 2008. For the first time, in a very long time, she articulated the her/history and cotemporary reality of millions of Americans. And, equally as important, she projected a future America that I hope we will all live to see.

As we all know truth-telling is never ever easy and more often than not, truth-tellers pay the price literally and/or figuratively.

There are some serious wounds that need to be healed and I'm not talking about Clinton supporters who have to be "convinced" that voting for McCain is voting against their self-interests. Though the aforementioned is most critical, I'm talking about healing the wounds between many White feminists and feminists of Color.

No One Is Free While Others Are Oppressed.

In Sisterhood and In Struggle,
Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning Black feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker who produced and directed the internationally acclaimed documentary NO!, which unveils the reality of rape, other forms of sexual violence and healing in African-American communities. www.NOtheRapeDocumentary.org

Janelle Monáe's Cyborg Love

via Waiting 2 Speak:



Mr. said Metropolis isn't a good album. He said it was "weird." He said its all about cyber love.

Metropolis is straight up Afrofuturism.

Metropolis is woman-centered. Perhaps even womanist.

Metropolis is also genius. And so is Janelle Monáe is--or, in Lex's words, a "post-human black girl genius."*

At UMCP Digital Diasporas 2008, Kara Keeling discussed how the meeting of digital media with the humanities could trouble the humanistic ideal. Digital diasporas can help us get to what she called the/a post-human. The multi-layered, anonymous, and constructive potential of digital African diaspora, or Afrofuturism, might possibly overturn the "human," the male, heterosexual, economically elite, classically educated subject of Enlightened modernity.

I mean, can you imagine it? A human that you didn't automatically assume was white and male and heterosexual? A human that you didn't have to spend time and energy converting into a black/Latino/indigenous/Asian female in love with women? What would she look like? Would she be black-skinned with kinky hair? Or would she be pale grey with dark grey tentacles and make love to you by massaging the nerve centers of your brain? Would "she" even be an appropriate moniker?

Would she--it--be a cyborg?

What else would disrupt the human so nicely but its extreme Enlightenment opposite? Mechanical. Emotionless. Clinical. Asexual. Literally "a product of the Man." ("Violet Stars Happy Hunting!")

And what would happen when that "product" decides its going to do its own thing? When it, *gasp,* falls in love with a human????

Cyborg love. Weird, huh?

Yeah, it is. Except that the idea that we (poc) are mechanical beings in "the Man"'s world isn't new for us. It's as old as genocide, as old as slavery. It isn't even a new idea in hip hop. Gnarls Barkley and Lupe Fiasco have both hyped their Go Go Gadget Flow.

Cindi Mayweather, the cygirl of Metropolis, is a similar take on the cyborg/mechanica theme. Cindi Mayweather is what would happen when that theme just happens to start coming out of a woman of color's mouth....

"Good morning cyboys and cyber girls! I’m happy to announce that we have a star-crossed winner in today’s heartbreak sweepstakes! Android # 57821, otherwise known as Cindi Mayweather, has fallen desperately in love with a human named Anthony Greendow. And you know the rules! She is now scheduled for immediate disassembly. Bounty hunters, you can find her in the Neon Valley Street District, on the 4th floor in the Leopard Plaza Apartment Complex. The droid control marshals are full of fun rules today! No phasers; only chainsaws and electrodaggers. Remember: Only card carrying hunters can join our chase today. And as usual, there will be no reward until her cybersoul is turned into the Star Commission. Happy hunting!"

Gnarls Barkley commits suicide on his human with every track. Lupe Fiasco randomly kills his human and then brings him back to life...to get killed again. Their subjects are men of color (although GB's may be questionable and questioning his race and sexuality and I refuse to count Fiasco's "The Streets"--her stereotyping is foolishness).

Their subjects are generally preoccupied with the Game and issues of Coolness--of conforming to stereotype and surviving an inherently destructive system. A system that makes you kill yourself, or gets you killed, over and over again.

They don't know their language/They don't know their God/They take what they're given/Even when it feels odd....

Monáe's unhuman is about conformity and Coolness too. But this cygirl is caught in the Game from a different angle.

It/She falls in love--but how when it/she's not allowed to? And then the questions roll in: Who are you to fall in love? Who are you to feel, to cry, to believe, to fight, to be bold, to be crazed, to grieve and to laugh? You're a cygirl, you're type-cast, your entire existence is regulated. Your soul isn't even yours--it belongs to the Star Commission. You were built to clock in, to work, to reproduce, to satisfy the Man sexually, and then to go home. Beyond that you don't exist.

(Are we speaking of mules and men?)

So Cindi dips. Why? Not just because she doesn't agree. If only. She dips because her particular brand of insurgency has been discovered. This cygirl is defective. She can experience emotion. And it's the most exalted of all human emotions--love. She must be taken care of: "They've come to destroy me...You know the rules." ("Violet Stars Happy Hunting!")

Cindi the cygirl isn't just resisting to resist. Cindi is outta there to save her own life:

"I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life." (Barbara Christian, 1987)

She is outta there to reclaim/take back/create her own soul:

"The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of self, which we women of color have come to think as "other"—the dark, the feminine." (Gloria Anzaldúa, 1981)

And on the run, what does she discover? An entire community, a network of firewalkers, a purple wondaland....

"We want to breathe, but we're stuck here underground/And everybody tryin to figure their way out. Hey, hey, hey!" ("Many Moons")

...debating, critiquing, and arguing together. Fighting to breathe, to create soul, to live. Contradictions abound--"You're free but in your mind. Your freedom's in a bind...."

...and life is a struggle....but still, the rejects, the Goonies, are building together. And their combined challenge is clear--"Tell me are you bold enough to reach for love?!?"

Cindi is bombarded, or bombards it/herself, with a parade of American grammar that are the enemy: "Silhouette, silver wall, hood rat, crack whore, carefree nightclub, closet drunk, bathtub..."

And finds that it's no longer just about experiencing human love with a human being. It's about being in love with herself. Tell me are you bold enough to reach for love.

In the chorus is the chorus, the community of non-humans, rule-breakers, nonconformists, insurgents, artists, activists, fools. The support network.

When the world just treats you wrong/Just come with me and I'll take you home/Change, change, change, change your life....

What a predicament. The paradigm shift is painful. After all, at first, it was only about a carefree romantic ideal--I want you and I won't take no for an answer!--But now, it's about so much more. You're entire history and identity is on the line. You go into cybertronic overload, you're caught in a "Cybertronic Purgatory." Not really in and not really out. You're waking up. But you've got decisions to make. Every day.....

Do you stay? Do you go? Do you fight? Do you stop for awhile in order to survive the maelstrom?

Q: What do you do, Cindi?

A: You sing a black girl's song.

("Sincerely Jane.")

Metropolis is next generation, my generation. The hybrids. The artivist underground, banging against the glass door and screaming. It's what happens when we shed the skin we're in and use it slap the Man in the face. Its the possibility of reaching across boundaries, creating coalitions, building a movement. Weird? Definitely. But if weird is code for not-normal (just like normal is code for knowing & following the Rules), then weird works just fine.

Weird is an afrofuturist harvest.

Tell me--Are you bold enough to reach for love?

And what does radical love look like?

Afro-Futurity: Going On by Gnarls Barkeley

Because the most insightful and exciting people I know walk here...

I'd love to know what this new music video for Going On by Gnarls Barkley makes you think of...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_R9fId_Rqo

Kameelah Rasheed put me on to this video. I am first of all grateful for it. I love watching it. On the first 4 watches it seems to have a message yet to be revealed and unconcealed. I love the beauty of the people in the video, both in the choreographed movements and the way they are dressed which for me bring up today, the 1970's, tomorrow and beaded yesterdays still to be imagined. I love how the futurism of the video is not technological. I love the details of the door. I want to know that the circular dance that the people do in the first part of the video reminds me of. It reminds me of something I believe in and don't have a precise reference for. I wonder how skeptically Saidiya Hartman would look at me for relating to that music video africanized moment through the eye in my forehead for memory.

I love that the people are carrying the portal to the future in their hands. I relate to the way their exuberance transforms into fatigue. I am inspired by the way their fatigue becomes reverence. I love the words of the song, I love the way the words are highlighted strategically all along.

I wonder about what levels of love are meant and residing there in words that seem to be spoken by I man (but they say what I want to say). I wonder who the singer is speaking for. The video put the words into the mouth of the lead man, and projects them onto the sometimes smiling, sometimes pained, sometimes pensive face of the lead woman. I wonder if the words about there "being a place for you too" are for a lover, a gendered lover? a whole gender of us to be left behind while male explorers forge forward again? I wonder what it means for the words of the song to vascillate between telling the imagined person being sung to "I'll see you there" and "I'll miss you." The main questions of the video for me live with the woman distinguished half way in as the "lead woman." What divides her from the "lead man" what connects her to him? Their movements are similar, the framing of the video makes it seem that a love relationship connects them, but the words to the song, which seem to be about leaving someone behind while also projecting that person into the future seem to divide the two characters. Most explicitly the command "don't follow me" made in words that seem to come out of the portal doorway after the man jumps could be meant for the woman who follows and jumps through the doorway, just as athletically anyway. If the words come to the viewing audience from both of the jumpers...why are they timed between the two jumps? Is the woman actor or audience in this video.
And to what extent is she or is she not me? Imma be thinking about this for a while. I'd love to know what you think.
love,
lex

p.s. In related news...the reason my reading of this film is mediated by Saidiya Hartman is because (in addition to her brilliance and perpetual relevance to all my thoughts) even as I write this I am supposed to be revising my review of Hartman's Lose Your Mother for the special issue of Obsidian on Ghana...so any thoughts about Hartman's book would be much appreciated too!

Hood Credibility and Womanist Work(s): Thoughts on Colonization, Academe, and Keeping it Real

i straddle many worlds, literally. i resist and construct my own freedom everyday. i make choices, choices are made for me; i run between worlds. not because its particulary fun, but probably because making a choice to reside in only one sphere of thought, only one space of understanding acutally defies all I believe in a growning creative human being black woman artist poet daughter dancer painter thinker community member lover of tapas and sangria and victoria falls and houston-humidity and large front porches.

with this said i struggle to reconcile my diverse and promiscuous relationships with academic institutions, artistic institutions, community institutions and institutions in specific as i explore creative autonomy and radical expressive in and with community. i crave intimacy, group intimacy and soul stirring energy in everything i do from writing a 25-page research paper to choosing what color sheets to place on my bed. holla if you hear me!

i am concerned sistas and brothas about the politics of work, energy, and spirit as it pretains to my my involvement with institutions. keeping it real, i am concerned about all of us. i have had the displeasure of seeing black women work themselves sick and worse in and through institutions. i have seen our ideas, dreams and desires used for profit and to advance the goals of the institution and then squelched when they were no longer deemed necessary. i have seen us conjure fires and put them out on the behalf of these institutions. i have seen our spirit, scholarship, inventiveness, creativeness and so on and so forth all up and through multiple institutions and spaces but AT What Cost?

Keeping it real, hood credibility does not only apply to rappers from the suburbs wanting to be down with ghetto experience(what ever that is) but it is just as prevalent in other aspects of society. Is what we add to these spaces so uniquely ours, so uniquely necessary that no one else can bring it like us? Yes! Is our stuff, as elder-in-the-game Ntozake Shange reminds us, only ours and no one else can really do anything with it? Yes! What is the it I am referring to? Spirit, working spirit, creating spirit, making space for spirit~~~all day everyday.

here is the question...how do black women performing women's studies engage in and with different institutions that need our work but don't necessarily honor our processes? how do we take care of home/self/body/desire and engage where we are needed regardless of the larger politics? alexis and mama nia holla if you hear me? how do we check the colonization practices of institutions while engaging in our work(s)? should we have any progressive and wholistic requests for the instituions and groups we associate with? i say YES! but what do yall think.

final thoughts. our mamas, grand mamas, and great grand mamas had/have visions that we could make this world different. give thanks to all the sistas we know and dont know who have been performing women's studies since the beginning of time. we know alot about how some of us prevailied and about how some of us struggled against defeat until death. how can we articulate rules for engagement for the here and now?

i am all ears/eyes/heart~~~~

ebony golden
furiousflower@gmail.com
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

Rebecca on Alice

Thoughts?!

"The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women."

Feminism, Race and Electoral Politics

Hillary Is White by Zillah Eisenstein

It seems clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president this fall. Nevertheless, it is crucial to clarify how wrong-headed Hillary Clinton's campaign has been so that the legacy she leaves does no more damage to a multi-racial, multi-class based feminism/womanism both here and abroad.

None of the pundits and journalists appears to be wondering and worrying about black women in this post-Indiana-North-Carolina-West-Virginia moment. Instead, all eyes, and especially Hillary and Bill's are on the so-called "white-hard-working working class". Hillary's pre-occupation with white voters is a dead give-a-way of how she thinks about gender, and being a woman. Gender is white to her, like race is black. Bill and Hillary Clinton have thrown African-Americans to the wind because they thought they could play the gender card with its history of whiteness and win.

And here lies the rub. Hillary Clinton presents herself to the electorate as a woman. She argues that she wants to break the glass ceiling of/for gender. But the truth is that she is not simply a woman but both a woman and also white. The very fact that she ignores her own race, in a way that Obama cannot, is proof of the normalized privileging of whiteness. In this instance white is not a color, but the color, the standard, by which others are judged. So she silently, inadvertently but knowingly, uses her color to write her meanings of gender and mobilize older white women and angry white men by doing so. She presents herself as a woman but her real power here is as white. Misogyny—the fear, hatred, punishment, and discrimination towards women—ensures that Hillary's privilege is her whiteness.

Most often the term white is not spoken alongside the term woman; there is no need. One only specifies color when it is not white. Women are assumed to be white if not specified otherwise, especially if you are speaking about gender or women's rights, or feminism. Forget the fact that it was a group of black women that initially challenged the Supreme Court in the first sex discrimination case in this country years ago.

Hillary speaks of herself as a woman, and then speaks separately about race, as though she does not embody both at the same time. She has as much `race' as Barack, but her race is not a problem for her. It is for him, even though it may not be as much as a problem as she is trying to make it. As such, Hillary, as a (white) woman pits herself against Barack (as black) with a race so to speak. So Hillary (as a woman) is falsely, wrongly, pitted against Barack (as black). Her whiteness privileges and pits gender against race. She encodes her whiteness as though it is central to her gender, and to her kind of feminism without saying a word. She re-awakens and rewrites the history of 19th century U.S. feminism that pitted black men getting the vote before white women had that right. More recently, women's rights rhetoric was used to justify the bombing of the Taliban and brown people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Feminism has a history of being bankrupt on this issue so this is nothing new. What is forgotten here is that women's rights come, or
should come, in all colors.

Barack Obama has said he wants to embrace the new notions of race and the racial progress that has occurred. He is not post-racist, but recognizes the newly raced relations as they exist at present. Nevertheless, he must give a speech on race although he says he does not want to be a racial candidate. He recognizes that the country has new-old racial hierarchies with complex identities and that he himself represents white and African blackness, whatever this might mean for him. Meanwhile Hillary says she is running as a woman, and never gives a speech on gender because white angry men and women, would not be pleased by this. So patriarchy, or sexual discrimination, or the structural hierarchy of masculinity with its racialized and class aspects is never mentioned in her campaign. She uses whiteness as her weapon and pretends to be speaking about gender. But she never once mentions the unacceptable misogyny of this country, or the sexual hierarchy of the labor force, or any of the great racial and class inequities that define women's lives today. This is a misuse and abuse of her gender.

Feminisms of all sorts have moved beyond the idea that feminism is a white woman's thing; or that feminisms should be particularly beholden to the white mainstreamed part of the U.S. women's movement. Large numbers of women, especially women of color, but many white women as well, know that race and gender are inseparable and that is why most of these women, whatever their color, are voting for Barack Obama. Hillary should not be allowed to push feminism backwards for her own political ambition. It is not surprising that it is older white women who disproportionately support her. They identify with old notions of womanhood—a homogenized notion that all females share an identity, and race and class are not connected issues to be named and spoken. This is why younger women and progressive women from the civil rights and women's movements, some of whom are older, disproportionately support Obama.

My thoughts about Hillary Clinton have their own history, which also coincide with her history. I have not been a fan of hers. I have written critically of her for more than a decade now. She has never spoken on behalf of women or as a candidate with a woman's agenda, let alone as a feminist when she was in the White House. Many of us who are her contemporaries were active in the Civil Rights Movement and Women's Movements and Anti-Vietnam War movement—while she chose not to be. Her one speech addressing the exploitation of women was delivered in Beijing, China, as though it is women outside, but not inside the U.S. who face untold discrimination. Now she runs for president and has become a
gun-toting, war mongering white woman who asks for your vote if you are an angry white Reagan Democrat. Maybe she thinks manly gender is the answer for breaking glass ceilings for women.

I would argue that she is not breaking gender boundaries but rather has embraced and extended masculine/misogyny for females. And misogyny always comes in racialized form. She remains female in body and hence parades as a decoy for feminist claims. And her white self is central to this decoy status. Susan Faludi wrote in the New York Times that Hillary is having a success with white male support because she is willing to battle, and engage in rough play like one of the boys. She is supposedly willing to "join the brawl" and as such has won their confidence. She has "broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys" opening the way for women to finally make it "through the glass ceiling and into the White house". Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation hesitantly embraces this assessment and then more forcefully criticizes Clinton for her ruthlessness. Ehrenreich writes that Clinton has "smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way…demonstrating female moral inferiority."

Hillary has proven that sometimes the best man for the job may be a female posing to be a man. In other words, Hillary has simply clothed herself in men's tactics and strategies. She can nuke with the best of them. Hillary not only authorized the war in Iraq but she repeatedly continued to do so for several more years—up until the time she began running for president. She allowed, along with Bill Clinton, the egregious trade blockade against Iraq as hundreds of thousands of children starved to death after the `91 war. She more recently has supported Israel's terror bombing of Lebanon and has newly endorsed "the total obliteration" of Iran.

But this is just part of the sad story. Hillary's embrace of a masculinist machismo embraces the very misogyny that most feminists want to dismantle. Instead of challenging the gender divide Hillary simply slides over to the other side of it. Instead of offering a new vision of what it might mean to have a female president she offers us old versions of white privilege and war mongering. But the structural privilege of patriarchy is ignored and obfuscated with Hillary's race card. Nevertheless many (white women write, like Marie Cocco in the Washington Post (May 15, '08) that she won't miss the misogyny of the campaign when its over—she lists the sexist T-shirts, and array of commercial goods circulating at present. While I abhor any form of degradation of girls and women, or any human being for that matter, I am also hesitant to see this as a sufficient critique of the problem.

Hillary Clinton should never be demeaned for being a woman. But being a woman comes in all colors and classes. Hillary has done the unforgivable. She has used race—the whiteness card—on behalf of gender. We, the big `we"—the huge diversely defined feminisms in this country and across the globe—are better than this. Black feminists in this country, during the 1970's and `80's women's movement made sure to break open the race/gender divide and clarify that gender is always racialized and race is always gendered. No person ever experiences one with out the other. Only when whiteness parades as an invisible standard can you think that gender and race can be separate. As such Hillary is white and a female and Barack is black and male. They are each both. Everyone is.

Hillary's manipulation and misrepresentation of her gender reveals her sexual decoy status. Being female is not enough to allow one to claim their gender as a political tactic. Such claims must be rooted in a commitment to end gender discrimination and their racial and class formulations; not pit races and classes against each other in the hopes of being the first woman president. Clinton does not share a political identity with women of all classes and colors and nations simply because she has a female body. She first needs to claim that body and demand rights for it—reproductive, day care, health, education, etc. She has no multi-racial woman's agenda because she has no anti-racist agenda.

Meanwhile she is thrilled that she won big in West Virginia. West Virginia is "almost heaven" to Hillary. She says it shows the country that she can win the "hardworking white Americans" in November. But West Virginia is not heaven, nor is it like much of the rest of the country. It may look like what the U.S. used to be, but that is exactly the point. It does not have the diversity of color, age, culture that defines the U.S. today. Neither does Hillary's vision.

Hillary is a sexual decoy. She looks like a woman but is not a feminist nor does she speak for or on behalf of most women. She speaks for white people while identifying with her gender, as a woman. But she has trumped herself here. If a female prepares to bully the rest of the world with war and white privilege hopefully we—the big `we'—the `we' that spans across our differences will defeat the political forces she represents.

And this means building a coalition for the November elections that makes sure that a non-misogynist agenda is part of the anti-racist politics of the Obama campaign.

Zillah Eisenstein is professor of politics at Ithaca College, a feminist anti-racist activist, and author of ten books in feminisms and feminist theories across the globe. Her most recent book is SEXUAL DECOYS, GENDER RACE AND WAR IN IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY, (London: Zed Books, 2007).

Thanks to Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Carla Golden, Rosalind Petchesky, and Richard Stumbar for reading an earlier draft of this discussion.

Tania Major

Engendering Peace

via impulsive acts
on gender and violence

development in process with the students at New Horizons
http://www.myspace.com/choosing_sides

Session 1:
What is Violence?
silent writing to music- what is a time that you have been hurt?

Definitions: facilitator asks the participants what their definitions of violence are. What are some examples of violence that people you know have experienced?

Dictionary definitions:
1 Physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or abusing: crimes of violence.
2 The act or an instance of violent action or behavior.
3 Intensity or severity, as in natural phenomena; untamed force: the violence of a tornado.
4 Abusive or unjust exercise of power.
5 Abuse or injury to meaning, content, or intent: do violence to a text.
6 Vehemence of feeling or expression; fervor.
(American Heritage Dictionary)

Breakout groups: (each group presents on their definitions of the following terms)
Abuse
Gang Violence
Violence Against Women
Domestic Violence
State Violence

Collectively write a definition of violence.

Session 2:
follow-up segment...silent writing to music: What is your relationship to violence?

What is gender?
Definitions: The facilitator asks the participants their definitions of man, woman, boy and girl. (All of these get written on the board.)

Discuss: What is the difference between a boy and a man? A girl and a woman? A boy and a girl? A man and a woman? A girl and a man? Do these words describe everyone? What if I am neither a girl nor a boy nor a man nor a woman?

The facilitator brings definitions of gender and sex. Volunteers read the definitions out loud. The participants discuss what’s the difference between gender and sex?

How do people experience violence differently because of their gender? Age? Sex?

Session 3 Recognizing Violence:
follow-up segment—how do you identify
Music video clips, magazine/newspaper clippings, photographs, song lyrics as examples for breakout groups.

Each group presents their clip....etc and presents answering the questions “Is this violent? If so, who is it violent towards? What is violent about it?

screening of short film on the after-effects of assault on black women (by Bonita Walker)
debriefing discussion.

Session 4 Engendering Peace
silent writing to music- (this is a free write to Common’s “Heaven” on the Electric Circus Album)

visualizing exercise: facilitator has the participants close their eyes and visualize what a peaceful day would look like for them...from when they woke up to when they went back to sleep

partner interviews: what does peace look like to your partner (try to arrange partners across gender). use only verbs to respond.
(e.g. sleeping, loving, eating, hugging, swimming, struggling, listening, leaning, healing)

create a collective definition of peace (do people experience peace differently based on gender?)

individually writing: what are 3 things that you can do to create peace as we’ve defined it in your life?

collective discussion: what are things that we can do as a group to create peace for members of our community?

what are demands that we have from our communities (schools, parents, government) that would make our lives more peaceful?

(possibly have participants do their writing about peace on a photocopied hand portrait)

NO! by Aishah Simmons as a crucial teaching tool

via impulsive acts

What follows is a statement that UBUNTU created for its use of NO! as a community outreach and educational tool. You may find it helpful to share with students and viewers as you use this important film in your teaching.


Because we...:
NO!

The UBUNTU education working group has chosen to use NO!, Aishah Simmons’ groundbreaking film about sexual violence in African-American communities because it exemplifies, informs and pushes our struggle to create a world that is free of sexual violence and full of community accountability and a sustaining, transformative love.

This is our collective reasoning for using this film and our vision for its impact on our communities.

NO! Because we love this film. Because this film is made up of warriors showing up for their own liberation, starting with Aishah Simmons, a survivor who created this film through 10 years of sustained community work to raise awareness about rape. Because the stories of survivors of sexual assault are powerful and sacred. Because there are survivors here. Because this story speaks to and for all of us. Because this story pushes us beyond words. Because this story has the power to heal. Because men need to be aware of the effects of sexual assault. Because this lets you know what you need to know fast. Because you have shown up and you will recognize your own fears and experiences here with a new clarity. Because you have shown up and you have survived and you are not alone. Because this film will make you think about sexual assault in your own community and in your own life. Because the history of sexual assault matters. Because you have shown up and this film might provoke you to demand and create your own freedom. Because this film can make you recognize your own situations and your own actions. Because this film will remind you that you can act. Because this film is brave and honest about fear and asks us to be brave and honest with each other. Because this film is real and encourages us to be real in this space. Because this film can push us all to acknowledge and share our emotions. Because this brings this issue home to all of us. Because this film insists that all oppression is connected. Because this film holds us all accountable for the world that we comply with and perpetuate. Because this film encourages us to change the way we respond to sexual assault on an institutional level. Because this film shows us how to hold our communities accountable without always buying into the flawed legal system. Because this film is about responsibility and not blame. Because this film teaches us something new every time. Because this film shapes and propels our analysis and our action. Because this film demands that we reimagine the whole world. Because we believe that the best place to make a new world is right here, together, with you.

So we challenge you as you watch this film to see yourself, your own fears and your own responsibility. This film is not about other people. This film is not about some pathology that is unique to the black community. This film is a specific and necessary examination of the manifestations of sexual assault in black women’s lives, but it calls all of us to recognize our own survival, our own silence, our own complicity, our own violence and our shared responsibility to create a world that honors us.
love,
UBUNTU Education Working Group

To Be A Problem: Outcast Subjectivity and Black Literary Production

This course...piloted at Duke University is also in process online at tobeaproblem.wordpress.com


the Duke students created a number of brilliant publications now available for free download at BrokenBeautiful Press.



To sign up for this course email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com
“To Be A Problem”

Outcast Subjectivity and Black Literary Production
Instructor: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

This class will reinvoke DuBois’s 1903 question (“How does it feel to be a problem?”) and challenge the response that has sought to foreclose black feminist and queer critiques within the (so-called) black community: “Shh. We have enough problems.” We will explore trouble-making, radical performative critique and the transgressive and embattled act of (visual, textual, sonic and multi-media) publishing as possible responses to systemic and individual exclusions. If publishing is an act of stolen power for outcasts, this class will be a publication of what it can mean to be problematic in a society inflected by race, class, sexuality and gender norms. Our aim is not to solve the problems of classism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia as inflected by race, but rather is to create a space where it is possible to act, speak, write and think otherwise, anyway.

Required Texts:

Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle, (Picador 2nd Edition, 2001)
Michelle Cliff, Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant (Dutton, 1993)
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Library of America: Vintage Books, 1990)
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, (Crossing Press Feminist Series, 1984)
Toni Morrison, Sula (Plume, 2002)
Me’shell Ndegeocello, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape (Maverick, 2002)*
Letta Neely, Here, (Wildheart Press, 2001)
The Roots, Game Theory (Def Jam, 2006)*
Natasha Tretheway, Bellocq’s Ophelia (GrayWolf Press, 2002)
Richard Wright, The Outsider, (Harper Perennial, 2003)
*Musical Albums

Foundations (Weeks 1-3):

Week 1: An/Other Way to Be

8/27 Introductions or What’s in a Name?

8/29 “Forethought” and “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in DuBois Souls of Black Folk
“Ethno or Socio Poetics” by Sylvia Wynter (on e-reserves)

8/31 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #1 Due)

Week 2: At Stake—Violence

9/3 “Southern Horrors” Ida B. Wells (e-reserves),
A Long Walk Home www.alongwalkhome.org,

9/5 “Need: A Chorale for Black Women’s Voices” by Audre Lorde (on e-reserves)

(interactive performance #1)

9/7 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #2 Due)

my hands/wishful thinking by Mendi Obadike (PhD Duke U 2004) http://obadike.tripod.com/Adiallo2.html

Week 3: Dis/ease

9/10 Cathy J. Cohen, Introduction in Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) (on e-reserves)

9/12 “U.S. Launches AIDS-Awareness Campaign In Botswana” http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40976

9/14 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #3 Due)

Positions (Weeks 4-9):

Week 4: Black Enough?

9/17 in class screening of Aaron McGruder’s “The Bookdocks”
(you are expected to have done extensive internet research on McGruder before class)

9/19 Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle

9/21 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #4 Due)

Week 5: Mindful

9/24 “Being Black” from Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks (on e-reserves)

9/26 The Outsider by Richard Wright

9/28 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #5 Due)

Week 6: Nobody Knows: Queer Epistemologies

10/1 from Nobody Knows My Name James Baldwin (e-reserves) “I am Your Sister” from Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

10/3 Here: (poems) by Letta Neely

10/5 Cyber-class (Post Assignment #6 Due)

Week 7: Some of Us Are Brave

10/8 NO CLASS! Fall Break

10/10 Sula by Toni Morrison, (in-class reading of “Between Ourselves” by Audre Lorde)

10/12 Cyber-class (Post Assignment (on Sula) #7 Due)

Week 8: Some of Us Are Brave Continued

10/15 “Falling Through the Cracks” by Advocates for Youth
http://advocatesforyouth.org/publications/iag/ywsw.htm

10/17 Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff

10/19 Cyber-class (Post #8 Due)

Week 9

10/22 Spread Magazine: Illuminating the Sex Industry (selections on e-reserves)

10/24 Bellocq’s Ophelia Natasha Tretheway

10/26 Cyber-class (PAPER DUE)


Models of Response (Weeks 10-12)

Week 10: Music and Fashion

10/29 Game Theory by the Roots and Cookie by Me’shell Ndgeocello

10/31 Wear an outfit you are prepared to explain. Bring a song (on CD) that responds to some of the issues that have come up this semester. (Web-assignment to be distributed.)

11/2 Cyber-class (Post #10 Due)

Week 11: HTTP and DIY

11/5 Reportbacks about blackrebel websites

11/7 (comparative distro/website research) In the People’s Hands (distributed in class)
(class meets @ the Sallie Bingham Archive)

11/9 Cyber-class (Post #11 on the ‘zine you would create)

Week 12: Collective Organizing

11/12 The Combahee River Collective Statement (e-reserves) Sista II Sista (on e-reserves) the Trans-Justice Statement (e-reserves)

11/14 Guest Workshop by SpiritHouse (preparatory reading to be announced)

11/16 Cyber-class (Post #12 Due)

Make Something (Weeks 13-15)

Week 13: Impulsive Acts

11/19 Collective Action Experiment (facilitated by UBUNTU Artistic Response)

11/21 NO CLASS!

11/23 Happy Thanksgiving!

Week 14: Do You

11/26 Project Presentations

11/28 Project Presentations

11/30 Cyber-class (last post—on revised projects…due)

Week 15

12/3 In-class zine production.

12/5 In-class zine production continued.

12/7 Release Party!

Always: The Queerness of a Reproductive Frame

via littleblackbook


The Combahee River Collective Statement, Kitchen Table Press (1977)
Need: A Chorale for Black Women's Voices, Audre Lorde, Kitchen Table Press (1979, 1991)
I am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities , Audre Lorde, Kitchen Table Press(1984)
Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Stuart Hall (1990)
Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology (Introduction), Makeda Silvera, SisterVision Press (1991)
Punishing Drug Addicts who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality and the Right to Privacy, Dorothy Roberts, Harvard Law Review, (1991)
Big Boots Zine (2001-2003)

Always. Like the word between love and your name in a love letter. Always. Like the pastel plastic promise that your period can become cute. Always. Like an ahistorical historicization. Like the production of eternity without witnesses. Like a recurring nightmare of hoping you exist.

This essay, informed by the works above is the place where "always" splits. Always become all ways and family, heritage and reproduction become an appropraited means for photocopying the zine quality black print of the new world in the basement of the university at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Seriously. I have been tripped up by the meaning of "reproduction" and the persistance of models of family and heritage that show up in works that I find to be foundational to my queer reading practice. What to make of this? Well...why not make what I usually make...an illegally printed freely distrubuted copyright defiant interactive publication. (click on the brokenbeautiful press link to your right). That is to say what if the central metaphor for reproduction was not the heteronormative biology of predictable birth into property and was not mechanism through which capital generated blindness and a surplus...but was rather (in a very Benjaminian "Author as Producer" type of way) a photocopy machine, illegally used for a purpose against capital. A performative mechanism, making multiplicity that called into question the unity and coherence of the status quo and that had the lovely biproduct of making words and images defer/difffer (yes. in the Derridian sense as Hall mentions) from themselves...becoming ever darker, ever grainer, ever less able to refer back to something true...because of their relationship to darkness and light and the means of production.

Can that machine that is used to make the status quo again and again be used to make something else? And that machine is the photocopier and that machine is also the idea of ancestry (hear Etheridge Knight...on ancestry...on Me'shell Ndgeocello's Cookie the Anthropological Mixtape...and while you're at it think of the burned CD as reproductive theft...and while you're there remember that the references in this essay are a glass bottle family tree) and family and the possibility of producing a future, and the idea of being connected to a past.

In other words, what does it mean that Big Boots, my favorite women/transfolk of color post-punk zine starts with an issue (that I love) on mother's and daughters called (so that I cannot avoid this) "ancestry"? What does it mean that in Audre Lorde's "I am Your Sister" the lesbian warrior poet frames her entire analysis in the structue of family? What does it mean for the Combahee River Collective, foundational black lesbian activists, warn against biological determinism in terms of gender while being able to claim what "Black women have ALWAYS embodied...resisted"? And what does it mean for Makeda Silvera, founder of SisterVision Press to come along about 15 years later and agree "We have always existed" and "our children will know who we are"? Race, motherhood, generations and the production of the future are central to each of these queer projects...so are they...not queer?

And what about Alexis? Radical queer girl to the core who is avowedly obsessed with her mother and grandmothers and who even dreams about bald pregnancy and waterimmersed childbirth at least tri-weekly. Is she not...queer? What to make of the way she claims the very texts she is writing about now as legacy, roots....even inheritance. (I saw her buy some out of print original copies of the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press Feminist Organizing Pamphlets Series just this week!)

Well. Since unqueering my whole world is absolutely out of the question let's try this. Remember the photocopier. What if always split into all ways makes a way out. In I am Your Sister, I would argue, Lorde frames herself as reproductive not only through her status as a biological mother of black children, but also through her mentoring of poets, her publication of books, her illegal "public art" vandalist fieldtrips with other black lesbian mothers. So what if this approach to making...to producing art out of opposition towards a liveable future by embattled and indeed often illegal means is also reproduction. Stolen. That is to say, since reproduction is a means of theft to begin with (a means of making property, a means of owning the bodies of women, a means of reinforcing an existing labour hierarchy) does the stealing of reproduction (a context from which queers are excluded from and by) reveal something fundamental, a switch on which flip the script of power? Think of this especially in the contexts of Roberts essay which argues that for black women's reproduction...their actual choice to ever give birth...is criminalized under the law in this coundtry. Reproduction in this sense is not something other than reproduction but rather the repetitive performative act based on a long lost, repressed, supressed past and looking towards a future of unlikely liberation, the proof of the lie of an eternal status quo in which we are oppressed and owned.

If so what does this have to say about the function of reproduction in the narratives of nation and diaspora? What does it mean for Audre Lorde to write "Need", strongest statement I can find against the consequences of the way that women are used and owned and raped and beaten and killed towards the building of a masculinist black subjectivity (that i would call nationalist) and frame the statement as one that enables black women to build nation. What would nation have to mean for that to make sense? (asha bandele spoke about nationalism in similar terms at the Urban Tea Party during the 2005 National Black Arts Festival in ATL GA) Ferguson might be interested in this idea of nation that refuses the heteropatriarchal.

But do you see what I mean about this pressure on words...this distance from originality? So when Stuart Hall defines diaspora as that which produces and reproduces itself again and again while at the same time insisting on Derridain differance and arguing that diaspora cannot be an attachment to a unitary past, what can he mean. Aside from his schematic constructions (scarily close to that of the creolistes) of the Americas as the child of/land of the procreative meeting of Africa and Europe I think he means diaspora can be a process of zine production and distrubution...through which the violence of dispersal becomes a relationship to the means of production that suggests an alternative.