Mumbo – Architecture: Sketch on Structure, Performance and Resistance

There is a very important analytic distinction between structural determinism and structural conditionalism. The one who thinks structural determination is one with archaeology; The one who thinks structural conditionalism is one with architecture. This is a sketch on Mumbo – Architecture.

1. We are not determined by the structure; we are conditioned by it. Thus, even in our fugitivity we find ourselves in the midst of the conditioning.

2. Performance is always structurally conditioned. It’s generative dissemination find its condition of possibility from within the preconditions of the structure itself. If the structure falls, the performance falls. But the performance is not necessitated by the structure.

3. Resistance is a performance. Resistance is an immanent production from within the structural conditioning which can condition one into the performance of rejection of the conditions of structure.

4. This performance of rejection of the conditions of the structure is radical if and only if it seeks to undo the structural conditioning of the structure itself. If it desires to get at the “root” of the issue which always is the root of one’s own performance of resistance.

5. This distinction between structural determinism and structural conditioning is important because it is likely that the current condition of our structure conditions us to view this specific structure and then, more hauntingly, structure itself as necessary facets of existence.

6. Nothing is necessarily necessary. Everything is conditioned by the conditions which generate its being which may or may not generate a sense of being which can perform its being-in-the-world.

7. Even the Universe is a structure of chaos conditioned by certain contingent circumstances which generate its possibility. The Universe is in the Hold of these conditions.

8. Blackness is in the Hold of the conditions of Modernity, or rather the Axioms of Man. This does not disavow black resistance; it just locates the conditions of possibility for Black resistance within the structure of Anti-Blackness.

9. If Anti-Blackness ended tomorrow, would Black resistance go on? Would Blackness go on? Who knows. I have never seen that World because anti-Blackness has never ended. But, I see that Black resistance performs up and against and to the root of the axioms of Man. Black resistance is radical because though conditioned in and through this architecture of anti-Blackness, it performs a praxis of being-with-Blackness that seeks to de-axiomatize the conditions of an anti-Black world.

10. But, this performance does not exceed the Hold. It is done from within the Hold – which is the structure – which is what we at the Bottom, are trying to get to the Bottom of, in order to undo the conditions of its possibility which may undo this performance of resistance, which may shape the World into mumbo jumbo.

We want to shape this World into mumbo jumbo, into nonsense. For Black studies is part critique of Western civilization and part bring invention into existence.