Marriott’s Fanon, or Brevity on the Tabula Rasa

Classroom Presentation: Libidinal Economy Reading: Marriott, David (2011) “Whither Fanon?” Textual Practice 25 (1), 33-69. “Turning to Fanon’s discussion, we will see how the theme of the psyche and culture come together in the form of a mutual abhorrence that is itself a sign of a traumatic inheritance … “ – David Marriott, Whither Fanon […]

On “The Function of ‘the Black Father’”

“If black children were raised in an environment that focused not on bemoaning their lack of fathers but on filling their lives with the nurturing love we all need to thrive, what difference would an absent father make?” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/the-dangerous-myth-of-the-missing-black-father/) This question sets up a false binary: either we bemoan the loss of a Black Father […]

Three Notes on Foucault

“We must not see the constitution of natural history, with the empirical climate in which it develops, as an experiment forcing entry, willy-nilly, into a knowledge that was keeping watch on the truth of nature elsewhere … natural history … is the space opened up … in representation by an analysis which is anticipating the […]

Rural Wiggers II

I think when you grow up Black in a predominately poor white area in America, there’s a certain austerity you are made to adopt towards your suffering that can transform gaslighting into the everyday state of being alive. Rural wiggers have a different attitude towards suffering. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard describes it as a condition of having […]

Lucifer, son of the Morning

You are Guilty by Association Everywhere. Everyone will find a way to detonate your name to destroy what you have made there is nothing to be done about this. Let it fall down Let it die a desperate death nothing here is worth being cherished nothing here is worth fake love. *** Lucifer, son of […]

Four Notes on the Ontology of Fantasy

It is forbidden to forbid, said the graffiti tagged walls in May 1968. The paradox of Law. Law regulates without regulation. Darling, what does it mean to be free? Freedom is a dream made out of the seduction of the Law. We cannot pretend. The Law is seductive. The question seems to be whether one […]

On Unprecedence

On Unprecedence What has been will be again, What has been done will be done again There is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 Now is a time for bible verses. Panic always gives birth to a Biblical tradition. My father called and said, “People better read revelations.” Revelations were being […]

outside of theory. pontifications.

Disco. Funk. Crunk. PUNK. What is the theory behind Lil’ Jon’s “Yea!” … Lil’ Jon’s “Okay!” … Lil’ Jon’s “What!” … The theory is as follows: no theory allowed. Lil’ Jon’s “Yea” escapes theory as an attempt to generalize the thing into a homogenous whole. Difference and repetition. Repetition that unveils difference without end. Untranslatable […]

“But Worlds End All The Time”: An Experiment-Thought on Death and Contradiction

Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia enabled a philosophical meditation on Death. The following poem, “Index,” in specific is the index for this precis and “art installation” project performed in text below. A combination of performance poetry as the articulation of philosophical theory functions to immanently perform the deconstruction of the axioms of thought that ground the […]

Carcerality of the Heart

You’ve witnessed the cycles as endless returns – the never-ending request for change, the never-ending quest for improvement. You’ve come to believe you deserve it. This is revenge for a history of what they called abuse. This is revenge for a history of what they called manipulation. This is your karma – to be trapped, […]