#ADPhD

[africandiasporaphd]

Sylviane Diouf's DREAMS OF AFRICA IN ALABAMA: THE SLAVE SHIP CLOTILDA AND THE STORY OF THE LAST AFRICANS BROUGHT TO AMERICA (@oxunipress) #adphdbooks https://instagr.am/p/CeRy1HTFmRI/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[profstringfield]

Rhea: I'm really impressed with how much you managed to fit in this blog post. I think you're doing really impressive connective thought work here. I love the thought of Jane as an #AntiJemima and I think Johnson would be pleased with that comparison as well. There's so much to think about in terms of whether or not we as humans are computers (Simone Browne and Dark Matters as well as Beth Coleman's "Race as Technology" immediately come to mind). We would have to go back to even the 1960s, maybe further, to investigate the conflation of women's bodies with technology work. There's actually a great body of work on just that which I think you'd find interesting! Let's talk about it sometime.

Professor Stringfield

If You’re Black and Digital and Feminist … Well, You’re Kinda Screwed

Now I’m no stranger to the masterpiece that is Dirty Computer (cue the violins and the violas), but there’s something about watching the (e)motion picture in its entirety three years later that just hits different. Maybe it’s because I’m older now and can recognize more of the nuances in Janelle Monáe’s imagery. Or maybe it’s because her music tells stories that still remain as relevant as ever. But, for the purposes of this blog post, I’d say it’s largely due to my increased thinking about the relationship between our bodies and technology.

“They started calling us computers.” This is the very first line Monáe utters and it instantly grabs my attention. I’ve been taking a course on gender and digital culture where we pretty much discuss all things related to these two topics. And one of our recent conversations with researcher Nishant Shah brought up the idea that our bodies are actually a form of technology in themselves. He used the example of time to illustrate the notion that we, as humans, find it impossible to think of ourselves outside of time because that’s all we’ve been immersed in our whole lives. So, if we were to think of time as technology, we could begin to understand digital technology as we do time, wherein no one necessarily “teaches” the digital as a separate entity, but rather we view it as a form of ourselves. (Does this actually make us computers? Y'all let me know.)

However, much like with anything and everything, race, gender, and sexuality complicate our relationships with the digital by a lot. As Jessica Marie Johnson articulates, “for those of us who are black and digital and feminist, there is no hard and firm separation between the creative work we do online, our intellectual production, and our IRL selves,” making us kind of screwed. We see this clearly all throughout Monáe’s (e)motion picture as not only her visuals but her music become translated into stories that are personally indicative of her thoughts and experiences. What’s more is that Johnson refers to this synchronicity with the digital as a political process in which Black narratives are transformed into the various “lived realms” of our reality (Johnson, 47). Monáe’s Dirty Computer is almost a perfect example of this in the way she articulates stories about being a Black queer woman in a society that refutes such an identity, proclaiming herself and others who are “different” as dirty. This dirtiness, translated through dystopian imagery, is ultimately symbolic of what society thinks about us right now, IRL.

But Monáe’s work is both a reflection and a resistance to this current status quo. In this way, her identity as Jane 57821 becomes somewhat of an #AntiJemima, or what Johnson describes as a rejection of “the oppressive power of the iconic that tries to trap black feminist bodies, sexualities, and genders in roles of only, ever, and never.” This meant to be “laughing, righteous, howling, and unreasonable,” all of which represent the opposite of what it meant to be cleaned, and essentially stripped of one’s identity. Monáe’s story in Dirty Computer represents the freedom that Johnson dreams of for Black queer feminists. One that doesn’t aim to separate ourselves and our humanity from the digital, but instead extend and enhance what is already there, though may have been “unrecognized, contained, exploited,” or heaven-forbid dirty (Johnson 56-57). And that’s the screwed sense of freedom I like to think Jane, Zen, and Ché were all running to at the end of the film.

~ Rhea

---------------

References/related articles:

Jessica Marie Johnson & Kismet Nuñez. (2015) Alter Egos and Infinite Literacies, Part III: How to Build a Real Gyrl in 3 Easy Steps, The Black Scholar, 45:4(47-61). https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2015.1080921

Monáe, Janelle. (2018) Dirty Computer.

Shah, N. (2015). Sluts ‘r’ us: Intersections of gender, protocol and agency in the digital age. First Monday, 20(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v20i4.5463

[africandiasporaphd]

from A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa #adphdbooks https://instagr.am/p/CeN_dJpuiLn/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#repost @newgenerationscholars 🚨TOMORROW ❤️// INTERSECTION OF BLACK FILM AND LITERATURE// 6 PM - 7:30 PM EST// Join @ the LINK IN BIO for access to the FREE, African centered Global education platform at NGS!!! Also quick shoutout to all the folks from last week! Can’t wait to see you again! This course will use Black film and literature to examine love, trauma, and healing in the Black community. Studying the works of bell hooks, Ntozake Shange, and Baltimore’s own Angel Kristi Williams and Kirby Griffin. https://instagr.am/p/CdmYPMNFhgV/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

AUTOCHTONOMIES: TRANSNATIONALISM, TESTIMONY, AND TRANSMISSION IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA by Myriam J. A. Chancy @myriamjachancy (@illinoispress) #adphdbooks https://instagr.am/p/CeRyjSqFltz/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#repost @blackrhizomes @alexoteric #collageart #collage #collagist #cutandpaste #afrofuturist #afrofuturism #blackart #blackarts #blackscifi #scifiart #dadaism https://instagr.am/p/Cd726QxOM8e/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

Black World Seminar Seven | Fall 2022 | faculty convener: @jmjafrx https://instagr.am/p/Cdzc64ZslNz/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa's A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE (@harpercollins) #adphdbooks https://instagr.am/p/CeER5XUrlCC/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

Congratulations @derraiscarter! #repost @derraiscarter Most of us ain’t have the $15.3 mil to buy #TheSugarShack BUT some of us got 21 Euros to snag Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack. The book is a party, an album, a dream, a creative kick back. Come thru! Link in bio 🥹🥹🥹 https://instagr.am/p/Cd73WJsun07/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

Jamil W. Drake's TO KNOW THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE: RELIGION, RACE, AND THE MAKING OF SOUTHERN FOLK (@oxunipress) #adphdbooks https://instagr.am/p/Cd0bzUQrlXa/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#repost @electricmarronage #NewBlogAlert With text by Jenise Miller [ @jenisepalante ] and collages by Giana de Dier [ @gianadedierstudio ], “The Glass Cabinet” is a multimedia exploration of the experiences of Afro-Caribbean migrants in the segregated Canal Zone at the beginning of the 20th century. The blog features a downloadable pamphlet to further immerse readers into this exploration 🔥. Catch this multi-media experience on our site ElectricMarronage.com (link in bio!) ☔️ Keep up with the authors on twitter: @GianadeDier & @jenisepalante https://instagr.am/p/CdzcrglMMMx/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#Repost @renderingrevolution • • • • • • On the islands of Saint-Louis and Gorée, off the coast of present-day Senegal, headwraps were central to the self-styling of signares, a class of mixed-race women who reigned over these islands and wielded economic power through commercial networks and interests in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As the progeny of several generations of concubinage between African women and European men, signares used their connections with white men to their advantage. Travel writers described these women as expressing power through their self-presentation, most notably their headdresses. Antoine-Edmé Pruneau de Pommegorge spent twenty-two years in West Africa as a merchant and described the signares’ headwraps as follows: “They wear a very artistically arranged white handkerchief on the head, over which they affix a small narrow black ribbon, or a colored one, around their head.” According to George E. Brooks, this white handkerchief headwrap would evolve into a “striking cone-shaped turban, artfully constructed with as many as nine colored handkerchiefs,” and would become “the hallmark of signares in Senegal and the Gambia.” Senegalese model Khoudia Diop (@melaniin.goddess) was styled as a signare in Gorée, embodying the spirit of the women who asserted their presence on the island through their sartorial ingenuity. #renderingrevolution https://instagr.am/p/CFPWeKpg-F6/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#Repost @renderingrevolution • • • • • • While indigo was produced in the Americas in the 18th century, it was also cultivated in India where natural indigo dyes were used in the production of highly valuable Indian textiles such as chintz, madras, and gingham. One of the reasons Indian produced textiles were in such high demand globally in the 17th and 18th centuries in particular, was due to their popularity in the coastal region of the Gulf of Guinea and along the coast of central Africa. Cloths such as Blue Salempouri were produced explicitly for the west African market, where Indian textiles (and European imitations) could be sold by European merchants who came to African coasts for trade and for business in kidnapping and human trafficking. As art historian Cécile Fromont writes in her study of textile use in early modern Kongo, blue dyed textiles and gingham patterns were worn by “Mighty men and women of the region who...demonstrated their ability to negotiate a place for themselves in the new commercial and political systems established as a result of the Atlantic trade routes.” In her discussion of central African dress culture, Fromont analyzes this late 18th century watercolor by French naval officer Louis Ohier de Grandpré titled “Woman from Malemba”. The woman in the image wears fine blue and white striped clothing and has adorned herself with missangas, or beads, which were also a popular European trade item. As exemplified by modes of self-fashioning and practices such as bluing, the color combination of blue and white has a long and rich history in the Atlantic basin. https://instagr.am/p/CGVQf1Bgq78/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#Repost @electricmarronage • • • • • • Black scholars’ Tiffany Lethabo King and Therí Alyce Pickens responses to our Blog Posts. Check out our blog for more #marronage conversations. 💜 https://instagr.am/p/CHf2B9ngTAP/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#Repost @renderingrevolution • • • • • • This art installation by Firelei Baez (@fireleibaez )confronts gendered and racialized silences in history. Titled “Marie-Louise Coidavid, exiled, keeper of order, Anacaona” (2018), this piece features a striking portrait of the Haitian Queen—marbled hues of pink, orange, white swirl dreamily across her back and arm, contrasting with the sharpness of her crimson headdress and brown eyes. The ornate architectural elements of the piece echo those of Sans Souci palace in Milot, Northern Haiti, where Marie-Louise and her daughters resided during the initial period of Haitian sovereignty. As Baez explained in a 2018 interview with Jasmin Hernandez: “The narrative of the Milot space has traditionally been centered around Henri Christophe, but his main residence was uphill at Fortress Ferrier...Sans-Souci was primarily a residence for his wife Marie Louise and daughters. I like to think this place, because of her presence, was more than a site for adversarial watchfulness like the fortress, being instead a place for enacting black joy.” The title of the piece also recognizes Indigenous Taino Queen, Anacoana of Xaragua (present-day Leogane, Haiti) who challenged Spanish explorers of the “New World” and was ultimately murdered by colonial settlers in the 15th century. #ayiti #haiti #renderingrevolution https://instagr.am/p/CFHlXaQgVWa/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[africandiasporaphd]

#repost @jmjafrx "I propose a radical mapping of new diasporic relations..." Figueroa, Decolonizing Diasporas https://instagr.am/p/CGS0xT5pQaB/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd