Bye Bye The Lexicon, bonjour The Lexicion !
C’est la fin du Lexicon comme vous le connaissez, en avril c’est un nouveau format et un nouveau contenu heberge par Line super plateforme qui vous recevrez. Les details seront bientot devoiler. Et pour finir, I’extraordinaire Saidiya V. Hartman dont I’un des livres [Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route] sort bientot (enfin !!) en frangais traduit par Maboula Soumahoro.
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On January 14th, Alice Diop was presenting her most recent film at the NYC Film Forum and the Africa Center. Critics and international festivals have praised Alice Diop’s first feature film for its cinematography, narrative, and acting. After earning the Lion of the Future and the Golden Lion at Venice, Saint Omer won the César of best first film at the 48th César ceremony on Friday, February 24. Saint Omer displayed a lexicon of shadowiness mastering the art of fragments—a cinematographic embodiment of Saidiya Hartman’s ‘critical fabulation’ methodology coined in her essay “Venus in Two Acts.”1 Although Saint Omer cannot be reduced to an “inspired by real-life” film, the film offers an acute awareness of Black subjectivities, silence, and its shadows.
Hello, La fin de l’hiver (qui ne semble pas avoir commencé) approche, la newsletter est consacrée aux concepts « délibérée mais pas conspirationnel » et prison fix tirés du livre de l’universitaire anti-carcérale et figure du Black feminist geography, paru en 2007 aux éditions University of California Press :
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
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Décolonial, colonialité, décoloniser… Soixante ans après la deuxième vague d’indépendances nationales, la question décoloniale est toujours (voire encore plus) d’actualité. Depuis des dizaines d’années, militant·es et universitaires démontrent qu’en termes économiques et géopolitiques les pratiques coloniales n’ont pas disparu : elles se sont recomposées et adaptées au contexte post-indépendance.
La Françafrique et les relations cordiales (et très intéressées) entre la France et ses anciennes colonies n’est pas morte, comme en témoignent les interventions militaires françaises dans le Sahel ou la survivance du franc CFA.
Lisez la suite ici.
Since its emergence in the French context, academics and activists have clashed over the definition of “intersectionality,” but also intramurally within those spaces where questions of legitimate forms of knowledge remain a point of contention. In this paper, I will map the paradoxical circulation of intersectionality by focusing on how the concept participated in the shaping of both alliances and antagonisms amongst and between activist organizations, academia, mainstream political groups, and the French State. This same intersectionality, which has given birth to significant intellectual channels of debate among scholars, feminists, and anti-racist activists (but also between scholars and activists), is nevertheless presented as a homogeneous and unified object. There exists another paradox: anti-racist and leftist political activists criticize intersectionality, arguing that it can be co-opted by neoliberalism or femonationalism. Yet the reality is that the reconfiguration of reactionary discourses in France has recoded intersectionality to mean “Islamist fundamentalism/racialism/anti-universality.”
Read more here.
Hello 2023 avec 
bell hooks
pour parler de cinéma, et du regard contestataires [ oppositonal gaze] des femmes Noires face aux représentations à l’écran. Un concept développé en 92 dans l’essai The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, qu’on retrouve dans le livre Reel to Real. Race, class and sex at the movies paru en 1996
“Spaces of agency exist for black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another naming what we see. The ‘gaze’ has been and is a site of resistance for colonized black people globally. Subordinates in relation of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that ‘looks’ to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating ‘awareness’ politicizes ‘looking’ relations-one learns to look a certain way in order to resist.” bell hooks
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BLST 31968 M[56639]
Black to the Future(s): Race in Science/Speculative Fictions
Instructor: Fania Noel
Spring 2023
The City College of New York
Black Studies Program
Course Description
Radical Black feminist futures construct a politics of the imaginary anchored in liberation politics, amongst them, the works of Octavia Butler, which simultaneously constitute speculative fiction and a social justice handbook. The Parable series, in which the heroine evolves in a post-apocalyptic and dystopian United States, incorporates racial, gender, sexual, and class power dynamics. Butler successfully demonstrates how race, gender, sexuality, and class still frame how power and violence are distributed within communities, families, and interpersonal relationships, even in an almost stateless context. Popular and mainstream screenplays fail to showcase post-racial/non-racial contexts by ignoring the racial historical continuum. This course aims to investigate [anti]Blackness, racialization and race in contemporary US screenplays. To do so, we will analyze a vision of the future as the grounds for the untold racial archetypes and stereotypes. Building upon Black feminist and cultural studies theories, we will interrogate the politics of the imaginary in speculative fiction by using Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower. as the guiding thread.
[Week 1: January 26]. Introduction: What Is and Is Not SF?**
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012. Chapters 1 and 2
Suvin, Darko. “On What Is and Is Not an SF Narration; with a List of 101 Victorian Books That Should Be Excluded from SF Bibliographies.” Science Fiction Studies, 1978, 45–57.
Recommended:
Roberts, Adam. The history of science fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
[Week 2: January 30th & February 2nd]. Disembodiment and office wife **
Film: Her
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 3
Ashley Bardhan, Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them, Futurism.com, https://futurism.com/chatbot-abuse
Winifred R. Poster, “Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy,” in Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, ed. Ruha Benjamin (Duke University Press, 2019)
Eva Gustavsson, “Virtual Servants: Stereotyping Female Front-Office Employees on the Internet,” Gender, Work & Organization 12, no. 5 (September 1, 2005): 400–419.
Recommended:
Benjamin, Ruha. Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (Duke University Press, 2019. Introduction p.1-25
[Week 3: February 7 & 9]. Silent and revolutionary dolls
Film: Ex-Machina
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 4
De Witt Douglas Kilgore, ‘Difference Engine: Aliens, Robots, and Other Racial Matters in the History of Science Fiction, Science Fiction Studies, 37.1 (2010), 16–22.
Trevor Richardson, “Objectification and Abjectification in Ex Machina and Ghost in the Shell,” Medium (blog), December 19, 2017, https://medium.com/science-technoculture-in-film/objectification-and-abjectification-in-ex-machina-and-ghost-in-the-shell-b126b8832a1d.
Recommended:
Sumi K. Cho, “Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment: Where the Model Minority Meets Suzie Wong,” J. Gender Race & Just. 1 (1997)
[Week 4: February 14 & 16] – The meaning of freedom
Film: Hunger Games 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 5 and 6
Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide:(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Penguin, 2009. p.11-44
Suggested:
Shakur, Assata. Assata: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill (2001). Chapter 1
[Week 5: February 21st & 23rd]. Monsters are Ugly; Ugliness is the monster
Film: I am Legend
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 7 and 8
Da’Shaun, L. Harrison. “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire.” Belly of the beast: The politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness. North Atlantic Books, 2021, pp. 11-32
Recommended:
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Philadelphia Negro. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Chapter 1
[Week 6: February 28 & March 2nd]. The Belly of the World
Film: Children of Men
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 9 and 10
hooks, bell. “The oppositional gaze: Black female spectators.” Black American Cinema. Routledge, 2012. 288-302
Hartman, Saidiya. “The belly of the world: A note on Black women’s labors.” Souls 18.1 (2016): 166-173
Suggested
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Chapter 1
[Week 7: March 7 & 9] Robot’s babies, Papa Maybe
Film: Blade Runner 2042
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 10 and 11
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book.” The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Routledge, 1987. 93-104
Snorton, C. Riley. Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2019
Suggested:
Butler, Judith. Gender trouble. Routledge, 2002
[Week 8: March 14 & 16]
Film: Mad Max: Fury Road
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 12 and 13
Said, Edward. “Introduction,” from Orientalism. ARC, Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
Farris, Sara R. In the name of women’s rights. Duke University Press, 2017.
IntroductionSuggested:
Farris, Sara R. In the name of women’s rights. Duke University Press, 2017. Chapter 1
[Week 9: March 21st & 23rd] [Anti]Colonial Fantasy
Film: Avatar. The Way of the Water (2022)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 14 and 15
Asenap, Jason. Avatar: The Way of Water or how not to make Indigenous futurism movies, Grist.org, https://grist.org/culture/avatar-2-indigenous-futurist-fantasy-no-indigenous-input/
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on colonialism. NYU Press, 2001, chapter 1
[Week 10: March 28 & 30] Encoding Love and romance
Tv Show: Black Mirror. San Junipero(season 3, episode 4) and 15 Million Merits
(Season 1, Episode 2)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 16 and 17
hooks, bell. All About Love, chapter 1 https://wtf.tw/ref/hooks.pdf
King, Rosamond S. “This Is You”: “Invisibility,” Community, and Women Who Desire Women” Island bodies: Transgressive sexualities in the Caribbean imagination. University Press of Florida, 2014
Suggested:
Browne, Simone. “Branding Blackness. Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness” Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. pp.89-130
[Week 11: April 4]White Womanhood Future(s) 1/2 **
Series: The Handmaid’s Tale, the first half of season 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 18
James, Joy. “Captive Maternal Love: Octavia Butler and Sci-Fi Family Values.” Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory (2015): 185.
Fuentes, Marisa J. “Agatha: White Women, Slave Owners, and the Dialectic of Racialized Gender.” Dispossessed Lives. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 70-99
Suggested:
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. “They were her property.” They Were Her Property. Yale University Press, 2019. Chapter 1
[Week 12: April 18th & 20] White Womanhood Future(s) 2/2 **
Series: The Handmaid’s Tale, the second half of season 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 19
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge, 2002. Chapter the Nanny
[Week 13: April 25th & 27th] The kids gonna be alright
Film: The Girl With All the Gifts
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 20, 21 and 22
hooks, bell. All About Love, chapter 2: Childhood Lessons https://wtf.tw/ref/hooks.pdf
Suggested:
Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. “Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future: Conversations.” Sylvia Wynter. Duke University Press, 2015. 9-89
[Week 14:May 2nd & 4th] The Day after the End of the World
Film: Pumzi
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 23 and 24
Schalk, Sami. “The Future of Bodyminds, Bodyminds of the Future” Bodyminds reimagined:(Dis) ability, race, and gender in Black women’s speculative fiction. Duke University Press, 2018. Pp.85-112
“What a body can do” Elsa Dorlin https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/what-a-body-can-do
[Week 15: May 9th & 11] AntiBlackness and the end of the World: Afropessimism
Episode: Black Mirror/Black Museum (Seaosn 4, episode 6)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 25
Wilderson III, Frank B. Afropessimism. Liveright Publishing, 2020. Chapter one (pp.1-18)
James, Joy. “The womb of Western theory: Trauma, time theft, and the captive maternal.” Carceral Notebooks 12.1 (2016): 253-296.
Suggested :
2022 touche à sa fin, vous vous préparez peut-être à voyager pour rejoindre vos proches ou avez déjà posé stratégiquement vos congés de 2023. Au programme de ce numéro le techno-capitalisme de surveillance, avec une technologie biométrique. Avec le concept de B®anding Blackness tiré d’un livre paru en 2015:
Simone Browne
Dark Matters. On the Surveillance of Blackness
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En ce début d’hiver qui a commencé bien tard (pas merci le capitalisme) au programme ce mois-ci, un seul concept qui s’inscrit dans l’héritage de Fanon. Il est tiré du livre éponyme paru en 2020 aux éditions Liveright Publishing :
Frank B. Wilderson III
Afropessimism
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En ce mois d’octobre qui marque la commémoration de la mort de Jean-Jacques Dessalines (17 octobre 1806) et celle de Thomas Sankara (15 octobre 1987) on va s’intéresser à la fabrique de l’Histoire. Le concept d’aujourd’hui est tiré d’un livre de l’anthropologue haïtien Michel-Rolph Trouillot paru en 1995 aux éditions Beacon Press:
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Silencing The Post. Power And The Production of History
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