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.
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
Vous pouvez lire par ici. Si vous n’êtes pas encore abonné.e, c’est le moment. Par ici
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
Vous pouvez lire par ici. Si vous n’êtes pas encore abonné.e, c’est le moment. Par ici
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
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
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
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
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
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 :
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
Ce mois-ci au programme deux concepts, inclusion prédatrice et citoyenneté/propriété sont tirés d’un livre paru 2019 aux éditions The University of North Carolina Press. Un livre qui traite des stratégies déployées par les secteurs bancaire et immobilier- soutenu par l’Etat- pour discriminer les personnes Noir-es.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
The City College of New York Black Studies Program
Course Description
Women in the African Diaspora investigates the political, social, and economic experiences and conditions of Black women in the context of diaspora. This course will use global Black Feminist and Africana theories, methodologies, and scholarship to comprehend migration, the global racial and sexual division of labor, the racialization of gender but also its invention and its normalization/generalization through slavery and [neo]colonialism. This course understands the term “diaspora” both as the historical diaspora – Afro-descendants whose ancestry lies in enslaved Black African people dispersed through North Africa, Europe, and the Americas; and the geographical diaspora – the groups circulating through forced or chosen migration from Africa all over the world.
“We cannot, without running the risk of breaking the pan-African momentum, separate Africa from its diasporas: without Africa, the African diasporas have no identity; without the diasporas, Africa would lose sight of both the scale of its past and current contribution to our world and the global scope of its responsibilities” (M’Bokolo 2003; 6).
[Week 1: August 25] Introduction
Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in two acts.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 12.2 (2008): 1-14
Palmer, Colin (2000) The African Diaspora, The Black Scholar, 30:3-4, 56-59
[Week 2: August 30 / September 1st] Gender and its Discontents
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses. U of Minnesota Press, 1997. pp. 1-30,
Snorton, C. Riley. Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2017. Chapter 1: “Anatomically speaking; Ungendered flesh and the science of sex.” in pp 17-53
Suggested:
Butler, J. 2011, “Gender is Burning,” in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge), pp. 81-99
[Week 3: September 6 & 8 ] A Feminist Grammar
Collective, Combahee River. “The Combahee river collective statement.” Home girls: A Black feminist anthology 1 (1983): 264-274
Verna, Chantalle F., and Paulette Poujol Oriol. “The Ligue Feminine d’Action Sociale: An Interview with Paulette Poujol Oriol.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2011, pp. 246–57.
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. “Erasures and the practice of diaspora feminism.” Small Axe 9.1 (2005): 129-133.
Suggested
Tamale, Sylvia. Decolonization and Afro-feminism. Daraja Press, 2020. The chapter “Pan-Africanism in African Feminism” pp 369-377
Morrison, Toni. “What the black woman thinks about women’s lib.” New York (1971).
[Week 4: September 13 & 15] What a Body can do? : slavery, body and flesh
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book.” The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Routledge, 1987. 93-104
Prince, Mary. “The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave.” Black Writers. Routledge, 2020. 345-364.
Shaw, Andrea Elizabeth. The embodiment of disobedience: Fat black women’s unruly political bodies. Lexington Books, 2006.
Suggested:
Fuentes, Marisa J. “Agatha: White Women, Slave Owners, and the Dialectic of Racialized Gender.” Dispossessed Lives. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 70-99
[Week 5: Sept. 20 & 22] “Freed from slavery and free of resources”: the Plantation’s Afterlife
Hartman, Saidiya, and F. Wilderson. “The terrible beauty of the slum.” Brick: A Literary Journal 99 (2017): 39-44
Hernández Reyes, Castriela Esther. “Black women’s struggles against extractivism, land dispossession, and marginalization in Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives 46.2 (2019): 217-234.
Forbes, Curdella. “Between plot and plantation, trespass and transgression: Caribbean migratory disobedience in fiction and internet traffic.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 16.2 (2012): 23-42
Suggested:
Cordis, Shanya. “Forging relational difference: Racial, gendered violence and dispossession in Guyana.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 23.3 (2019): 18-33.
[Week 6/7: Sept. 27 & Oct. 6 ] Don’t Agonize, Organize: Community and Organization
Video: Migrant Workers in Lebanon Are Trapped in a Racist System / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFEui9JhMFI
Davies, Carole Boyce. “Carnival and Diaspora: Caribbean Community, Happiness, and Activism.” Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Duke University Press, 2008.
Brunson, Takkara K. “A Heroic and Revolutionary Undertaking”: African-Descended Women of the Communist Movement”. Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba. University Press of Florida, 2021
Suggested:
Larcher, Silyane. “The End of Silence: On the Revival of Afrofeminism in Contemporary France.” Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality (1848-2016), Lincoln/Londres, Presses universitaires du Nebraska (2018): 102-126
[Week 8: October 11 & 13] Black Women Black and State Violence
Kia Lilly Caldwell (2020) “#MariellePresente: Black Feminism, Political Power, and Violence in Brazil”, Souls, 22:2-4, 213-238,
Maynard, Robyn. “Misogynoir in Canada: Punitive state practices and the devaluation of Black women and gender-oppressed people.” Policing Black lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood Publishing, 2017
Suggested:
Shakur, Assata. Assata: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill (2001). Chapter 1 & 2
[Week 9: Oct. 18 & 20] The Border: Labor, Migration, and Racial Capitalism
Film: Black Girl by Ousmane Sembène
What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism? By Robin D. G. Kelley https://bostonreview.net/articles/robin-d-g-kelley-introduction-race-capitalism-justice/
“Black Women and Domestic Work: the Early Years.” Andall, J. (2000). Gender, Migration and Domestic Service: The Politics of Black Women in Italy (1st ed.). Routledge.
Mlambo, Victor H., and Sphephelo Zubane. “No rights, No Freedom: The Kafala system and the plight of African migrants in the Middle East.” ADRRI Journal of Arts and Social Sciences 18.1 (6), April, 2021-June (2021): 1-16.
Suggested:
Stephen J. King (2021) Black Arabs and African migrants: between slavery and racism in North Africa, The Journal of North African Studies, 26:1, 8-50
Rose Myrlie Joseph. “Tying the Apron.” , Alaso #1 Rezistans, : 20-27
[Week 10: Oct. 25 & 27] Ho Theory: Controlling Images and Black Women’s Agentivity
Lomax, Tamura. “Black Venus and Jezebel sluts: Writing Race, Sex and Gender” Jezebel unhinged: Loosing the Black female body in religion and culture. Duke University Press, 2018. pp. 13-33
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:
Magunbane, Zine. “Which Bodies Matter?: Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the ‘Hottentot Venus.’” Gender & Society, vol. 15, no. 6, Dec. 2001, pp. 816–834
[Week 11: Nov. 1 & 3] Family Affair: Motherhood and Sisterhood
Movie: Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash (1991 )
Hill Collins, Patricia. “Black women and motherhood.” Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics. Routledge, 2000. 450-461
dos Santos SB. “Controlling black women’s reproductive health rights: An impetus to black women’s collective organizing in Brazil”. Cultural Dynamics. 2012;24(1):13-30.
Bambara, Toni Cade. “On the Issue of Roles”. The black woman: An anthology. New American Library, 1970.
[Week 12: Nov. 8 & 10 ] The Beautiful Side of the Beast: Desire and the politics of Desire
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
Williams, Bianca C. “Breaking (It) Down: Gender, Emotional Entanglements, and the Realities of Romance Tourism.” The Pursuit of Happiness. Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Duke University Press, 2018. pp. 123-158
Chancy, Myriam J. A. “Subversive Sexualities: Revolutionizing Gendered Identities.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 2008, pp. 51–75. JSTOR,
Philyaw, Deesha. “Eula” The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Pushkin Press, 2022. pp.1-11
Suggested:
Johnson, Jessica Marie. “Black Femme: Acts, Archives, and Archipelagos of Freedom“ Wicked flesh: black women, intimacy, and freedom in the Atlantic world. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp.153-186
Oloukoi, Chrystel. “A Chorus for the Revolution: On Sarah Maldoror’s Radiant Call of Resistance.”Metrograph, https://metrograph.com/a-chorus-for-the-revolution/
hooks, bell. “The oppositional gaze: Black female spectators.” Black American Cinema. Routledge, 2012. 288-302
Suggested :
Steele, Catherine Knight. “Black bloggers and their varied publics: The everyday politics of black discourse online.” Television & New Media 19.2 (2018): 112-127
Wynter, Sylvia. “Novel and history, plot and plantation.” Savacou 5.1 (1971): 95-102.
[Week 14: November 22 ] Crossing the Border: Internationalism and Solidarity
Florvil, Tiffany N. “Transnational feminist solidarity, Black German women and the politics of belonging.” Gendering Knowledge in Africa and the African Diaspora. Routledge, 2017. 87-110.
Williams, Elizabeth. “The West Indian and African Roots of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain.” The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa: Black British Solidarity and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015
Wyddiane Prophète. “Suzanne Comhair-Sylvain, a woman, an extraordinary avant-gardiste scientist”. Alaso #2 Frontyè, : 62-69
Suggested :
Sudbury, Julia. “Rethinking global justice: Black women resist the transnational prison-industrial complex.” Souls 10.4 (2008): 344-360.
[Week 15: Nov. 29 & Dec 1st] AntiBlackness and the end of the World: Afropessimism
Episode: Black Mirror S04e6: Black Museum – Netflix
Wilderson III, Frank B. Afropessimism. Liveright Publishing, 2020. pp.1-18
Browne, Simone. “Branding Blackness. Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blaéckness” Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. pp.89-130
Suggested:
Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks. Grove press, 2008.chapter 1
[Week 16: Dec. 6 & 8] The Day after Tomorrow: Futures
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
Bon retour de vacances, ou bonnes dernières semaines pour les aoûtiens. Comme on arrive à la fin de la saison des injonctions au “summer body”, ce mois-ci au programme deux concepts tirés du livre de Da’Shaun L. Harrison, paru 2021 aux éditions North Atlantic Books, qui fait le lien entre la négrophobie et la grossophobie:
Da’Shaun L. Harrison Belly of the Beast. The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness