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Heart of the unliving4/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Part of why this oversight occurred is because of that hashtag in the title. ![]() And yet, here I was, rehearsing this violence. I had also read Hortense Spillers, who made it clear that this world needed to enact and rehearse violence on black flesh. ![]() Describing violence only helped to ease white consciences-which meant that, at the end of the day, the antiblack world needed suffering to both fuel its rage and its “progress.” Reproducing these scenes became the worst kind of trauma porn. Hartman refused, on ethical grounds, to reproduce the scene of Aunt Hester’s beating in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative if one has to rehearse this violence to spark some kind of empathetic response, then, in the end, such violence becomes necessary. It was not necessaryīut why and how had I done this to myself-a philosopher, a scholar of black religion, of all people? I had read Saidiya Hartman, who, in her text Scenes of Subjectionhad made it clear that a certain kind of (admittedly liberal) sentimentality had turned brutal scenes of antiblack violence into a cause for an “empathy” that, in the end, would provide little to no solace for black people in this country. Theodicean course in the name of a misguided ethical premise. Moreover, I had justified the importance of this That entire party are too evil to even comment on) but this was disgusting.Īnd then, I thought about my class. Perhaps to cover my bases, I should make it clear that the other person and I never liked Biden or Harris anyway (and, ![]() Thought, but when all you do is describe, you enact a theodicy. It hit me: Not only is description not liberation, I In his DNC acceptance speech, he said: Maybe George Floyd’s murder was a breaking point. The “justice” conversation always and already stopped at brutal description.Īnd then, Joe Biden took the cake. All anyone was doing was describing violence. Almost everywhere “black” or “African American” showed itself, sights and sounds of violence were nearby. It filtered how I read articles about the disproportionate effects of Covid-19 on black communities. It became the lens through which I watched the DNC convention and the presidential debates. But after I saw it, I could not unsee it. As a phenomenologist, description is my primary method. Description is not liberation-by which I take her to mean: describing violence and its conditions is not liberative. They need to see this, I thought.Įarlier this year, I stumbled upon this 2019 tweet from black studies scholar Katherine McKittrick. I thought it was fundamentally unethical to teach a class on the movement for black lives without directly attending to the violence that conditioned its emergence. I thought it was absolutely important for nonblack students to see the effects of their complicity. Before 2020 though, I thought this day was necessary. If you are cringing right now, trust me: I am cringing as I write these words. While demanding that all of my nonblack students stay. I show these videos in class, I encourage all of my black students to leave I say prayers before, during, and after class on this day. And when I say I hate thisĭay, I mean it. State-sanctioned violence against black people. (For those who are familiar with black religious studies, I turn to William Jones and Kelly Brown Douglas to do this.)īut here is why I will not teach this class anymore: theĮntire first module leads up to one day in which I show videos of Their lethal violence is necessary for justifying the goodness of whiteness. This is why, for example, police are rarely indicted-let alone convicted-for killing black people. This religion is the geopolitical channel through which whiteness and white people justify themselves. The state and its actors adhere to the religion of whiteness. Whiteness and white people justify themselves through the violence they enact against black people. This module shows whiteness enacts antiblackness as a theodicy. The first module is organized around what I call the religion of whiteness. To explain why, perhaps it is best to describe how the class is structured. By all external measures, theīut after this year, I doubt I will teach it anymore. Successful, popular, relevant, and effective. I have taught this course for three years. Racism” and the social ontology of antiblackness. Conversely, many nonblack studentsīegin-but only begin-to detect the distinction between what we call “systemic Many students-quite a few of whom are black The religious dimensions of antiblackness, particularly when it comes to Students are always engaged and, by the time we are done, they can articulate For the past three years, I have taught a course entitled “#BlackLivesMatterĪnd Religion.” The course is popular: I am a pretty good teacher, so the ![]()
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