What Exceeds the Hold?: An Interview with Christina Sharpeстатья из журнала
Аннотация: I'd like to begin with a question that invokes, for me, your first book-Monstrous Intimacies [1] -in particular your formulation of the "sadomasochism of everyday Black life" [2] and the representation of Black suffering.I recalled your investigations of the spectacle, imagination, and identification when I watched President Obama's performance at Reverend Pinckney's funeral in Charleston, South Carolina and I could not help but think of the compulsion to remember and repeat, this compulsion with regards to the funeral as a televised event, replete with entertainment brought to you by the US' first Black President.You reference Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection [3] in much of your work and you discuss the "staging of black suffering" in your essay "Blackness, Sexuality and Entertainment." [4] I wonder what your thoughts are regarding non-blacks' desires to consume the spectacle of Black deathfunerals in particular-and the role of both memory and forgetting in Black people's response to, participation in, and consumption of these practices and images?[4] CS: I have several responses to this.The first is that I'm not so interested in thinking about the non-Black desire to consume, produce and stage spectacular and quotidian Black death.I think it's enough for me to say that that is the case; that is the ground that we stand on, the space that we enter into.Your question, though, has me thinking about Amiri Baraka's funeral service, which I watched live streamed from Newark Symphony Hall.I was struck (but not surprised) by the number and range of people who came forward to speak.Poets like Jessica Care Moore and Sonia Sanchez, musicians such as Saul Williams, activists, and, of course, Ras Baraka.And I was struck as well by the musical performances and the testament to Baraka's profound influence in the world, in Newark, and Newark in the world.I remember very well the sound of people speaking (how they spoke as well as what they said), the activists who got up to speak, and in particular the sound of Savion Glover's dance for Baraka.I don't know if you saw it, but Savion Glover performs a tap dance and in that dance was the sound of mourning and joy and presence and it was all there.It was completely gorgeous and moving and life giving.As I watched the funeral for Rev. Pinckney, Baraka's funeral was somewhere in the back of my mind, disturbing my mind.Of course, Pinckney's service was religious and Baraka's was secular; I knew why Barack Obama delivered the so-called eulogy for Rev. Pinckney's funeral and I say so-called eulogy because it wasn't a eulogy, it was a political speech.[5] ST: Yes, exactly.[6] CS: But I really wanted him not to deliver that speech.I wanted him, if he was going to be there, to stay in the audience to greet the family, to comfort the family, and to sit in the audience and listen, but of course he didn't.When he took the stage he gave the same one note performance that I think he always gives when it comes to Black people.It's the sort of note that sutures Black suffering to romance and redemption.The note of a more perfect union, the note of unhearable Black suffering.The note of romance of empire.There's a moment when I watched-and I didn't want to watch, but I was compelled to watch the funeral, to watch his eulogy-there was this moment as I watched his face that looked as if he was deciding what he was going to do next and then it became clearer to me that, oh my god, he's going to sing.And that line from Invisible Man kept going through my head, "the Brother does not sing!" [5] I tweeted that because I could and couldn't believe he was actually going to do that.And then, of course, when he sings it's the opposite of Glover's tapping.For that reason, it seemed to me that he had to sing "Amazing Grace" because "Amazing Grace" is precisely that...unhearable Black suffering.It's precisely that song of romance and redemption because we know John Newton's history, that he keeps working on the slavers after his conversion and it's only later that he writes "Amazing Grace."[7] I'm going to digress here and say that because I presented on a panel at the Black Portraiture Conference in Florence, Italy, I had the opportunity to attend the Venice Biennale.I wanted to go this year because it was curated by Okwui Enwezor and the title was All The World's Futures.It was my first time in Italy and given the crossings, sinkings, and drownings in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, Venice, is a beautiful space and a deeply fraught space.On this day we decided not to go to either of the two main exhibition sites-the Arsenale or the Giardini-but to some of the other exhibition spaces.It's prohibitively expensive for countries to be in the main exhibition space so many pavilions are off-site.We saw a sign for the "Scottish and Venice Pavilion" and decided to go there.Once we're inside we realize that the theme of the Pavilion is "The Slave's Lament" and we are, to say the least, trepidatious.The
Год издания: 2016
Авторы: Selamawit Terrefe
Издательство: Bowling Green State University
Источник: Rhizomes Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge
Открытый доступ: diamond
Выпуск: 29
Страницы: 1–1