May 9, 2012
1.
Writing will save me. Africans don’t get depressed. Witches have gaps between their teeth. You are from a book. My friend fucked an ass like yours. In the porn we are making you will suck me off. Peaches can’t be rimmed. Nor plums. Teabags hold dregs. You pee standing up. But you don’t dress left. When you left I felt bereft. And then fucked your chair. You are sitting on my cum. Or the remains of a wet fart. Gummy. You wear white socks. I almost didn’t choose you. But you are cheap...
April 11, 2012
I cruise a black maze.
—Essex HemphillThe “emergence” of black gay men in the academy was marked by a curious confession: I have a white lover or I have sex with white men, as though intellectual legibility within a predominantly white academy was predicated on a desire “for whiteness.” (See foundational work by Isaac Julien, Darieck Scott, Reginald Shepherd, Melvin Dixon, Phillip Brian Harper, Robert Reid-Pharr, Samuel Delany. I take desire for whiteness from...
April 10, 2012
If one has been following news in higher education, one has noted discussions about “lectures”: good or bad, useful or not useful, boring or interesting. The topic is polarizing, so it seems. On the one side, those “lazy” students who want to be “entertained.” On the other, the “earnest” teachers who “must lecture” to “impart knowledge,” because they have “prepared powerpoints.” And, anyway, today’s students need to...
April 6, 2012
A good memory: in the 1980s, Kenyan women had discovered European and North American hunger for ciondos. Women would buy ciondos, pack them in suitcases, travel to Europe and North America, and raise school fees. In my imagination, the streets of New York smelled like freshly-woven, brightly colored sisal. I would accompany my mother to Kariorkor market, where I’d watch women sitting next to each other, chatting, sharing space, and weaving. Weaving was a communal practice...
When we touch, our bones clatter and clang,
This new music the only song we sing.
—Melvin Dixon, “Just Us, at Home”Taboo dominates Nairobi. Security guards still believe in the sacredness of bodies, avoid touching other Kenyans, touch foreign-passport holders reluctantly. Amsterdam, famed for public sex, touches everyone. Touch feels less offensive, as though the breaking of all rules justifies rule breaking. Our bodies do not belong to us. Touch happens in Dubai, as it...
April 5, 2012
If a certain kind of queer theory, emanating primarily from the English departments of elite universities, is dead, we need not mourn. What we have now is a plenitude of promiscuous engagements across disciplinary and institutional boundaries now remaking fields and politics in ways the queer theory of 10 years ago could not have imagined.—Lisa Duggan
During a recent encounter, shall we call it queer, I mused about the anxiety expressed by a recent book about the “state” of queer...
March 29, 2012
Grief is not apparel—Essex Hemphill
Yesterday, I swore not to write anything about Adrienne Rich.
Writing felt premature, as though grief could find a language beyond keening. I have never felt as close to keening. And so I sought refuge in twitter, hoping someone would say something, create a space I could inhabit. But it was too much, mourning blended in with comments about “papers to be written.” Adrienne Rich was the loss that could not be named, the loss named through...
March 27, 2012
#TrayvonMartin will not trend on twitter. Many have tried. Are still trying. But I think “trend” is the wrong word. For the past few weeks, friends have mourned Trayvon Martin, registering not simply “outrage,” but that deep well of the unspeakably familiar.
#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin
#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin
#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartin#TrayvonMartinWe return to the painful familiarity of...
March 23, 2012
How might one take seriously the claim that privilege is not experienced as such? I am interested in the argument that those who critique male privilege or white privilege mischaracterize the male-bodied and white-identifying/ied figures who do not experience themselves as privileged. Those who respond that they don’t feel privileged are accused of demonstrating bad faith, of exercising the privilege of unknowing, the ignorance of privilege. These encounters between the privileged...