In The Predicament of Blackness, Jemima Pierre asks us to consider the relationship between the global distinction between the human and the unhuman along the color line. In this world forged by white supremacy, the white man is overrepresented as the human while the black person figures as non-human. These distinctions between the human and … Continue reading #BlackLivesMatter : #LuoLivesMatter
Queer African Studies: Personhood & Pleasure
I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am. —John Mbiti Let us face it. We are undone by each other. If we are not, we are missing something. —Judith Butler I have been reading bits and pieces of African philosophy focused on the problem of personhood. This particular exploration started when … Continue reading Queer African Studies: Personhood & Pleasure
Notes Toward a #kenyasyllabus
A syllabus is generative. The framework of readings and activities creates a shared space for thinking and creating. Objects of study produce shared frames of reference—those assembled by those objects may disagree over how those objects mean and work, but the objects create a ground from which to begin and a space to which to … Continue reading Notes Toward a #kenyasyllabus
Love Chronicle XIII (for G)
I want to understand the link between cum and tears I had been looking for you and when you did not show, the leaves changed their patterns, losing their vibrancy in an unexpected deluge What falls and cannot be un-broken I find you beautiful, also, a suitable addition to my collection of mummified love objects … Continue reading Love Chronicle XIII (for G)
Political Imagination
If your political hopes and dreams for Kenya were to be realized, how would you experience that Kenya? Describe a typical day in this transformed Kenya in as much detail as possible, from waking up to going to sleep. Describe a typical week in this transformed Kenya in as much detail as possible. Describe a … Continue reading Political Imagination
Moonlight
Water is another country. --Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return At first, the sound of water. Residence time.1 Black time. Black untime. The memory of water—the memory water has—the memory water is. We keep returning to the water. We keep being returned to the water. A face plunges into ice. Again. my … Continue reading Moonlight
Reading Ras Mengesha & Joyce Nyairo
The first section of Ras Mengesha’s The Other Experiment is titled “What We Were Not,” and it moves through scenes of ethnic, gendered, and sexual making and unmaking—declarations of identity in an impossible register (the Somali-named figure who claims to be Kenyan), rituals of intimacy truncated by violence (two men declaring they love each other … Continue reading Reading Ras Mengesha & Joyce Nyairo
