Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

someone talk to me abt why ppl are saying "bodies" as in "black bodies" instead of "people"

― lag∞n, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 3:28 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also seen this as "trans bodies," "queer bodies," etc--was explained to me that "bodies" *centers* the dehumanization of the subject

"female bodies"

i think this approach doesnt really "get" how language works but i cld be wrong

i know you already saw it since you linked to the article, but

Q:There are two terms invoked constantly throughout the book: “body” and “plunder.” There is a physicality to both, a totality in each when you use them, that is terrifying. I’m interested in this idea of choosing the word “black body” as opposed to saying, “the black mind” or “the black soul.”

A: I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don’t think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don’t think it is. It’s just true.

Q: It’s your vessel.

A: But not even your vessel. It’s the thing. The body is the mind. The mind is housed, as far as we know, within an organ—the brain. The brain is part of the body. And when people speak about the soul, they are speaking about certain sensations that they feel as a result of nerves and other organ systems within the body. For me specifically, not really coming out of a religious tradition, that’s how I understand black people. It very much clarifies for me the idea of physical violence. There is a tradition within black America, that I quarrel with, that says: They can do things to our body, but they can’t really trap our minds. I disagree with that. Every assault upon the body is, in fact, also an assault upon the mind. I don’t think there is any way to get away from that.

Freddie ‏@freddiedeboer 2h2 hours ago

Please, inform me: what level of overwrought hagiography am I meant to achieve in order to properly signal my moral character?

I'mm violating my own advice by de boring is hard to resist

xxp yes that's another note to the academic rhetoric too: 'bodies' stands in for references to the worst that can be done because in that context there's nothing worse to be done than something done to a body

i know you already saw it since you linked to the article, but

― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Wednesday, July 15, 2015 12:05 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i didnt get that far

A: But not even your vessel. It’s the thing. The body is the mind. The mind is housed, as far as we know, within an organ—the brain. The brain is part of the body. And when people speak about the soul, they are speaking about certain sensations that they feel as a result of nerves and other organ systems within the body.

basically redefining body to mean person

i think using "bodies" instead of "people" or "subjects" is one of those things that attempts to reflect dehumanization but ends up seeming to enact it, at least for me. TNC's idea that it's about grounding the subject in materiality to call attention to the urgency of political struggle makes sense, but i think other writers who use it are less deliberate about their ontological positions. i guess also i am resistant to framing oppression as being at the core of identity: it's something that happens to people, and shapes them, but doesn't produce their subjectivity in some ultimate way, as postmodernists, i think, will sometimes claim as a challenge to the cartesian subject. so maybe i disagree with TNC's materialist ontology too

basically redefining body to mean person

why would anybody do this

"bodies" will always remind of flattened out art/dance/poetry criticism that reduced humans to objects in a landscape (i.e. "Bodies moving through space")

"the body" was a term of critical fascination in lit studies, idk, 15-20 years ago?

heyo

https://granta.com/issues/granta-39-the-body-3/

xp to get rid of this nonsense about souls and bodies as vessels for something else

i think it's foucault's fault

There is a tradition within black America, that I quarrel with, that says: They can do things to our body, but they can’t really trap our minds.

This same dualism has historically been used to justify slavery by suggesting that the harm of slavery "only" happens to the body. From Seneca:

It is a mistake to think that slavery goes all the way down into a man. The better part of him remains outside it. The body belongs to the master and is subject to him, but the soul is autonomous, and is so free that it cannot be held by any prison....It is the body that luck has given over to the master; this he buys and sells; that interior part cannot be handed over as property.

Yeah but phenomenologically we don't experience ourselves as just bodies, even if we believe only our body is ultimately real, ya know? Also casting off the soul is nice and all, but I don't understand the necessity of this for emancipatory struggle. It's a huge paradigm shift but what's the payoff? How will this understanding help people fight injustice? It seems just as likely to do the opposite

Ah sorry, xp to flappy bird

think i've seen that use of 'bodies' traced back to douglass, as foregrounding certain things about the specific embodiedness of african-american experience and the constitution of blackness, i could be wrong w/ that vague detail but it certainly long predates postmodernism in some guise

I think there's some foucaultian biopolitics stuff in its genealogy too

Xp jmm, interesting passage. But materialist monism could also be used to justify slavery, e.g. people are just their social condition, there is no inherent right to freedom that society should acknowledge. The whole doctrine of human rights is founded on an implicit dualism, or an idea of an inherent value or dignity in human nature that makes things like slavery abominable. It's just hard for me to see either position as inherently progressive.

Or inherently regressive. The relationship between these kinds of questions and politics always seems obscure and indirect to me

i think using "bodies" instead of "people" or "subjects" is one of those things that attempts to reflect dehumanization but ends up seeming to enact it, at least for me.

Agree with this. Also, I don't think they're connected, but it links up in my mind with dudes who refer to women as "females," something that's always creeped me out.

xp yeah of course and i think douglass discusses how in even a lot of the white pro-african american discourse during and shortly after slavery (and beyond in different ways) is about how ~interesting~ it is that african/afrodiasporic culture didn't fit in the bounds of european/american rationality. so, yes, it is complicated

xps i don't think stoic philosophy has historically been used to justify slavery...?
more like the opposite if anything
provided techniques & language for humans to think of/ experience themselves as not slaves to another, subject to another's will, but masters of themselves, sovereign subjects
a way for the powerless to find/create/claim for themselves a space of autonomy (even if only in "the mind")
epictetus was a slave

i think using "bodies" instead of "people" or "subjects" is one of those things that attempts to reflect dehumanization but ends up seeming to enact it, at least for me. TNC's idea that it's about grounding the subject in materiality to call attention to the urgency of political struggle makes sense, but i think other writers who use it are less deliberate about their ontological positions. i guess also i am resistant to framing oppression as being at the core of identity: it's something that happens to people, and shapes them, but doesn't produce their subjectivity in some ultimate way, as postmodernists, i think, will sometimes claim as a challenge to the cartesian subject. so maybe i disagree with TNC's materialist ontology too

― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:19 (24 minutes ago) Perm

My approximation of how black studies would respond to this is that the slave class--which is contiguous with the system now referred to as blackness--is denied a subjectivity; the Cartesian subject is a white subject. The structures of race are themselves ontological

i don't think deciding bodies have inalienable rights is any more of a leap of faith or any less defensible than deciding whatever spooky stuff you think is inside the body has them

my body is full of ghosts

http://www.incognegro.org/afro_pessimism.html

"Accumulation" is replacing "intersectionality" I am told

updates xls

...how?

Oops I mean "assembledge"--I just read accumulation in that piece I linked

lagOOOoooOOOoon

Idk man because sometimes the conceptual focus in critical theory changes over time?

the ghosts demand new words to feast on

I believe it's a deleuze/guattari deal

lagOOOoooOOOoon

― Trap Queenius (wins), Wednesday, July 15, 2015 1:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_macgdfyqFW1rwmb58.gif

https://sequelsprequels.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/tumblr_inline_n4pmyequek1svujri.gif

http://i.imgur.com/cPkwGfA.png

freddie backlash in full swing

I also misspelled "assemblage"--sorry working from my phone

ah ok

is it supposed to be in french pronunciation like "differance"

xps treeship otm upthread re tnc's anti-cartesian materialist ontology
i understand tnc's reasons for using this language, identifying person/self = body
but ultimately that reductive equation is no less metaphorical in its way, no less a philosophical fiction, than cartesian metaphors
yes it may be philosophically (or politically) clarifying in certain context, & powerful, used for deliberate reasons as tnc does,
but as pervasive locution--
imo maybe confused/confusing, maybe ultimately counterproductive

xps i don't think stoic philosophy has historically been used to justify slavery...?

Yeah, I plucked this passage out of a Bernard Williams essay without knowing its proper context. Looking it up, it's not exactly a justification. Seneca's arguing that slave and slaveowner are, in their essence, equivalent beings and that there are limits to what a slaveowner can "own" in a slave. The slaveowner can't compel crimes or treason since the slave is his/her own moral being. So you could say he's cordoning off what can justifiably be done to slaves from what can't, not justifying the practice as such. I'm not sure if he thinks it needs justification as such.

Roman slavery was p different from colonial-era slavery in some obvious ways

Is drash just ignoring my post or

(that's the same kind of reasoning clarence thomas employed in his recent opinion, i think. historically disagreements with stoic-style thought about things like slavery have stemmed more from their being insufficiently disposed to effect social change, possibly in light of being inappropriately satisfied with ethical ideals indifferent to the status quo.)

not ignoring, just crossposted
(have to think about it)

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/looking-white-in-the-face/

Postmodern theory tries to interrupt that expression at every stop, to put every word in scare quotes, to put our own presuppositions into question, to make us worry about the murderousness of “we,” and so to get in the habit of asking, “we, who?” I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.