Afro-pessimism, Gender, and Performance
CHUM 371
Fall 2021
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 370, FGSS 381, THEA 373 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
This class engages African and African diaspora critical thought and aesthetic production (dance, visual art, performance art, installation, film) to think about colonial dispossession, objectification, and reparation. We will address topics such as the repatriation of artifacts and other ephemera taken from Europe's colonies that are housed in the archives of European cultural institutions. The objects in question have been described as either artwork, artifacts, or anthropological fetish objects (depending on which field one engages with). How can we rethink our understanding of objecthood as irreducible to "inanimate" things but as also signaling a regime of imperial domination and enslavement that violently turned African personality into a status of objecthood? What does it mean to think about the object (broadly defined) in relation to loss and the (im)possibilities of repatriation and reparation? How does the Black performer's body's disappearance/remains endow the Western art institution? The course will encourage students to think about repatriation as well as certain losses that can neither be repaired/repatriated nor evidenced in conventional ways. In those instances, how do contemporary critical thinkers and/as contemporary artists help us rethink loss, mourning, as well as the promises and ends of reparation? The assigned readings offer ways to think about colonial archives not merely as neutral repositories of past events, but also as performances; as enactments of power, aesthetic value judgment, and hierarchical arrangements of knowledge production. The theoretical, art historical, psychoanalytic, philosophical, and creative reading materials engage contemporary scholars', artists', and activists' response to both the recorded and ephemeral archives of Black dispossession. Students are encouraged to engage in events and workshops outside of the classroom, such as visiting library archives, attending performances, gallery exhibits, and film screenings. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA CHUM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Frank B. Wilderson, Red, White, and Black
Assata Shakur, Assata Shakur: An Autobiography
Jared Sexton, Lucifer's Nocturne
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly blog posts, mid-term research proposal, final research paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Zondi,Mlondi Times: .....F. 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: CFH106; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 20 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 7 | GRAD: 1 | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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