notes: beyond labor towards a fugitive south
I wanted to avoid writing about the 2020 election for various reasons. I did not want to unthinkingly legitimize the u.s. presidency or fall prey to the emptiness of representational politics. but writing on the fringes of time—as a lover and chronicler of the past who is presently experiencing many worlds while looking toward many futures—I kept coming back to this moment. what makes this election a haunting one exceeds its usual discursive life in the news cycle. Rather, I am left ruminating: What would it mean to move beyond [black] labor? How would we have to think Differently about the south in order to realize its radical potential? Here, i offer my thoughts In-progress.
Note 1: presence/pastness of the [Black] reconstruction
every four years, the underbelly of an undying attachment to [the illusion of] democracy rears its ugly head. the election season produces mass delusion—idealized theories about the democratic process and civic duty dominate the tongues of politicians, pundits, and people in and around our NEIGHBOURHOODS. the irony of it all is that at the center of debates about the state of “democracy” is always black folks living in the us. how is that American democracy—predicated on black exclusion—needs black inclusion to legitimize itself? depending on who is happy/dissatisfied with the election results, black people are to blame or to “celebrate” for the failure or “success” Of Democracy. In turn, the pending State of the “democracy” leads to discussions about black (un)deservingness—a determination of "Humanness.”
this paradoxical condition is not all too different from what Du Bois argues in Black Reconstruction. The promise of democracy rested in the Black (men) PROLETARIAt—The general strike brought about emancipation and created The potential between black and white laboring classes to challenge a “Dictatorship of Capital” [1].However, the PERCEIVED failure of the reconstruction, thus democracy, became solely the fault of black INCOMPETENCE, laziness, and ignorance [2].
but that is precisely the entrapment of centering labor as black being. it is a being that is only made legible or WORTHWHILE for the state while SIMULTANEOUSLY rendering other kinds of being as illegible,
Note 2: ‘voting-as-being’/the [black] south as a colony
the [Black] south is stuck in its colonial mode. it is to be extracted from, used, and discarded. Last week, It was all the rave about georgia’s Black population turning the state “blue” due to the efforts of black women organizers. this Week and beyond, Many will remain silent about the lack of funding and resources organizers RECEIVED to combat the State’s Failing policies in their communities.
What I am trying to hint at is that the black vote has been framed as a kind of civic labor specifically tied to black being in the us. ”vote or die” means something different for black folks. Liberals use black history as a call to action to “honor” those who died, primarily in the south, while attempting to gain enfranchisement. However, for black folks who are trying to move beyond liberalism, “vote [or] Die” becomes “vote [and still] die.”
to vote is still to die. It is to still be denied health care. it is to still suffer ecological DISASTER. It is to not have clean water. To be overpoliced and killed for it. It is to have the truth OBFUSCATED, entrapping us in the US empire’s machine that kills globally. that is the kind of labor that folks beg for black folks to do. A labor that will ULTIMATELY kill us. but we must refuse.
note 3: radical potential of a fugitive south
If Du Bois thought the black worker in the south played a vital role in the promise of democracy, I believe that the black fugitive in the south plays a crucial role in the undoing of the US Empire. This won’t be done without the shoaling of black + Native Thought and practices. A true refusal of colonial modes of being, mappings, and ways of knowing [3].
Special note: the flock flying south
I want to end with the image that accompanies the reader’s initial encounter with this post. Pausing for a moment, I envision Hartman’s chorus:
The chorus bears it all for us…What Better articulates the long history of struggle, the ceaseless practice of black radicalism and refusal, the tumult and upheaval of open rebellion than the acts of collaboration and improvisation that unfold within the space of enclosure? The Chorus is the vehicle for another kind of story, not of the great man or the tragic hero, but one in which all modalities play a part, where the headless group incites change, where mutual aid provides the resource for collective action, not leader and mass…The Chorus propels transformation. It is an incubator of possibility, an assembly sustaining dreams of the otherwise.”
Hartman, Wayward lives, beautiful experiments, 347-348
putting both hartman’s chorus and the adage that “birds fly south for the winter” Together, I Offer the South as a necessary Site of Upheaval and rebellion. As politicians haphazardly NEGOTIATE our lives, the poles melt, global-capitalist extraction continues, and discord rushes quickly from the coastlines to the inlands, those of us who live in the many souths must be ready to “play a Part” to fight for another world.
BIRDS IN FIELD, 2010 by Brandon Thibodeaux
From the When Morning Comes series
Mound Bayou, Mississippi