On Fungible Fugitivity: Spoken Words to the Selves I Am and Have Been
““Just as Black fungibility is a form of gratuitous violence that is unending and unpredictable, Black struggle’s resistance to and maneuvering within fungibility is as unpredictable and uncontainable” (Tiffany Lethabo King).”
This spoken word is a sonic engagement with King’s insistence that Black fungibility “represents a space of alterity and possibility, or what [C. Riley] Snorton calls ‘fungible fugitivity’ (The Black Shoals).
Quoting Franz Fanon, Dionne Brand, and Lethabo King, this performance contemplates:
the hold of the ship on black life/expression
how to conjure possibilities of fungible fugitivity that center the connections and duties we have to those before us.
Ultimately, this piece asks us: who/how can we be if we use our fungibility to our own ends?
*Using headphones is highly recommended for your listening experience. Automatic captioning available.
References:
King Lethabo, Tiffany. The Black Shoals. Duke University Press, 2019.
Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press, 2008.
Brand, Dionne. At the Full and Change of the Moon. Grove Press, 2000.
My body, detained by imaginations held by the ship, “was returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning” (Fanon).
I remember what they called you, girl. I recall what they told you, girl.
Little black girl too dark to be lovely.
the darkness beheld you and it
was like magic in the way
it could make people see what was not there
and transform what was:
your shyness was quickly made aggression;
your beauty was not beauty
but eroticism.
Quite early in life I felt on my body the violation of another’s words.
sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words…
Fragment | bodies.
Is that why you, little black girl, looked for your beauty
in the groping hands of men?
In the amount of bodies
that would accept invitation into your bed?
Did you find yourself, girl?
Tell me.
Did you find yourself, girl?
Yes. I found myself…
while atop a man with groping hands and no intention to love me like I needed to be. Though I never intended to love them either—the swinger I was. I enjoyed many men for the simple fact that I could. Black beauty reigned in my bed: yes, I was desirable, and while on top, yes, I was in control.
But were you?
I kept men near me, but not too near: panting with pleasure, our blending breaths created one large sigh, our sweat pooled to form the body of water that kept us seas apart, our bodies sang but we each had a solo. As Eula laments in At the Full and Change of the Moon, “You live all the moments of your life when you make love and you live it alone. No one can truly be with you” (228) and for this, I was thrilled.
When I felt another body within mine, my own singularity became crystal clear. Through sex, I sung sweet vengeance upon a world that never let me have my body.
But, oh the horror
that plagued me
when I found myself
still
with the hold of the ship
shackled upon my hips.
Wasn’t I just everything they said we were? Unmarriable. Insatiable.
I told you. We were not fully found.
Swinging helped you hone your senses, but it did not liberate your body. Were you not still beheld by imaginations held by the ship? Didn’t men claim to be fucking you when you were certain of your fucking them? Were you not your ancestors in the eyes of the world—primitive, debased, with bottomless seas between your legs
Behold. The ship assails.
You, who I have been, were (not) who they claimed us to be. They rendered you Black and fungible, withholding us in a “space and state at-the-edge and outside of normative configurations of sex, gender, sexuality, space, and time” (Lethabo King) and we, all the selves I have been, thus saw an opportunity. We beheld our own bodies and discovered that they felt like the clay of the Earth, yearning to be molded. We relished in our fungibility and spent many hours ruminating upon the possibilities we could be. It was then that we heard
The ancestors whispering
from the waters within
you hold freedom in your hands,
they say.
Find your body,
and you will find us,
Form your body
and you will find you,
and it is in this
that you will find
freedom.
In the spirit of Obatala, I took the Earth’s clay in my hands and I shaped my body, reclaimed my body. I formed my body in the likeness of my ancestors as I honored the parts of them already within me. And so I recall you, grandma, and you, Margaret Alice. I remember, and I recall our/selves.
I took within my own the hands of my great, great grandma. Those hands that made me fish and grits at 6:30 in the morning. I conjured up every joint, and I felt the essence of her work within me. Breathing, flowing into every fiber like rivers of love. And it was love that Margaret Alice had for me. With her hands as mine, I set up my altar in her honor. I touch the world with hands that loved, hands that held Bibles, hands that brushed hair, hands that pulled herself from bed when her legs went away. I look at all that my hands can do and I think of Margaret, and she thinks of me.
I remember, and I recall my grandma’s Head, conjuring up the forces that connect our dreams. Shellie Mae, we are water from the same well. Both of us ruled by the tides of the sea, we dream powerful, raging dreams about happenings uncontainable by the spirit-world. Our heads connected by a moon-like force that beckons me, when the sun has set on your time, to succeed your place as true-dreamer in our family. It is Shellie’s prayers, I know, that has protected my path. Bound head-to head and spirit-to-spirit, it is in our shared ether that I am free.
And so When the world demands of my body that which I am not
and I find myself at the tip of forgetting
just who the hell I am…
I remember,
and I
recall…
Us,
You,
Me—
our fungible,
fugitive bodies.
— Jaye Similton