A Fugitive Handbook
And so the maroons, taking their bodies completely outside the reach and ambit of the white European - but only in those places and spaces where the land allowing it. Mountains!—you having to have them and “I will lift mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my salvation.” Maroonage—the coming together of the exploited physical s/place—“place” and “space”—and the exploited physical s/place—“place” and “space”—of the body. Maroonage—the coming together. Creating something new—an inner space and place—s/place—of African self-sufficiency which the European, emissary of the outer space, and what Brathwaite calling “missile cultures” continually trying to penetrate.
M. NourbeSe Philips, A Genealogy of Resistance, 267
Queen Nanny of the Maroons. Keith Morrison 2018
M. NourbeSe Philips theorizes maroonage as the “coming together” of body, space and place. To maroon is to abscond from the outer space, and to forge an inner space, a real and imagined orbit cultivated for the Black body. This space becomes an oppositional geography to the predominate state order, it is, even if ephemeral, impenetrable to the outside forces of white supremacy. The maroon - through acts of subversion, mapping routes of escape and, plotting land - claimed place, and reclaimed their bodies as sites for the construction of alternative visions of freedom.
Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Keith Morisson 2018
The Fugitive Handbook serves as a response to the brave displays of black resistance and protest against the fungibility of Black life. Electric Marronage stands in solidarity with protestors who are demanding an end to state-sanctioned anti-black violence, police brutality, and global white supremacy. Using marronage as its organizing praxis, this forum seeks to offer a historical genealogy of Black resistance grounded in a Black diasporic framework.
Freedom as Marronage! Neil Roberts, argues, marronage operates on four pillars: 1) Distance, 2) Movement, 3) Property, and 4) Purpose.[1] Connected with Roberts theorization of marronage, this four piece forum will employ our rules in order to expand and engage these pillars of marronage with the past and our present moment.
How do you escape? (Distance)
What does it feel like? (Movement)
How do you steal? (Property)
Whatever* (Purpose)
This will be a four day long forum beginning Tuesday June 16th, 2020 starting with Guest Electrician Dr. Vanessa Holden. Please join the discussion this week by following @e_marronage on Twitter with the #FugitiveHandbook, or follow our page on instagram @electricmarronage for most post updates and engagement.
- Halle-Mackenzie Ashby
[1] Neil Roberts, Freedom As Marronage. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. 9