In search of Saadia
"Over the years of fighting anti-blackness in Tunisia, Mosbah has herself become a living archive of the stories of suffering and humiliation faced by those racialized as black."
When Language Fails and I Exist
“What kind of man will you be?” they asked. But I had no plans to be a man at all.
“To exist outside a male-female binary is to repeatedly crash against the limits of language, spurring the creation of new alternatives.” - Alizeh Kohari, The Guru Who Said No
by #IanKharaEllasante
no. 7, The #Nonbinary Issue
Summer 2022
"I certainly do trans the hell outta #gender, slipping all over that spectrum like a droplet of mercury. This has been my vibe long before transition and it still is now, when I consider myself to be beyond transition. But to be nonbinary, in a sense, means that I eschew not just the idea that there are only two genders, but also that those two genders are polar opposites, existing at either extreme of a continuum or spectrum.
"For some, to be transgender means to move determinedly across that very spectrum—or from some perspectives, to leapfrog from one box to the other—which requires a great deal of confidence in the theory of gender’s binary construction. Such perspectives, therefore, make the amalgamated label trans-nonbinary an oxymoron.
"I mean, I give a nod to the binary. Hell, it is foundational to the extreme majority of social structures, for better or worse (Psst… It’s for worse. Thank you, #Patriarchy.) In other words, it’s hard to ignore. But can I acknowledge the impact of this theory without subscribing to it? Can I accept that this binary structures much of the world in which I exist while rejecting it as a framework for my own life? *bites nails* Of course I can.
"I can because I am trans-nonbinary. Though, depending on the day and who’s asking, I might also say I’m gender-expansive. Or gender-liminal. Or #genderqueer. Or gender-weird. Or, in some contexts—in particular when I think I’m keeping it simple—I might say something like 'my gender is in the middle,' although I’m aware that phrasing frames gender as the binary I otherwise and so often declare that it is not. Despite my string of alternative labels, the increasing prevalence of nonbinary nearly guarantees some familiarity, which makes it useful. Except that my gender—however I express it and whatever I choose to call it—is always already refracted through the lens of my #Blackness."
Read more:
https://pipewrenchmag.com/trans-identity-beyond-language/
#Maine #Juneteenth #AfricanAmerican #Genderfluid #AfricanAmericans #Poetry
#Poems #Poets #AfricanAmericanScholar
I wrote a thing. Bound to piss everyone off. But I still embrace it's relevance.
https://fallingintoincandescence.com/2023/10/31/afro-pessimism-and-palestinian-liberation/
@palestine #Palestine #Israel #Gaza #Blackness #AfroPessimism
We've been thinking in and through afropessimism and its identification of anti-blackness as foundational to the modern world order since we began Ill Will. Here are a few articles that touch on these themes:
Print version of Wilderson's classic article The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s Silent Scandal which (along with Saidya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection) first articulated the afropessimist position : https://illwill.com/print/the-prison-slave-as-hegemonys-silent-scandal
Onticide: Afropessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics: https://illwill.com/onticide-afropessimism-queer-theory-and-ethics
‘We’re Trying to Destroy the World’:
Anti-Blackness and Police Violence After Ferguson (interview with Frank Wilderson): https://illwill.com/were-trying-to-destroy-the-world-anti-blackness-and-police-violence-after-ferguson
Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope: https://illwill.com/black-nihilism-and-the-politics-of-hope
As Free as Blackness Will Make Them (interview with Frank Wilderson): https://illwill.com/as-free-as-blackness-will-make-them
