BALLAST | L’abécédaire de Toni Morrison
▻https://www.revue-ballast.fr/labecedaire-de-toni-morrison
« Écrire des romans, c’est faire apparaître les gens ordinaires qui ne sont pas dans les livres d’histoire. »
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Toni Morrison : aux origines du racisme, la violence du langage - regards.fr
►http://www.regards.fr/idees/article/toni-morrison-aux-origines-du-racisme-la-violence-du-langage« le #langage de l’#oppression représente bien plus que la #violence ; il est la violence elle-même ; il représente bien plus que les limites de la connaissance ; il limite la connaissance elle-même ». Le langage fait bien plus que représenter, refléter les choses et les personnes. Il est un acte, une performance, qui façonne violemment le monde et ce que l’on peut en connaître. Et le langage raciste, sexiste, classiste, n’est pas une représentation parmi d’autre du #racisme, du #sexisme, du #classisme ; il est le racisme, le sexisme, le classisme eux-mêmes.
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Ils ont tué son père, et les cheminots aussi… - regards.fr
▻http://www.regards.fr/culture/article/ils-ont-tue-son-pere-et-les-cheminots-aussiLa littérature est souvent le reflet d’un monde qui parfois nous échappe et dont on ignore les contours. Comme si nous refusions de nommer la réalité. Le dernier ouvrage d’Edouard Louis, Qui a tué mon père, réveille notre actualité sociale bouillonnante et désigne les coupables.
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Un art de conteuse
Cette conférence de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie est aujourd’hui (enfin, a-t-on envie de dire) traduite en français sous le titre provocant de : Nous sommes tous des féministes – traduction à laquelle les éditions Gallimard ont eu la judicieuse idée d’adjoindre une très belle nouvelle de l’écrivaine, intitulée Marieuses.
Le texte est évidemment tout sauf théorique et technique. Plus proche du ton des contes de Toni Morrison que du travail, sur un plan formel, de Judith Butler, il n’est pas, pour autant, anecdotique. Si Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie y décrit à merveille les interactions hommes-femmes, c’est pour mieux faire apparaître, sous la surface de l’anecdote, les structures profondes de la domination masculine qui enserrent, étouffent autant les hommes que les femmes (ce que l’auteure nomme du beau et triste nom de « déterminisme du genre », d’une « injustice criante », ajoute-t-elle aussitôt).
Si, comme dans L’Hibiscus pourpre, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie dénonce bien évidemment toutes les formes de domination et de violence mutilantes qui pèsent sur les femmes (la violence conjugale, notamment), elle excelle plus encore à décrire les violences douces, symboliques, invisibles à force d’être évidentes et d’aller de soi.
►http://www.regards.fr/web/article/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-feministe -
Massive New Database Will Finally Allow Us to Identify Enslaved Peoples and Their Descendants in the Americas.
▻http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/massive-new-slave-trade-database-will-finally-allow-us-to-identify-afriThroughout the history of the so-called “New World,” people of African descent have faced a yawning chasm where their ancestry should be. People bought and sold to labor on plantations lost not only their names but their connections to their language, tradition, and culture. Very few who descend from this painful legacy know exactly where their ancestors came from. The situation contributes to what Toni Morrison calls the “dehistoricizing allegory” of race, a condition of “foreclosure rather than disclosure.” To compound the loss, most descendants of slaves have been unable to trace their ancestry further back than 1870, the first year in which the Census listed African Americans by name.
But the recent work of several enterprising scholars is helping to disclose the histories of enslaved people in the Americas. For example, The Freedman’s Bureau Project has made 1.5 million documents available to the public, in a searchable database that combines traditional scholarship with digital crowdsourcing.
▻http://www.lowcountryafricana.com/the-1870-brick-wall
he 1870 Census was the first to list freed African Americans by name. The 1860 Census listed only the age and gender of enslaved people, and plantation records, wills, estate inventories and bills of sale often listed only the first names of slaves. To complicate matters, fewer than 20% of freed families in the Lowcountry adopted the name of the final slaveholder, so surname is most often not a good indicator of which slaveholding family’s records hold the keys to your family’s heritage.Because of these challenges, many family historians find their research stalled at the 1870 Census. Here, we have compiled all the records in our document database which positively connect freedmen with surnames to former slaveholders.
As we find new records, we will add them to this page so please check back often. If you find an ancestor here, we would love to hear from you. You can drop us a note on our Contact Page!
Discover your roots and unlock your future.
▻http://www.discoverfreedmen.orgEnslaved: People of the Historic Slave Trade
▻http://research.msu.edu/enslaved-people-of-the-historic-slave-trade
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMS1r8WHyoc -
9 Women Authors Who Pioneered Postcolonial Feminism
▻https://feminisminindia.com/2017/08/17/9-women-authors-postcolonial-feminismWomen in Asia, the Middle-east and Africa face double marginalisation on account of their race as well as sex. The emergence of black feminism as a challenge to mainstream white feminism that either marginalised the voices of women of colour or subsumed it within its larger discourse, was a watershed event (or rather a gradual process) in the history of feminism. Given below is a list of women authors whose writings have established the contours of feminism for us, as post-colonial subjects and as women of colour. This list, however, is not exhaustive and I have incorporated authors whose readings have helped me comprehend feminism better.
1. Toni Morrison
2. Audre Lorde
3. Jean Rhys
4. Nawal El Saadawi
5. Flora Nwapa
6. Chimamanda Adichie
7. Alice Walker
8. Urvashi Butalia
9. Mahasweta Devi -
Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy | Moira Weigel | US news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trumpIn truth, these crusaders against political correctness were every bit as political as their opponents. As Jane Mayer documents in her book, Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Bloom and D’Souza were funded by networks of conservative donors – particularly the Koch, Olin and Scaife families – who had spent the 1980s building programmes that they hoped would create a new “counter-intelligentsia”. (The New Criterion, where Kimball worked, was also funded by the Olin and Scaife Foundations.) In his 1978 book A Time for Truth, William Simon, the president of the Olin Foundation, had called on conservatives to fund intellectuals who shared their views: “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.”
These skirmishes over syllabuses were part of a broader political programme – and they became instrumental to forging a new alliance for conservative politics in America, between white working-class voters and small business owners, and politicians with corporate agendas that held very little benefit for those people.
By making fun of professors who spoke in language that most people considered incomprehensible (“The Lesbian Phallus”), wealthy Ivy League graduates could pose as anti-elite. By mocking courses on writers such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, they made a racial appeal to white people who felt as if they were losing their country. As the 1990s wore on, because multiculturalism was associated with globalisation – the force that was taking away so many jobs traditionally held by white working-class people – attacking it allowed conservatives to displace responsibility for the hardship that many of their constituents were facing. It was not the slashing of social services, lowered taxes, union busting or outsourcing that was the cause of their problems. It was those foreign “others”.
PC was a useful invention for the Republican right because it helped the movement to drive a wedge between working-class people and the Democrats who claimed to speak for them. “Political correctness” became a term used to drum into the public imagination the idea that there was a deep divide between the “ordinary people” and the “liberal elite”, who sought to control the speech and thoughts of regular folk. Opposition to political correctness also became a way to rebrand racism in ways that were politically acceptable in the post-civil-rights era.
Soon, Republican politicians were echoing on the national stage the message that had been product-tested in the academy. In May 1991, President George HW Bush gave a commencement speech at the University of Michigan. In it, he identified political correctness as a major danger to America. “Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States,” Bush said. “The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land,” but, he warned, “In their own Orwellian way, crusades that demand correct behaviour crush diversity in the name of diversity.”
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J’en parlerai à mon cheval • Feminist texts written by women of color
▻http://mamie-caro.tumblr.com/post/137474500134/feminist-texts-written-by-women-of-colorThis list is stil a work in progress, but I really wanted to get it posted. I have either read parts of/all of the texts below or they have been recommended to me. Please reblog and add your own suggestions to the list. Each time someone adds something new, I’ll go back to this original post and make sure to include them. Thanks and enjoy!
Books
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
Women Culture and Politics by Angela Davis
Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins
Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua
Aint I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
Feminist Theory from Margin to Center by bell hooks
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Medicine Stories by Aurora Levins Morales
Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home by Anita Hill
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith
Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions (Feminist Constructions) by Maria Lugones (submitted by oceanicheart)
Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism by Jessica Yee (submitted by oceanicheart)
Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks (via easternjenitentiary)
Nervous Conditions by Tsisti Dangarembga (via easternjenitentiary)
A Taste of Power by Elaine Browne (via tinajenny)
Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (via jalwhite)
I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism by Lee Maracle (via jalwhite)
Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics by Joy James (via jalwhite)
Re-Creating Ourselves by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (via reallifedocumentarian)
Chicana Feminist Thought by Alma M. Garcia (via eggplantavenger)
Queer Latinidad by Juana Maria Rodriguez (via eggplantavenger)
The Truth That Never Hurts by Barbara Smith (via sisteroutsider)
Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions by Maria Lugones (via guckfender)
Consequence: Beyond Resisting Rape by Loolwa Khazzoom (via galesofnovember)
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid (via wherethewildthingsmoved)Anthologies
Companeras: Latina Lesbians by Juanita Ramos and the Lesbian History Project
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism edited by Daisy Hernandez
This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa
this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating
Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critial Perspectives by Feminists of Color edited by Gloria Anzaldua
Women Writing Resistance: Essays from Latin America and the Caribbean edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
Unequal Sisters edited by Ellen DuBois and Vicki Ruiz
Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings edited by Alma M. Garcia (submitted by oceanicheart)
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (submitted by oceanicheart)
The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology
I Am Your SIster by Audre Lorde (via marlahangup)
Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture edited by Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Perreault, Jean Barman (via jalwhite)
Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire edited by Sonia Shah (via jalwhite)
Pinay Power: Feminist Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience edited by Melinda L. de Jesus (via titotibok)
Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire edited by Sonia Shah (via titotibok)
MOONROOT: An Exploration of Asian Womyn’s Bodies (more Asian Pacific Islander American ones here) (via titotibok)
Making Space for Indigenous Feminism edited by Joyce Green via jalwhite)
All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, more commonly known as But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scot, and Barbara Smith (via jalwhite)
Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology edited by Barbara Smith (viasisteroutsider)
Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women edited by Stanlie James and Abena Busia (via sisteroutsider)
Black Woman edited by Toni Cade Bambara (via ancestryinprogress)Essays
“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” by Kimberle Crenshaw
The Combahee River Collective Statement
“Tomboy, Dyke, Lezzie, and Bi: Filipina Lesbian and Bisexual Women Speak Out” by Christine T. Lipat and others (via titotibok)
“Rizal Day Queen Contests, Filipino Nationalism, and Feminity” by Arleen De Vera (via titotibok)
“Pinayism” by Allyson G. Tintiangco-Cubales (via titotibok)
“Practicing Pinayist Pedagogy” by Allyson G. Tintiangco-Cubales and Jocyl Sacramento (via titotibok)
“Asian Lesbians in San Francisco: Struggle to Create a Safe Space, 1970s – 1980s” by Trinity Ordona (via titotibok)
“A Black Separatist” by Anna Lee (via girlsandgifs)
“For the Love of Separatism” by Anna Lee (via girlsandgifs)
“Separation in Black: A Personal Journey” by Jacqueline Anderson (via girlsandgifs)
“Separatism is not a Luxury: Some Thoughts on Separatism and Class” by C. Maria (via girlsandgifs)
“Coming Out Queer and Brown” by Naomi Littlebear Morena (via girlsandgifs)
“Internalising the Lesbian Body of Color” by Jamie Lee Evans (via girlsandgifs)
“In Search of Our Mother’s Garden” by Alice Walker (via wherethewildthingsmoved)Other authors and poets you should know
Maya Angelou
Toni Morrison
Alice Walker
Nawaal El Sadaawi
Mary Crow Dog
Zora Neale Hurston
Arundhati Roy
Zadie Smith
Dorothy Roberts
Nikki Giovanni(submitted by my bff maskofmaterials)
Lucille Clifton (submitted by my bff maskofmaterials)
Gwendolyn Brooks (submitted by soemily)
Octavia Butler (submitted by soemily)
Nalo Hopkison (submitted by soemily)
Trinh T. Minh-Ha (via eggplantavenger)
Ananya Roy (via eggplantavenger)
Paola Bacchetta (via eggplantavenger)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (via pitcherplant)
Andrea Smith (via crankyindian)
Ashley Love (via guckfender)
Linda Martin Alcoff (via guckfender)
Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí (via guckfender)
Staceyann Chin (via guckfender)Tumblr authors of color who are woc that you can follow:
Tayari Jones ( @tayarijones)
Roxane Gay ( @roxanegay)
Ijeoma Umebinyuo (@theijeoma)
Janet Mock ( @janetmock)
Maza Dohta (@maza-dohta)
@nudiemuseliterally so many others
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Édouard Louis : « Mon livre a été écrit pour rendre justice aux dominés »
▻http://www.revue-ballast.fr/edouard-louis-mon-livre-rend-justice-aux-dominesEt si l’on voulait parler des #valeurs que je garde du prolétariat, l’une d’elle, et sûrement la plus importante pour moi, est un certain rapport à la politique. Il y a, dans les milieux dominés, une sorte de rage dans le rapport à la #politique. Quand j’étais petit, on répétait tout le temps, c’était une sorte de topique : « Au moins, sous Mitterrand on avait un beefsteak dans l’assiette ! » On disait tout le temps ça, moi compris. J’avais deux ou trois ans quand Mitterrand est mort et pourtant je le disais. Et même si le mitterrandisme n’a pas été un âge d’or pour les classes populaires et qu’on pourrait faire l’histoire des réformes qui leur ont été défavorables, ce qu’on peut dégager de cet énoncé, c’est qu’il existe, dans les classes populaires, un rapport presque vital à la politique. Que j’ai gardé. C’est ce qui m’a marqué quand je suis arrivé à Paris : la politique, c’est vrai, a finalement peu d’emprise sur la bourgeoisie.
Vous pouvez vous plaindre d’un gouvernement de droite ou de gauche quand vous êtes bourgeois, mais la plupart du temps, sauf en situations très particulières, ça ne change pas profondément votre vie, ça ne vous empêche pas de manger. Je peux le dire de moi aujourd’hui. Quand j’étais petit, la politique changeait tout : comment se nourrir, comment se chauffer. C’est une des choses qui m’a le plus marqué. On parlait des APL, du RMI, tous ces acronymes étaient des événements mythiques qui bouleversaient le quotidien. À l’inverse, la #bourgeoisie, puisque son capital économique et culturel la protège en grande partie des variations politiques, défend la plupart du temps (dans ses institutions, comme l’ENS, l’ENA, Sciences po, ainsi que dans ses universités) une vision de la politique comme communication et échange : c’est la vision habermassienne, qui revient à une sorte de dévitalisation de la politique. Je l’ai vu en arrivant à Paris. Quand vous êtes privilégié, la politique est un plus, que vous le vouliez ou non, c’est une question de conditions matérielles d’existence. C’est une activité qui s’ajoute au reste. C’est un exercice de style.
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- Sartre engageait la notion de responsabilité. Houellebecq, au contraire, invoque son irresponsabilité. Il estime qu’un roman n’a jamais changé l’Histoire donc qu’il n’a pas les mêmes obligations qu’un essai, qu’un texte de « pensée pure ».
– Je crois que ce n’est pas vrai. La littérature, et les œuvres en général, ont un grand pouvoir de transformation sur le monde social. La vie d’une personne noire, même dans ses aspects les plus quotidiens, ne serait pas la même sans James Baldwin, Toni Morrison ou Édouard Glissant. Il faut considérer la société comme un espace où des discours, les possibilités et les façons de penser le monde coexistent et s’affrontent, sous des modalités différentes : la politique, la littérature, l’art, les mouvements de grève, la conversation. Je ne place pas de hiérarchie là-dedans, la littérature joue le même rôle qu’un mouvement social. Elle est donc très importante. La politique, ce n’est pas gagner une élection, c’est faire exister une parole. La littérature en est une forme possible. Mais s’il s’agit de ne pas penser, d’être irresponsable, d’écrire, simplement, sans penser à ce que l’on écrit, on se fait le porte-parole du sens commun, on se fait le sténographe de la violence du monde. C’est aussi l’un des pièges en littérature. Beaucoup d’écrivains disent : « Je m’éloigne de la théorie, de la pensée, je ne veux pas penser, je veux dire le vécu, je veux dire l’émotion, je ne veux pas comprendre, etc. » Mais si on refuse de s’interroger, on devient le relais des pulsions, et donc des pulsions les plus mauvaises qui agitent la société.
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Angela Davis and Toni Morrison In Conversation: Literacy, Libraries and Liberation
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/angela-davis-and-toni-morrison-in-conversation-literacy-libraries-anLiteracy skills serve as invaluable tools as we clear away the rubble in order to make room for a future peppered with the possibility of rebirth. Angela Davis and Toni Morrison explore this...
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What If We Publish Children’s #BOOKS African Kids Could Relate To?
▻http://africasacountry.com/what-if-we-publish-childrens-books-african-kids-could-relate-to“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” wrote Toni Morrison. Imagine a world with no Hobbits, no Aslan, no Dr. Who. These English mythologies, love them or hate them, are rampant, bold and provocative. There is a tendency for children’s books set […]
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A Villiers-le-Bel, les collégiens s’offrent l’œuvre de Toni Morrison | Ixchel Delaporte (Côté quartiers)
►http://quartierspop.over-blog.fr/article-a-villiers-le-bel-les-collegiens-s-offrent-l-oeuvre-dPendant un an, le collectif Fusion a réuni des élèves de troisième du collège Martin Luther King de Villiers-le-Bel et des étudiantes de la New York Univesity de Paris autour de « l’Oeil le plus bleu », premier livre de l’Américaine Toni Morrison, prix Nobel de littérature en 1993. Une expérience unique qui s’est conclue par la réalisation d’une ciné-lecture inspirée du roman. Reportage.
