Black Affect and Other Pre-Discursive Expressionisms in the Making of Place
Topics: Black Geographies
, Caregiving Geographies
, Cultural Ecology
Keywords: care, black ecologies, affect, afrosurrealism, ephemerality, place-making
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 26
Authors:
Symone Antoinee Johnson, University of Notre Dame Department of Anthropology
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Abstract
This is an exploratory paper in which the author contends with what it means to notice and be moved by Black affect and pre-discursive dispositions. What methods of living emerge from the trials and errors of cultivating relationships and wholeness? What socio-geographic formations must necessarily be formed around such affectivity? In this paper, the author questions the role of impulse and intuition in the making of place through the lens of AfroSurrealism, a literary framework that attends to the absurdity of Black everyday life in experiences of two-ness and dysmorphia in the break and the performances of Black subjects therein. Care as an expressive mode and genre of social-political critique is a key infrastructural elements of such places.
The author examines characteristically ephemeral places—places that are taken down and put back up, re-formed, re-configured, re-imagined in each iteration—such as social gatherings, restorative justice peace circles, and community altars, places in which impulse and intuition are key affective and embodied elements that bring them alive through social action. These places are formed to allow its constituents room to experience feelings that they do not feel in their day-to-day lives but are necessary for their survival, and these formations often emerge from the realm of the impulsive such that there is no discursive meaning to the form before it is imbued with affectivity through intersubjective exchanges of feeling.
Black Affect and Other Pre-Discursive Expressionisms in the Making of Place
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
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