THE
SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
I
OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS
O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart is in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.
—arthur symons
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned on me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and live above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.
—w. e. b. du bois
Image
Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
beyond blue(s), 2020
Graphite on paper
Whenever I read Du Bois I think about “double consciousness,” the “veil,” the “peculiar sensation” or “the talented tenth,” but the excerpt from Souls of Black Folk that you shared in particular, for me, is not solely about what it means to “be a problem.” It is Du Bois's plea of/ for the humanity of Black folx. So for this drawing I started to think about the humanness of emotion; how seemingly disparate emotions, joy, pain, grief, ecstasy, anger, rage, will, etc. manifest/ are expressed in the body in similar ways—tears, hollers, sigh, relief, release, unsteady breathing, etc.
I titled it beyond blue(s)—thinking both of the Blackness of the blues tradition (Black creativity) AND blue beyond our sadness, losses, and mourning, beyond our forced migration through blue saltwaters, beyond our poverty, beyond the blue police, our oppression, beyond being beaten black and blue, beyond our inequity is the cite of something else—the nonlinear cyclical flow of our tears, that at any tipping point could be a realm or frequency of so many different/possible feelings, bellows, wails, contortions, so many spiritual strivings.
—Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
INTRODUCTION
Romancing the Shadow
Anita N. Bateman, PhD
Audio | Anita N. Bateman reads Romancing the Shadow
The year 2019 was momentous. The 1619 Project, organized by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, marked the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival to the shores of what is now the United States. Meanwhile, Ghana designated 2019 as the Year of the Return to welcome African people dispersed throughout the diaspora back to the continent. It is also the year that the world lost a literary giant whose writing was so poignant and heart-wrenching that it single-handedly revolutionized the English language. Embodying both “Empress-Supreme” and “Magician,” this writer bent words to her will, obligating them to communicate the depth of Black life without pretense or apology.1
When Toni Morrison writes of ripping the veil in her essay “The Site of Memory,” she conveys it as a necessary breach and invitation to Black people to own their own narratives—to transform terrible histories, dangerous even, into power. In the nineteenth century, the veil was present in slave narratives, in memories and events too abominable to recount. In the early twentieth century, ruminating on the failures of post-Reconstruction America, W. E. B. Du Bois created a sociological concept that associated the veil with the line that separated Black life from white terrorism, i.e., the color line first introduced by Frederick Douglass. Articulated as the darker, or melanated, skin of African Americans, as well as framed as an inhibitory blind spot of whiteness, the veil is a “second sight” that stems from the devaluation of African Americans’ unique perspectives and self-knowledge. At some point, Black people are or will be made aware that Blackness has connotation; at the same time, Black people see whiteness, or whiteness is made transparent, in a way that it isn’t to white people. As a consequence, the veil is forever linked to double consciousness, and it is always relational.
Image
Fred Wilson, American, b. 1954. X, 2005 From the Exit Art portfolio Tantra
Gift of Exit Art © Fred Wilson
Operating in the shadow comes with a legacy of resistance, both in spiritual and ideological forms.
With the veil comes another aspect: the question of crossing over into the discernible, of bringing the shadow into light. In other words, visibility. Thus, the veil has a relationship to the gaze, with the gaze having the added function of looking. One of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of art history and visual culture, the gaze has the sociological and anthropological charge of making the world visually understandable. At the same time, its objective has been to obscure—to hide history (ahistoricize, dehistoricize), to overlook and erase. To veil without permission, and often without recourse.
Over the years, scholars have problematized this concept of visual accountability that the gaze demands for itself and its wielders; some, like Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant, have universalized the resistance to being known, calling it the “right to opacity,” for what is not visible cannot be trivialized, misunderstood, or exploited. This anti-visibility is not the same as being invisible, rather it is the power to operate against systems of imperial domination, including the gaze. It asks: How do we force the gaze to surrender? What if explanation were off the table? By enabling a petit marronage that can be expressed in the visual and symbolic use of shadow, the gaze is challenged.
This issue of Manual and the accompanying exhibition (on view at the RISD Museum this fall) posit that the right to opacity de-burdens contemporary work by artists who identify as Black and/or queer and/or feminist and/or non-binary and/or OVER IT—whatever sociocultural constriction “it” signifies. Opacity extends to artists who are simply not interested in explaining themselves or offering the emotional labor that is expended for inclusion. This right says, “I have given enough.” It also legitimizes and reclaims the shadow as a place of refuge, instead of being a place from which to escape.
The shadow historically existed on the margins. To be conscripted to the shadow previously meant to be rendered invisible or relegated to non-existence. However, this negative interpretation belies the complex position Black survival and liberation has to agency. Operating in the shadow comes with a legacy of resistance, both in spiritual and ideological forms.
To be clear: freedom doesn’t have to be a constant struggle, nor should it be hidden. It is, however, a constant practice. Black people, say “No.” Rest. Laugh. Dance. Disengage from emotionally draining people and situations. Take up space. Be vocal—or revel in the silence of your thoughts. Wear what you want. Invest in self-care and your mental health. Stop explaining your presence to people who would sooner you disappear. Validate your frustration. Code switch, if that makes you comfortable. Don’t, if it doesn’t. Curate your life. Live on your terms. Succeed. Be accountable to yourself and to the people you love. Practice simple refusal—and self-acceptance—with the mindfulness that you belong to you alone, and that is enough. These small things are radical.
“You are your own best thing.” Toni Morrison taught us that.
You are your own best thing.
Cover:
Excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903;
poem from The Crying of Water by Arthur Symons, 1903;
music from “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” (traditional)
Images:
Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
beyond blue(s), 2020
Graphite on paper
Courtesy of the artist
Fred Wilson
X, 2005
From the Exit Art portfolio Tantra
Gift of Exit Art © Fred Wilson
- Oprah Winfrey uses these descriptors in her tribute to Toni Morrison posted on Instagram August 6, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B01OMclhby2/?utm_source=ig_embed.
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