Africa World Now Project

"“We are surrounded. We who are in the academy, looking for community, like June Jordan and her students in 1969, are still surrounded. We have also made it inside the gate, but we are now cornered. This place, the university, is the destination, they said. We were told that we had to be inside or else. And now that we are here, they lie to us. Just as they lied to Jordan’s students. Just as they lied to the Black professors they hired when they demanded teachers less likely to lie. Just as they lied to the Black teachers who went to college in order to teach those Black professors long before 1969. They lied about us. About why we are here, how we got here, and what it means to be here. Although they would eventually again shut the gates, some of us made it through and have been here for a long time now. Which means we have listened to these lies for a long time now. The lies have changed. But they are still lies. Every now and then, there is a slip, an exposure, a seam opens. We seize on those moments because the lie that sustains what Jordan called this system’s “exploitation of human life, for material gain” cannot exist forever." What you will hear next is a critical exploration of Chapter 1 – Of Hesitance: WEB Du Bois with Nathalie Frédéric Pierre. For Du Bois, Myers suggests, was a desire to reveal the inadequacy of the prevailing norms of scientific inquiry, both on their own terms as well as their ability to reveal the Truth of the Black experience. His work continued a process of thinking beyond discipline, beyond even interdisciplines, in order to access that, Truth. In that conception, Du Bois would have heirs who would take this further. His example was foundational to how they regarded the world. And just as Of Black Study grapples with Du Bois’s legacy in ways that are different from those texts that seek to exalt him as the founding father of several disciplines, it connects his confrontation with those disciplines to a genealogy of Black thinkers who extended his example in the early days of Black Studies” [9]. Expanding and stretching this premise, you will hear a conversation we had with Nathalie Pierre. Nathalie Frédéric Pierre is an Assistant Professor of History at Howard University. She earned her PhD in the history of the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America from New York University. In the classroom and within her research agenda, Professor Pierre highlights the plans and processes people of African descent set into motion in order to sustain sites of autonomy across the Americas. She is currently writing her first book, ‘The Vessel of Independence... Must Save Itself’: Haitian State Formation, 1757 - 1815 which articulates the political thought of Haitian statesmen, who were bound to preserve antislavery and create a government suitable for emancipated citizens of African origin in a revolutionary Atlantic world still reliant on enslaved labor. Her work has been published in The Journal of Haitian Studies, Cultural Dynamics, Remembrance: Loss, Hope, Recovery after the Earthquake in Haiti, and other forums. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of the City University of New York in the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC), a Black Studies Dissertation Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Ronald E. McNair Scholar at Howard University. Public engagement is a critical part of her work; and, after surviving the 2010 Haitian earthquake, she became board chair (2011 - 2017) of the Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project, an immigrant education advocacy group serving migrant Haitian teens and their families. She has given lectures in Haitian Creole and English to community organizations; while also participating in the Digital Library of the Caribbean’s online exhibit “Haiti: An Island Luminous.” She is on the board of the Haitian Studies Association. Image: Lisa Larson-Walker

Today we will hear from Sudanese diasporan activists who are maintaining vital attention on the conflict which has been taking place in Sudan since April 15. The human cost of this current iteration of conflict is immeasurable from those observing from a far, but very measurable to those impacted directly, whether in Sudan or in the Diaspora. It is vital we direct our empathy into action. Our compassion into measured and intentional activities that are led by those impacted, in country as well as in the Sudanese diaspora. The interconnectedness of this conflict impacts the entire African world, not just segments. The current conflict is between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Lt. General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo also known as “Hemetti”. The conflict continues to take a devastating toll on people across the country. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has recently estimated that an additional 2.5 million are expected to slip into hunger in the coming months. WFP has provided food aid to nearly one million people in 14 of the country’s 18 states since resuming operations on 3 May; the UN agency plans to expand support to 5.9 million people by the end of the year. Today, we will hear a recent conversation between Africa World Now Project’s Mwiza Munthali and Dimah Mahmoud. Dr. Dimah Mahmoud is a humanist, Pan-Africanist, and Actionist. Her extensive interdisciplinary expertise in research, cross cultural communication, political analysis and project management are reflected in the diverse public programs and conferences she organizes as well as the initiatives and collaborations she spearheads through her strategic research consultancy established in 2014. Her work contributes to advancing sustainable socio-economic and political development in Africa and the Middle East. She has consulted for a number of international organizations and is co-founder of: The Nubia Initiative (TNI), a transboundary organization aimed at leveraging art, academia and technology to protect, preserve and promote Nubia’s endangered heritage and languages. Dr. Mahmoud completed her MA and PhD at the University of Exeter, UK on Middle East Policy Studies and Sudanese Foreign Policy and International Legitimacy respectively. She obtained her BA in Political Science from Towson University. We will also hear voices from the demonstration, which was graciously provided to us by Sudanese American journalist Isma’il Kushkush. After Dimah, we will hear, in the following order, from recent Harvard graduate, Reem Ali, in both a poem she delivered at the 2023 program honoring Black graduates from Harvard and then her reflections at the June 3rd demonstration. And Emi Mahmoud. Emi Mahmoud is a Sudanese American slam poet. Emi Mahmoud has supported the work of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency since 2016 and was appointed as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in June 2018 after giving the opening performance at TEDxKakumaCamp, the first ever TEDx event held in a refugee camp. Born in Khartoum, Sudan, before later moving to the United States, Emi has used her talents to raise awareness around refugee causes. 1] https://www.worldhistory.org/user/dimah/ 2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biTJD9FLNf0 3] https://emi-mahmoud.com/ 4] Image: Tate, "Ibrahim El-Salahi, The Inevitable," in Smarthistory, September 10, 2021, accessed June 21, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/ibrahim-el-salahi-the-inevitable/

Delegates at the First Conference of Independent African States, hosted by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, in 1958, called for an “African Freedom Day” to be held on April 15 to honor those who had contributed to the anti-colonial struggle. Later in 1963, with the founding of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, African Freedom Day became African Liberation Day. At the founding of the OAU, Kwame Nkrumah stood before 31 heads of African states and declared: “[T]he struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs…unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.” The clarity of Nkrumah’s thought is further articulated as he was very clear to point out that while African peoples were throwing off “the yoke of colonialism” it must not be lost that “these successes were equally matched by an intense effort on the part of imperialism to continue the exploitation of our resources by creating divisions among us.” As a result, for Nkrumah, the imperative was clear: “We must unite or perish”. While the Organization of African Unity eventually became the African Union (AU) and African Liberation Day became Africa Day, May 25th still serves as a crucial platform for progressive forces to connect and strategize against inequitable and dehumanizing conditions. Moreover, while it is argued that the ideas and principles of liberation that propelled the formation of the Organization of African Unity has since been “removed in letter, and even in spirit, from official commemorations of the day” (Tanupriya Singh, “Unity is an imperative: reclaiming African Liberation Day, 60 years on”). However, the current global conditions, products of historical inequities inherent in racial capitalist relationships, have produced a more intentional focus on radical study that informs the work to address the false narrative of the ‘post’ colonial which is rising across the African world (see Kenyan Organic Intellectuals). Today, we explore the continuities of African Liberation Day w/ Obi Egbuna Jr. Born in London and raised in Washington, DC, Obi is a journalist, African/a history teacher and playwright. Currently, Obi is correspondent to The Herald, Zimbabwe’s national newspaper as well as US correspondent to the Southern African Times. Obi is also External Relations Officer to the Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association and founder of the Get Out of Cuba Way coalition. Obi is a Founding Member and Executive Director of Mass Emphasis Children’s History and Theater Company (2012). Working directly with Kwame Ture, Obi is the son of Obi Egbuna Sr, who was a Nigerian-born novelist, playwright and political activist, leading member of the Universal Coloured People's Association (UCPA) and the British Black Power and Black Panther Movement. Obi’s father’s book, Destroy this Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain, has been [re]released and is currently available from Black Classic Press. Shirley Graham Du Bois (1972) in her review of Destroy this Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain, wrote that: “Here is a book all of us will find extremely valuable. By “all” I mean every African, everyone of African descent, wherever he or she may be and everyone who is aware that something is basically wrong with the relations of human beings on this earth. (People not aware of this fact are either too stupid or too arrogantly complacent to matter)” (Black Scholar, 3(5): 58-61). Image: Members of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party march outside the White House for African Liberation Day, May 28, 1977. (Star Collection/D.C. Public Library)

this #thinkingblackoutloud session is from 2017 ... it was a meditation on the necessity of thinking through the dialectical processes inherent in the react/respond relationship [shout out to The Fifth Dynasty] . it is our consistent call to think beyond struggle, as we know what we are struggling against. we must simultaneously understand what we are struggling for. it's a prompt to find guidance in the world we see in art. we hear in music. we taste in our favorite foods. to see the beauty in struggle. and the beauty that comes out of struggle. the world in spaces between spaces. the world that moves our unconsciousness to consciousness.

Image: Amélia Araújo recording the works of the First National Popular Assembly of Guinea-Bissau for Rádio Libertação, in the liberated region of Madina de Boé [available: http://casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=05247.000.152] In this program, militant memory & the walking archive w/ Sónia Vaz Borges, we move through her work on the PAIGC’s struggle for liberation and militant education, paying attention to the contours of thought, the edges where questions were formed that guide us to push beyond. Sónia Vaz Borges [https://www.soniavazborges.com/] is a militant interdisciplinary historian and long-time social and political organizer. A daughter of Cape Verdean immigrants, she was born and raised in Portugal. Sónia is currently an Assistant Professor at Drexel University, in the department of History and Africana Studies. Sónia work focuses on the silenced histories of people, specifically peoples actions and roles during historic moments of sociopolitical change … the liberation struggles and social movements around the world and their internationalism and solidarity, in relation with the fields of education and memories, space and architectures, through the practice of anti-colonial, decolonial and militant research and writing. Sónia career as an interdisciplinary historian was developed in three international public universities: Lisbon, Berlin and New York. Professor Borges obtained a B.A in Modern and Contemporary History-Politics and International Affairs from ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon as well as an M.A in African History from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon and received a Ph.D. in Education Sciences - History of Education from the Humboldt University of Berlin. In August 2019, Sónia finished postdoctoral work at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CPCP) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, under the theme Consciousness and Revolution. Sónia is author of Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness: The PAIGC education in Guinea Bissau 1963-1978 and The PAIGC’s Political Education for Liberation in Guinea-Bissau, 1963–74 with the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Sónia has edited Notebooks Consciousness and Black Resistance and In the Dust of Waiting. Paths in the neighborhoods of Estrada Militar, Santa Filomena and Encosta Nascente. Along with filmmaker Filipa César, creative work includes a short film titled: Navigating the Pilot School (2016), and Mangrove School (2022). Sónia is currently working on her next project focused on The Walking Archives, the liberation struggle, memory, generation and imaginaries. Makaya McCraven - The Fifth Monk [Universal Beings] Oddisee - Work To Do (feat. Bilal)[To What End]

Image: “Apartheid No.”, Faustino Pérez, 1977 [Organisation in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL)] Reflecting on the THE IDEOLOGICAL TENDENCIES AND POLITICAL PRE-DISPOSITIONS OF THE BLACK 'LEFT' IN AND AROUND THE ANTI-APARTHEID AND AFRICAN SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT IN THE 1970'S AND 8O'S: SOME THOUGHTS & NOTES, Prexy Nesbitt suggests that: “There were certain political moments and certain African liberation movements “that highlighted the tendencies and orientations more than the normal ups and downs of African solidarity work. Three of those moments were: 1) the 1974 Sixth Pan Africanist Congress and decisions taken as to who would be invited to it and who would be allowed to participate in it; 2) Cuba's entry into the Angolan liberation struggle after the invitation extended to Cuba by Agostinho Neto, the then President of the MPLA; and,3) the over-all performance and steady demise of the Pan-Africanist Congress(PAC) throughout the 1970's and 80's in direct proportion to the steady increase in support and relationship of US activists and supporters to the African National Congress(ANC).” Today, you will listen to Pt. 1 of a conversation we recently had with Prexy Nesbitt, where we begin to construct a framework – an activist-intellectual biography – a point of entry into understanding the role of study & struggle/theory & practice, as a central pillar in Black Radical praxis, a praxis specifically rooted in a critical Africana human rights consciousness. Its purpose to present, explore, map, and construct contemporary pathways into the constellation of ideas and practices that fundamentally resist a global world order that is rooted in race/racism, colonialism-imperialism, capitalism through the people who were in engaged in collective struggle. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Prexy Nesbitt was educated at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Nineteenth Century Russian Literature. He went on to attend the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Northwestern University; and Columbia University. His work includes direct and indirect activity in six Southern African liberation movements: African National Congress (ANC); Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO); Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA); Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU); and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU); the Southwest African People's Organization (SWAPO), the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Returning to Chicago in the 1980s, he worked as a labor organizer and as special aide to then Chicago mayor Harold Washington. He was later appointed consultant to represent the country and its interests in the United States, Canada, and Europe by the independent Mozambique government. He also engaged many formations that included, but not limited to, the Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau American Committee on Africa; the Institute for Policy Studies; the African National Congress; Labor Against Apartheid; Chicago Coalition for Illinois Divestment from South Africa (CIDSA). As an activist and an educator, he has organized and taught throughout the U.S. and around the world. Other audio: Samora Machel, Son Of Africa [snippet] - https://icarusfilms.com/if-samo Makaya McCraven - Universal Beings - Holy Lands (feat. Brandee Younger) Keyshia Cole - I Changed My Mind [instrumental] Laura Mvula - Sing To The Moon Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa: https://www.jstor.org/site/struggles-for-freedom/southern-africa/ Africa Information Service: https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization/210-813-696/

In Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights, Burden-Stelly [https://www.charisseburdenstelly.com/] asserts that modern U.S. racial capitalism is a racially hierarchical political economy constituting war and militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination, and labor superexploitation.” For Dr. CBS, “The racial specifically refers to Blackness, defined as African descendants’ relationship to the capitalist mode of production—their structural location—and the condition, status, and material realities emanating therefrom. It is out of this structural location that the irresolvable contradiction of value minus worth arises. Dr. CBS further unpacks Blackness and its relational value to capital by arguing that it is a “capacious category of surplus value extraction essential to, on the one hand, an array of political-economic functions, including accumulation, disaccumulation … While on the other, “Blackness is the quintessential condition of disposability, expendability, and devalorization (Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights, 10). It is here that it can be argued further that this contradiction allows the mutability of oppression of Blackness to be transmitted across time and space, impacting multiple levels of the lived experiences of African/a peoples as individuals moves across perceived social boundaries, while at the same being ascribed to the “disposability, expendability, and devalorization” of the/a collective Blackness. Dr. CBS goes on to write that “modern U.S. racial capitalism is rooted in the imbrication of anti-Blackness and antiradicalism. Anti-Blackness is reduced to a category of abjection and subjection through narrations of absolute biological or cultural difference …” (Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights: 11-12). Today, we explore the praxis of Black radicalism, mutual comradeship, Organize, Fight, Win: Three Decades of Black Communist Women’s Political Writings & Black Scare/Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly. Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is currently an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Research & Political Education Team. Dr. Burden-Stelly is a critical Black Studies scholar of political theory, political economy, intellectual history, and historical sociology. Dr. Burden-Stelly pursues a research program that encompasses two complementary lines of inquiry, with the first line interrogating the transnational entanglements of U.S. racial capitalism, anticommunism, and antiblack structural racism. While the second, examines twentieth-century [20th] Black anticapitalist thought with a particular focus on W.E.B. Du Bois and scholar activists in his intellectual community. Dr. Burden-Stelly is co-author, with Dr. Gerald Horne, of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History and is finishing, Black Scare/Red Scare: Antiblackness, Anticommunism, and the Rise of Capitalism in the United States. Dr. CBS is co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Three Decades of Black Communist Women’s Political Writings (Verso, 2022) and Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean and the Postcolonial State (University of Mississippi, 2022). Dr. Buden-Stelly’s work appears in: Small Axe, Monthly Review, Souls, Du Bois Review, to name a few. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly. Enjoy the program! SAULT: Power and Higher Vels Trio - 40 Point Feat. Shabaka Hutchings and Yellow Ochre Pt.1

Bedour Alagraa [https://www.bedouralagraa.com/] argues that “the word ‘catastrophe’ as an anchor for understanding our earth’s ecology has yet to account for the manner in which the catastrophic is ongoing, yet still tied to an ‘original’ detonation of sorts. A prompt given to us by Kamau Brathwaite. And so, the “enigma of catastrophe as a word, as a concept, lies in this tension—that is, between a desire to evade the originary Event in favor of the repetition, while also recognizing the Event as it were.” It is in following Brathwaite’s insistence on both the ongoing presence of an original or inaugural moment and the repetition, that Alagraa suggests constitutes the most pressing theory-problem. For Alagraa, part of the problem with our thinking concerning this theory-problem, is the manner in which liberal scientist formulations have remained relatively unchallenged. Cedric Robinson adds clarity to this assertation, in his essay titled “On the Liberal Theory of Knowledge and the Concept of Race,” when he wrote: “The examples are legion in physical science and in social science. One does a little hand-jive, a little mechanical magic, produces an illusion and looks for uncritical acceptance and obedience from the audience. [Liberal] scientific thought does not resolve mysteries so much as it defines them out of existence.” It is from here that we can see that Alagraa is urging us to think “against the claim that we need simply to believe science, or have better science, or better mechanics so that we might address the problem of our earth’s ecology and its assumed lifespan. Without destabilizing our core assumptions about catastrophe, we run the risk of rendering theory inept for confronting this predicament ...” Today, we explore this in more detail as well as the role of Caribbean radical thought; Sylvia Wynter; Black Studies as the praxis of Black life; and beyond the anthropocentric frames with Bedour Alagraa. Bedour Alagraa is an Assistant professor of Political and Social Thought in the Department of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bedour’s work explores the contours of Black radical genealogies in political theory, history/ies of political concepts, Caribbean thought, African anti-colonial thought, and Black Marxism(s). Dr. Alagraa is also the co-editor of a volume of Chairman Fred Hampton’s Speeches alongside Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., titled I Am a Revolutionary!: Speeches by Chairman Fred Hampton, forthcoming from Pluto Press in early 2023. Her book, The Interminable Catastrophe (forthcoming from Duke University Press), writes against the discourse of imminent disaster and considers the predicament of catastrophe as a grammar-problem, which requires a re-reading of Black radical thought in order to find an escape from circulating discussions concerning our planet’s ‘bad infinity’ (borrowing from Hegel) status and lifespan. Dr. Alagraa has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Critical Ethnic Studies, Contemporary Political Theory, The CLR James Journal of Caribbean Philosophy, Small Axe, and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. She is currently co-editor, alongside Anthony Bogues, of the ‘Black Critique’ book series at Pluto Press. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly. Enjoy the program! Image: https://offshootjournal.org/the-interminable-catastrophe/

It is without hyperbole to suggest that Esther Cooper Jackson was one of the most important organizers, thinkers, writers in the history of world broadly, the Africana world specifically for over eight (8) decades [if start with SYNC]. Her intellectual contributions, her insight/foresight, her writing, her ability to organize organizers, her kindness, her love for and hope in Black people, her modeling of radical care for intentionally extended community and her family, her vision to see beyond the parameters of now - the moment - all are foundational to what Robin DG Kelley calls ‘freedom dreams’. As well as the clearest articulation of what Amilcar Cabral called for all revolutionaries to commit, that is ‘class-suicide’. For Maurice Jackson [People’s World], “Esther Cooper Jackson, was the Soul of Black Folks, the Soul of Humanity – the Salt of the Earth. From her days at Washington’s historic Dunbar High School to Oberlin and to Fisk University, she fought for equality. From her co-founding of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, she was a warrior for justice. During the fascist-like McCarthy era, she stood as a woman of enormous courage, saying that she and Jack ‘devoted themselves [ourselves] to each other, to our daughters, and to the great cause of our times’ through thick and thin. Hers was a ‘life supreme,’ where throughout her century plus five years she emitted a love supreme, for humankind. Nothing could be finer.” Those who have been fortunate to meet Esther Cooper Jackson, whether personally, politically, or indirectly through her legacy with Freedomways or related organizing work, must now, more than ever, intentionally ensure that generations to come meet her as well. We all must listen to Esther Cooper Jackson’s instructions more closely now, developing an ‘ear’ to hear deeply, listen beyond the dominant narratives that distort the ability to develop a clear analysis of the relationship between the past and present, with a clear vision of the future. Next, we present a recent conversation with Maurice Jackson where we reflect on the life of Esther Cooper Jackson, her thought and practice as well as her impact on his personal [and others’], intellectual development and organizing activities. Maurice Jackson is an Associate Professor who teaches in the History and African American Studies Departments and is Affiliated Professor of Music (Jazz) at Georgetown University. Before coming to academia, he worked as a longshoreman, shipyard rigger, construction worker and community organizer. He is author of a range of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters as well as Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism; co-editor of African Americans and The Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents; Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754-1808; and DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC. He has lectured in France, Turkey, Italy, Puerto Rico, Qatar, served on Georgetown University Slavery Working Group, and is a 2009 inductee into the Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame. He is completing work on Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African American in Washington, DC to be published by Duke University Press. His next projects will be We Knew No Other Way: The Many-Sided Struggle for Freedom and Black Radicalism: A Very Short Introduction. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly. Enjoy the program! Image: https://collections.si.edu/search/record/edanmdm:nmaahc_2010.55.88

Black life, that is, the range of thought and behavior of African/a peoples has been the foundation upon which the modern world was built; it, too, has been the foundation upon which the modern world centers its systems and institutions of distain … often collapsing anything that is seen to be other … into its limited definitions of Blackness. For many of us, Black life can primarily be understood as an articulation of marronage; a resistance to the dialectical processes of existing and not existing in the warped imagination of whiteness. To understand the complexities and simplicities of Black life, to see constant manifestations of the refusal to be dehumanized, we must push on the way we think about Black life … identifying and mapping the improvisational processes that produce polyrhythmic ways of being, which is the primary essence Black life … ways of being that ultimately is a refusal to fit into narrowly constructed categories of racist thought … mostly actualized, not even on purpose. Moten suggest that Black Studies must always maintain its relationship with Black Study, as it is “Black study that refreshes lines of rigorously antidisciplinary invention, effecting intellectual renewal against academic sterility” [The Universal Machine, 2018: 192]. Black Studies is the insurrectionary project of Black life. For Moten, “study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal – being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory – there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it ‘study’ is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present [The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, 2013: 110]. It is the ‘already present’ that Josh Myers has provided an important meditation on, study outside/inside the university, an exploration of the radical praxis of Black life. Today, we present a recent talk from Josh Myers titled: Cedric Robinson and the Precepts of Black Studies. In addition to being a member of the Africa World Now Project collective, Josh Myers is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. His research interests include Africana intellectual histories and traditions, Africana philosophy, musics, and foodways as well as critical university studies, and disciplinarity. He is the author of We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989 (NYU Press, 2019) and, recently released, Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition (Polity, 2021), as well as the editor of A Gathering Together Literary Journal. His current book project, Of Black Study [Pluto Press, 2023] explores how the ideas of Black intellectuals created different ways of thinking and knowing in their pursuit of conceptual and epistemological freedom. Of Black Study explores the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logics of academic disciplinarity. Bookended by meditations with June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, Josh focuses on how W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers, and Cedric Robinson contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Enjoy the program!