In this episode, James is joined by AAP Fanon correspondent M. Shadee Malaklou as they welcome a new guest, Derrais Carter, assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. The trio discuss Alexis Pauline Gumbs‘ forthcoming M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke UP, March 2018), the second book of her “planned experimental triptych.” M Archive is a speculative documentary project that chronicles the end of the world from an unspecified position of futurity. We sit with the ways Black poetics enact forms of knowledge that resist grammar and structure, and how Gumbs’ work exceeds genres and disciplinary boundaries. We also tease out the polemical strains of Black feminist metaphysics and ecocriticism that resonate throughout the imagined otherwise world that Gumbs conjures for her readers. What happens after the world ends? How can we take the act of breathing as the project of Black feminism? Take a listen and discover the ways that Afro-pessimism, Black optimism, and Afro-futurism fold into each other and open onto other dimensions of Black life in the Anthropocene.

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment, potentially provide episode transcripts, and more – plus, you may have the chance to jump your request to the top of the request queue. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here.Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, and always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gumbs.mp3

Links: