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“Maybe We’ll Make Something”: Feminist Theory Production in Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and “Talkin’ ‘bout A Revolution”
By: Darby Babin
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Positionality Statement: This paper was written for my Feminist Theory course at The University of Ottawa as part of my PhD coursework. As a white, non-binary queer person I want to note that the question of audience can be a generative one. Although these cannot be addressed here, they are integral to discussions of feminist theory and the mobilization of Black feminist epistemologies as well as citational practices by white academics. I chose Tracy Chapman because her music was important to me as a young queer person, but this does not mean I claim to speak on her behalf or on behalf of communities to which I do not belong. Ultimately, I believe this paper demonstrates the important of finding theory in non-academic spaces, and how feminist praxis is mobilized before it comes to be named.
In her songs “Fast Car” and “Talkin’ ‘bout A Revolution,”1 Tracy Chapman evokes different spaces and temporalities within which feminist theory can be found. Chapman’s descriptions of space within both songs, as well as the songs themselves as textual/discursive space, generate what Dion Million refers to as “theory from life” (2014, p. 31). This idea will be used alongside the work of Katherine McKittrick on cartographies of resistance (2006), and Simone Browne’s discussion of dark sousveillance (2015). Together, these theories illuminate how Chapman’s subject matter is rooted in experiences of anti-Blackness, the legacies of chattel slavery and colonization, and the situated knowledge that comes from moving through the world as a Black woman. While Chapman’s use of acoustic guitar and folk rhythms tends to place these songs as sad or even romantic, they are also sites of anger, trauma, and survival.2 In this paper, I will argue that through her lyrical storytelling, Chapman describes the car and the welfare line as spaces where subjectivity is both generated, surveilled, and challenged. I begin by discussing how “Fast Car” and “Revolution” both describe and generate space. Next, I demonstrate how surveillance is used as a tool of racial control, which is reflected in both songs. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of what Chapman can contribute to feminist theory and how her music can provide a path forward in the creation of an abolitionist world. Through her descriptions of the car and the queue, Chapman describes and participates in resistance through her storytelling. Million argues that “stories, unlike data, contain the affective legacy of our experiences” (2014, p. 31). Both “Fast Car” and “Revolution” can be understood as reflective of this idea, as Chapman’s lyrics tell complex stories of intergenerational trauma and affective responses to violence. Additionally, how Chapman describes and challenges space is a response to the legacies of chattel slavery, colonization, and the continued white supremacist project. One of the central facets of white supremacy is the construction of spaces as inherently white, thereby erasing Blackness through spatial conquering. McKittrick describes this “whitening” of spaces as a “material, political, and social landscape that presumes—and fundamentally requires—that subaltern populations have no relationship to the production of space” (2006, p. 92); meaning, white supremacy and colonialism require that spaces be constituted as white, and that all subjectivities be constructed in relation to whiteness. The insidiousness of the white supremacist project requires that whiteness not only be upheld through geography, but through textual, discursive, and normative mechanisms. Chapman’s music challenges white supremacist spatial dominance, while the two songs themselves also function as discursive space. The car in “Fast Car” plays a role as a site of freedom, as well as a vehicle to generate space between the subject and the place that causes them pain. In the first verse of the song, Chapman sings: “You got a fast car/I want a ticket to anywhere/Maybe we can make a deal/ Maybe together we can get somewhere/Any place is better” (1988). She sets up the idea of this space as not related to a particular temporality: it can be anywhere, any place, as long as it is different from her current one. It is here that Chapman plants the seeds for imagining a future no longer tethered to the
1 For the sake of brevity, this song will be referred to as “Revolution” throughout this paper. 2 It is important here to note that my position as a white audience member generates many more questions about the consumption of her music. Although these cannot be addressed here, they are integral to discussions of feminist theory and the mobilization of Black feminist epistemologies as well as citational practices by white academics.
aforementioned legacies of white supremacy that construct space and subjectivity. Within the textual space of the song, she imagines somewhere in which both the subject and the listener can participate in a space that demolishes borders and establishes something new. This question of border abolition is an important one. To challenge the white supremacist project, a major cartographic shift needs to happen. This is true not only insofar as colonization has been continued through globalization, but through domestic methods to delineate what spaces are for whom. “Fast Car” can be seen as challenging both these methods of bordering. Chapman continues: “Won’t have to drive too far/Just ‘cross the border and into the city/ You and I can both get jobs/And finally see what it means to be living” (1988). Evoking borders brings in another spatial reality of white, colonial narratives further explained by Harsha Walia. Walia describes borders as an “ordering regime” that operate through “racial-capitalist accumulation and colonial relations” (2021, p. 2). The border in “Fast Car” is a reminder of the life-or-death choice that Chapman makes reference to when she sings “leave tonight or live and die this way” (1988). We know that attempts to cross borders are met with violence and punishment at the hands of the carceral, imperialist nation-state. While borders are most often considered transnationally, the conceptualization of local borders is significant here as well. “Fast Car” evokes images of crossing from life in shelters to a house in the suburbs (Chapman, 1988). This distinction reminds the listener of the delineation between socio-economic status and the connection of wealth to space. The image of the suburb as a white space is quite clear; most often constructed as clean, upper class, and lacking in crime and violence. Lower socio-economic spaces, whether they are the shelter or the low-income household that the subject of “Fast Car” wishes to leave, are narratively constructed as the result of Blackness. The reality is that the border between low-income spaces and high-income ones is both discursively and spatially generated by white supremacy. In opposition to this construction, Chapman is generat“By evoking borders, Chapman is generating a space not beholden to the rigid temporalities of nation-state boundaries.”
ing both a textual and imaginative space in which this is no longer the status quo. This narrative aligns with what McKittrick describes as the possibility of geographies that are not bound by borders (2015, p. 104). In her hopeful refrain, Chapman is saying that there is something beyond borders that promises a better way to live. The space of the car as a vessel for a new life is imbued with desire, putting distance between the subject of the song and the initial space in which she finds herself. By evoking borders, Chapman is generating a space not beholden to the rigid temporalities of nation-state boundaries. I will now turn to “Revolution” as a space for challenging sites that are temporally fixed and surveilled. The song centres around the queue as a temporal space and whispers as discursive space. Chapman sings: “While they’re standing in the welfare lines/Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation/Wasting time in the unemployment lines/ Sitting around waiting for a promotion” (1988). Understood as an extension of the nation-state, the welfare line is another ordering regime through which racial subjugation is maintained. The line is evoked as a method of control and construction of docile subjects, something that can be traced back to the positioning of bodies through chattel slavery (McKittrick, 2006; Browne, 2015). This can be further unpacked through McKittrick’s description of Blackness being landscaped out of sight (2006, p. 96). McKittrick argues that nations reproduce Black invisibility through the absorption of Blackness into the nation-state, while maintaining Blackness as “Other” (2006, p. 97). We can take Chapman’s description of both the welfare and unemployment lines to be reflective of this: The Other can exist, but only when frozen in a time and place that reflects the hegemony of whiteness. Simone Browne describes the slave ship as a site of panopticism in which Black prisoners were relegated to inhumanely tight quarters, designed to encapsulate as many bodies as possible (2015, p. 47). Her conception can be extended to the welfare line as a space in which marginalized communities are forced into the queue. This often creates uncomfortable conditions, but becomes a requirement for re-
ceiving a state-rationed livelihood under the capitalist system integral to white supremacy. “Revolution” demonstrates how the white supremacist project was designed to map Black and brown bodies out of sight, and continues to do so through contemporary social services.
As spaces are constructed to marginalize bodies, surveillance inevitably follows. Browne argues that surveillance is an inherently racialized project (2015, p. 8). Robyn Maynard further explains that Black women are surveilled and policed through welfare structures (2017, 135). Welfare is explicitly named in “Revolution”, but “Fast Car” also touches on the socio-economic realities of poverty. Together these songs paint a picture of how one comes to be positioned within these neoliberal institutions. Similarly, as “Fast Car” describes flying away, “Revolution” describes mobilizing the welfare and unemployment line as a site of resistance; a space intended to generate docile bodies is manipulated to be a site of community building and revolution. In both the opening lyrics and the chorus of the song, Chapman is generating a space of resistance within her music. The lyrics begin: “Don’t you know/They’re talking about a revolution?/It sounds like a whisper/ Poor people gonna rise up/And get their share/Poor people gonna rise up/And take what’s theirs” (1988). She reminds the listener what is at stake and what resistance can look like. Her songs are a site of what Browne calls “dark sousveillance” (2015, p. 21), a starting point from which to both critique racialized surveillance and begin to imagine processes of freedom (2015, p. 21).
The epistemological nature of dark sousveillance (Browne, 2015) is reflected in Chapman’s use of storytelling as a method of resistance. As she sings about whispers, she is producing a similar action through soft folk rhythms. Throughout “Revolution,” Chapman shifts from the objective “they” to the personal “I.” She demonstrates to the listener that she is reflecting her own experiences as a Black woman, as well as a person whose position is tied to a community. What Chapman has done through her music is maintain the affective legacies
of these roots, as well as the history of music, poetry and art as dark sousveillance (Browne, 2015, p. 5). Through “Fast Car” and “Revolution,” Chapman generates theory from situated knowledge of anti-Blackness and the affective responses to both the legacy and continuation of the white supremacist project. Chapman demonstrates what Dian Million calls “theory from life” (2014), in which praxis is integral to the construction of theory. While she does not name theory in her music, she describes practices of survival and revolution that reflect dark sousveillance, Black feminist thought, and abolition. To live in the current white supremacist world is to be indoctrinated into cisheteropartiarchy and neoliberal ideologies; a world in which the institution of whiteness monopolizes space-making. Chapman’s music both depicts space and becomes discursive space from which to challenge this hegemony. “Fast Car” illustrates the car as a space that is not temporally situated but can push through borders that are. “Revolution” describes the welfare line (and other queues) as spaces which are temporally fixed, but can be manipulated toward resistance. If there must be a line, let it be filled with whispers of resistance. When she says “maybe we’ll make something,” she is asking us to do just that. What can we make when space is not solely constructed by whiteness? What geographical markings can be overcome by challenging the idea of borders as things to be crossed? What happens when we make something rooted in our relationality as a lived, creative experience? While these questions are outside the scope of this paper, they generate important reflections for how we engage with feminist theory and non-academic sites of theory production moving forward. By both describing and generating space, Chapman reflects the possibilities of the life that creativity can build. She demonstrates how situated knowledge is rooted in the praxis of theory before we have the words to describe it; to live is to theorize. By living in community, we theorize together, building new subjectivities and realities for ourselves. Chapman sings “maybe we can make a deal, maybe together we can get somewhere” (1988). It is only together that we can get somewhere, anywhere, better.
