A Note from the Lead

A NOTE FROM THE LEAD.

When exploring the concept of politić, I had to truly consider not only the illustration of wholeness, but rather the expression of a fundamental disintegration of individual identity. I suppose in this you have to similarly ask: “when will the black body escape (from) the guise of the white imagination?”

It is, at least for me, an exploration of self; of collective people, nations, ideologies. And It is by no means an easy question to answer. Despite many critical attempts to navigate questions of inequity and disproportionality many still, in my opinion, continue to suffer a chaotic relationship to the truth. Therefore, to insist on truth in times of chaos (Peterson, 2018) is imperative, lest we backslide. Perhaps then, truthbecomes the metaphor that can be used to illustrate an evolving body politić; objects emerging from this discussion illustrating the many reverberations of nuanced emotions that forms the contemporary body politić.

In settling on a title for this ToR I thought to myself, what does the politić mean to me? As lead, I knew that it needed to explore a topic that I felt personally connected to, something that I in fact wanted to learn more about. Hence, the perspective of other creatives artists became of great importance because it is we who are making work within an evolving body politić, marked by new visualisations - both controversial and celebrated - of the blackbody in which questions of the politić can be thrown much more seriously towards modern audiences. As such, this ToR has become another mechanism to engender a renewed questioning around issues of contemporary body politics and how this manifests itself in my everyday, collective experience.

However, in terming the word ‘politić’, I must make one very important clarification: whilst the comma - removed from its normative function - is substituted in this usage transforming the words traditional spelling, this also becomes a deliberate attempt to show plural possession; or collective dispossession. Thus, the extended term of body politić can and has come to embody the several mythologies surrounding the black body as constructed (regulated) in traditional media; in its simultaneous manifestation, consumption and dispersal both online and IRL (in-real-life), in maintaining the presumed dimensionality of ‘blackness’ as a counterpart (or antagonist) to ‘whiteness’.

The consideration that ‘black is as unimaginable without white as white is unimaginable without black. What we are is shaped by the other, for better or worse and the interaction is real’ (Cole, 2018), what does it mean to discuss the idea of black bodies as political playgrounds in a (supposed) ’post-racial’ epoch.

As I find myself residing in a society undoubtedly confounded by a severe strain of ‘post-truth’ politics, damaged peer-relations, and skewed models of acceptance I find that all I can do within this climate is continue the growing conversation in an attempt to make a direct challenge to this narrative history of colonialism under the new type of perceptive schemata, that feels to have undoubtedly come full circle in the present. Whilst the black body continues to perform as radicalised subject - the histories of this atrocity run deep - it all boils down to a question of visibility versus omission?

Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark.

KEY QUESTIONS.

1. We can start this dialog by considering the following questions:

2. What embodies ‘blackness in the white landscape’, and what does this look like to you?

3. What are the differences between the British and American microcosms in the discussion of race?

4. How is / can the body politić discussed in the everyday: includes types of manifestations, visualisations and framing)

5. What about the possibility of black liberation?6. What is the applicability of a collective body politić in relation to black trauma?7. Are issues of ‘otherness’ still prevalent in today’s ‘post-racial’ societies?8. How are colonialist narratives linked to issues of the body politić?

9. How can / has the idea of the body politić be located in film, art and poetry - with examples.

10. How do artifacts such as memes contribute to the evolving body politić?

11. What informs the many considerations of double consciousness and performance as integral to the black experience?