Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724191
Patricia Noxolo
Abstract:In a discussion of Jovan Scott Lewis's Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (2020), the book is considered as ethnography written from "inside the circle" (Sadiya Hartman) of a generation of young Black men brought up in Jamaica. Nonetheless, Lewis shows genuine appreciation of the profound differences between himself and his respondents. However, the response ends by proposing that Lewis needed to widen the circle to include those who died in the terrible violence that was a consequence of the scamming practices that he describes, and that his arguments about Black repair might have been all the more convincing had he been able to do so.
摘要:在对Jovan Scott Lewis的《骗子的院子:牙买加黑人修理的罪行》(2020)的讨论中,这本书被认为是从在牙买加长大的一代年轻黑人的“圈子内”(Sadiya Hartman)写的民族志。尽管如此,刘易斯对他和他的受访者之间的深刻差异表现出真诚的欣赏。然而,回应的最后建议Lewis需要扩大范围,包括那些因他所描述的欺诈行为而死于可怕暴力的人,并且如果他能够这样做,他关于黑色修复的论点可能会更有说服力。
{"title":"Inside the Circle: A Response to Jovan Scott Lewis's Scammer's Yard","authors":"Patricia Noxolo","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724191","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In a discussion of Jovan Scott Lewis's Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (2020), the book is considered as ethnography written from \"inside the circle\" (Sadiya Hartman) of a generation of young Black men brought up in Jamaica. Nonetheless, Lewis shows genuine appreciation of the profound differences between himself and his respondents. However, the response ends by proposing that Lewis needed to widen the circle to include those who died in the terrible violence that was a consequence of the scamming practices that he describes, and that his arguments about Black repair might have been all the more convincing had he been able to do so.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"62 1","pages":"163 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82003676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724023
Susan C. Méndez
Abstract:Recent texts in Latinx literature have ghosts that demonstrate new knowledge about history, culture, and subjectivity. In Song of the Water Saints and Soledad, the first novels of authors Nelly Rosario and Angie Cruz, respectively, the figure of the ghost is a trope that imaginatively reconnects communities of women that are fractured by the corruptive influence of the United States and other Western nations in the Latin Caribbean. The ghost of Graciela in Song of the Water Saints and the "living ghost" of Olivia in Soledad allow readers to see how matrilineal bonds in families can be restored. These ties are cut by the prolonged and detrimental exploitation of the Dominican Republic by the United States and more generally the West. With a focus on women, the use of ghosts in these novels attends to the material, historical, and cultural practices between people and the geographies they inhabit.
{"title":"Ghosts in Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints and Angie Cruz's Soledad","authors":"Susan C. Méndez","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Recent texts in Latinx literature have ghosts that demonstrate new knowledge about history, culture, and subjectivity. In Song of the Water Saints and Soledad, the first novels of authors Nelly Rosario and Angie Cruz, respectively, the figure of the ghost is a trope that imaginatively reconnects communities of women that are fractured by the corruptive influence of the United States and other Western nations in the Latin Caribbean. The ghost of Graciela in Song of the Water Saints and the \"living ghost\" of Olivia in Soledad allow readers to see how matrilineal bonds in families can be restored. These ties are cut by the prolonged and detrimental exploitation of the Dominican Republic by the United States and more generally the West. With a focus on women, the use of ghosts in these novels attends to the material, historical, and cultural practices between people and the geographies they inhabit.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"15 1","pages":"16 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90616148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724037
C. Stieber
Abstract:This essay analyzes the genre of mémoire produced by gens de couleur (free people of color) within the colonial and military bureaucracy of revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Building on recent scholarship on Toussaint Louverture's 1802 "Mémoire du général Toussaint Louverture," it situates the genre in broader conversation with the mass of bureaucratic and administrative writing in the colony by offering close readings of mémoires from Julien Raimond and André Rigaud. Though written for different purposes, these mémoires evince a shared formal and rhetorical strategy: they present textual evidence and employ forensic rhetoric to refute competing claims and vindicate their cause. By elucidating the generic conventions of the mémoire, this essay contributes to the growing body of scholarship on Black writing that has moved beyond the paradigm of the slave narrative toward other forms and genres of Black protest. In so doing, it refocuses vindicationism on these rhetorical evidentiary practices, rather than on the mythos of romance and romantic overcoming that has categorized vindicationist narratives of the Haitian Revolution.
摘要:本文分析了革命时期圣多明各殖民地和军事官僚机构中自由的有色人种(gens de couleur)所创作的msammoire类型。在杜桑·卢维杜尔1802年的著作《杜桑·卢维杜尔》的基础上,这本书通过对朱利安·雷蒙和安德烈·里高德的作品进行细致的阅读,将这一文体置于与殖民地大量官僚和行政写作的更广泛的对话中。尽管写这些文件的目的不同,但它们在形式上和修辞上都有共同的策略:它们提供文本证据,并使用法医修辞来反驳相互竞争的说法,为自己的理由辩护。通过阐明黑人运动的一般惯例,这篇文章为黑人写作的学术研究做出了贡献,这些研究已经超越了奴隶叙事的范式,转向了其他形式和体裁的黑人抗议。在这样做的过程中,它将辩护主义重新集中在这些修辞证据实践上,而不是集中在浪漫和浪漫克服的神话上,这些神话已经归类为海地革命的辩护主义叙述。
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Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724135
Gordon Rohlehr
Abstract:This essay, an extract from a longer two-hundred-page manuscript, traces the author's literary friendship with Kamau Brathwaite from their first meeting in 1968 to Brathwaite's passing in 2020. It relies on correspondence over fifty years, memories of meetings, and critical responses to Brathwaite's work to trace their mutual admiration and scuffles amid a comradeship that is stronger than time.
{"title":"A Literary Friendship: Selected Notes on the Correspondence with Kamau Brathwaite","authors":"Gordon Rohlehr","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724135","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay, an extract from a longer two-hundred-page manuscript, traces the author's literary friendship with Kamau Brathwaite from their first meeting in 1968 to Brathwaite's passing in 2020. It relies on correspondence over fifty years, memories of meetings, and critical responses to Brathwaite's work to trace their mutual admiration and scuffles amid a comradeship that is stronger than time.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"97 1","pages":"124 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81417244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724149
Elaine Savory
Abstract:Kamau Brathwaite left us just before COVID-19 changed our world. This memoriam essay explores the questions his work poses in his role as mentor/teacher/Griot to other writers, toward whom he was always very generous and encouraging. He asks us to embrace uncertainty, making it an aesthetic value from which transformative understanding may come. We learn to deeply explore the relation of languages of the voice, the musical instrument, and visual image; to be eclectic with regard to influences; to have the courage to face loss and trauma; and to be honest about history. Kamau made revision into an art form, from which we can learn about ways to embrace change, not only in creative work but in social and political thinking.
{"title":"The Questions Kamau Asked of Us","authors":"Elaine Savory","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724149","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Kamau Brathwaite left us just before COVID-19 changed our world. This memoriam essay explores the questions his work poses in his role as mentor/teacher/Griot to other writers, toward whom he was always very generous and encouraging. He asks us to embrace uncertainty, making it an aesthetic value from which transformative understanding may come. We learn to deeply explore the relation of languages of the voice, the musical instrument, and visual image; to be eclectic with regard to influences; to have the courage to face loss and trauma; and to be honest about history. Kamau made revision into an art form, from which we can learn about ways to embrace change, not only in creative work but in social and political thinking.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"1 1","pages":"145 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74593252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724205
J. Lewis
Abstract:In this response essay, the author returns to his arguments in Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (2020) to further consider the limits of repair as advanced by the book's crew of Jamaican lottery scammers. The author reconsiders some of the arguments to examine more deeply the issues of respectability, violence, and refusal, doing so in conversation with Patricia Noxolo, Beverley Mullings, and Kevon Rhiney—Caribbean and Caribbeanist geographers who help explore the scam as representative of repair within Jamaica's violent, impoverished, and seemingly inescapable circumstances. Further analyzing the possibility of repair as advanced by the scammers, the essay identifies and contests the normative terms of politics that complicate those reparative claims, arguing that the scam moves past the politics of social incorporation and resistance in Jamaica and instead represents a form of political suspension that avoids the reconciliation of respectability and refusal typical of Caribbean postcolonial social production.
{"title":"The Limits of Repair","authors":"J. Lewis","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724205","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this response essay, the author returns to his arguments in Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (2020) to further consider the limits of repair as advanced by the book's crew of Jamaican lottery scammers. The author reconsiders some of the arguments to examine more deeply the issues of respectability, violence, and refusal, doing so in conversation with Patricia Noxolo, Beverley Mullings, and Kevon Rhiney—Caribbean and Caribbeanist geographers who help explore the scam as representative of repair within Jamaica's violent, impoverished, and seemingly inescapable circumstances. Further analyzing the possibility of repair as advanced by the scammers, the essay identifies and contests the normative terms of politics that complicate those reparative claims, arguing that the scam moves past the politics of social incorporation and resistance in Jamaica and instead represents a form of political suspension that avoids the reconciliation of respectability and refusal typical of Caribbean postcolonial social production.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"26 1","pages":"191 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75579762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724177
Kevon Rhiney
Abstract:This essay draws on Jovan Scott Lewis's Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (2020), a rich ethnographic study of lottery scammers in Jamaica and the ethical logic they use to justify scamming as a form of reparations, to think about the limits of Black reparative claims. Specifically, it draws on various theorizings of Black insurgent life to explore the inherent challenges in engendering a radical politics of change premised around principles of repair, alterity, and fugitivity. The author argues that theorizing Blackness and, by extension, Black repair necessitates exploring questions of the unimaginable, the liminal, and the otherwise.
摘要:本文借鉴Jovan Scott Lewis的《诈骗者的院子:牙买加黑人修理的犯罪》(2020),对牙买加的彩票诈骗者进行了丰富的民族志研究,以及他们用来证明诈骗作为一种赔偿形式的道德逻辑,思考黑人赔偿要求的局限性。具体来说,它借鉴了黑人反叛生活的各种理论,探讨了在以修复、替代和逃亡原则为前提的激进变革政治中产生的内在挑战。作者认为,理论化黑人,进而延伸到黑人修复,需要探索不可想象的、阈限的和其他的问题。
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Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724107
L. Goodison
Abstract:This essay takes the form of a brief tribute to the life and work of Kamau Brathwaite and his first wife, Doris Brathwaite. It is written from the point of view of a writer who knew Kamau personally and who considers herself to be the beneficiary of his immense wisdom and iconoclasm. The essay provides anecdotal accounts of an awards ceremony in London, when Kamau delivered a powerful exhortation to Caribbean writers, and of a New Year's Day party held at his house in Jamaica, at which Kamau and Doris demonstrated immense thoughtfulness to the assembled guests. It focuses briefly on X/Self, makes mention of the Zea Mexican Diary, and references Rex Nettleford and Philip Sherlock.
{"title":"Not a Usual Man","authors":"L. Goodison","doi":"10.1215/07990537-9724107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9724107","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay takes the form of a brief tribute to the life and work of Kamau Brathwaite and his first wife, Doris Brathwaite. It is written from the point of view of a writer who knew Kamau personally and who considers herself to be the beneficiary of his immense wisdom and iconoclasm. The essay provides anecdotal accounts of an awards ceremony in London, when Kamau delivered a powerful exhortation to Caribbean writers, and of a New Year's Day party held at his house in Jamaica, at which Kamau and Doris demonstrated immense thoughtfulness to the assembled guests. It focuses briefly on X/Self, makes mention of the Zea Mexican Diary, and references Rex Nettleford and Philip Sherlock.","PeriodicalId":46163,"journal":{"name":"Small Axe","volume":"113 1","pages":"108 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81035479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/07990537-9724051
Kathleen Donegan
Abstract:This essay concentrates on the relation between song and history in the lives of the enslaved and the afterlives of slavery, particularly by tracing the history of the song "Take Him to the Gulley," which became known as "the famous slave song of Jamaica." Thinking alongside Katherine McKittrick's and Sylvia Wynter's work on plantation geographies, the author argues that the gulley, a site of mass burial in the center of the song, was also a site of Black cultural expression and futurity—a place where death and life, torture and escape, enslavement and freedom collided and shaped each other. The essay traces the song as both a mode and a performance of history, in which, through the workings of reclamation, remembrance, and redress, an enslaver's perverse punishment became a people's history.
摘要:本文主要探讨了歌曲与历史在奴隶生活和奴隶后世的关系,特别是通过追溯歌曲“Take Him to the Gulley”的历史,这首歌被称为“牙买加著名的奴隶之歌”。结合凯瑟琳·麦基特里克和西尔维娅·温特对种植园地理的研究,作者认为,在歌曲的中心,水沟是一个集体埋葬的地方,也是黑人文化表达和未来的地方——一个死亡与生命、折磨与逃跑、奴役与自由相互碰撞、相互塑造的地方。这篇文章追溯了这首歌作为一种模式和历史的表现,在这首歌中,通过开垦、记忆和纠正的工作,一个奴隶的不正当惩罚成为了一个民族的历史。
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