The Black Radical Tradition (BRT) has been a deep and winding journey into the ideas and events which created the Black struggle for emancipation. But, while the has been deeply moving, it did make me long for my radical tradition. About my Selma March, my Black Panthers, my Black Pride. But BRT can exist for me, and can also provide a blue print on how to have indigenous discourse on resistance. The Black Radical Tradition has much to teach South Asians about the importance of both the discursive and manifest ways resistance and struggle. I argue that through discursive introspection and proper documentation of struggles, we can at least begin to understand what decoloniality (or post-coloniality) means for us as South Asians.

Before this course, I felt like the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) was the furthest from my experience as a South Asian woman. We have not gone through the mass devastation and trauma that slavery (except perhaps those whose ancestors served as indentured labor). And, even within South Asia – whether one looked at individual countries or the commonalities between South Asians – there is deep internalized racism for anyone who was considered “black” (the state of non-being) whether they were religious minorities, ethnic minorities or anyone who does not fit within the norm. Perhaps it can be said that the BRT makes us question our histories, and what we consider as the norm amongst ourselves. In our insular communities, we fear the same abjection we force onto the non-being actors, and in this way systems of domination continue with new faces. And therein lies a unique trauma, one which we in South Asia (or at least Pakistan) have not properly been able to articulate. How does one begin to address this shortcoming?

Firstly, we as South Asians need to stop considering BRT as something completely alien to our context. The point of calling it a tradition was to let these ideas pass from one generation to another as a coming-of-age, even if that meant the generation was in a completely different historical/cultural context. What BRT offers us is the ability to think radically. It has been the radicals who dared to dream of a completely new world free from oppressive and homogenizing forces. Not all of these ideas would be practical, but they move and inspire us to question the robustness and seeming innocence of the status quo. In the early 20^th Century, WEB Dubois and Cesaire struggled for black people (or the colonized) to be recognized for their complexity and wholesomeness just as the white man was seen as complex and wholesome. But when these ideas became mainstream, the likes of Fanon and Malcolm X suggested new radical thoughts which sought the complete breakdown of race itself. A movement closer to my heart has the black women’s fight for intersectionality. At the time, it was seen as a deeply radical and even counterproductive movement, but it set a precedent for how women of color demanded more form the mainstream feminist movement.

But discourse also needs to be translated onto something concrete, and perhaps the best way to do so is through the archive. Just as there were stories of black oppression and resistance, there are no doubt stories of anti-colonial, revolutionary struggle within South Asia which are yet to be recorded. Toni Morrison urged us to find the missing blackness in our stories, both as a way to make the narrative more holistic and to allow representation to those who were otherwise left out from mainstream narratives. The people who have existed within our marginalities (Pashtuns, Baloch, Christians, Ahmedi) should be allowed to articulate their experiences in their own terms, without our impositions. But one way for us as privileged members of society to show support is to record their words, and disseminate them to the pubic. Thus, the act of archiving and citation can become a vehicle for allowing marginal narratives to diversify our common histories (the word common here means these histories are shared but also are also uniform and uninspiring).

BRT can be mine because it teaches me about my oppression, but it also has the power inspire a more South Asian tradition of historiography and discourse. Anti-colonial and racial equality movements were once considered radical and dangerous, but now they generate feelings of pride and unity – a radical tradition. We as students of history need to extend that same sentiment to those who remain on the peripheries of our stories. Then, can we create our lacuna of narratives, experiences and memories that bring about a sense of pride in our South Asian Experience. The narratives of oppression and resistance in South Asia (whether anti-colonial or post-colonial) are mine, but I can only recognize them if I put in effort to pay attention to them, just as those of the BRT paid heed and tribute to the journey of their movement.

CLR James account of the Haitian revolution is one that is driven by accounts of  individual figures namely Toussaint L’Ouverture and Mackandal whose liberation struggle preceded the French Revolution by a century .We can find a similar focus on individuals in Malcolm X’s speeches, the earlier ones especially, that place a lot of importance and responsibility on one individual- namely Elijah Muhammad.  The individuals are larger than life but at the same time constrained by the very circumstances the history has placed them in. His description of slaving in the West Indies is one that provides a counter-narrative to white histories by challenging two primary assumptions espoused in them. The first one was that the violence, torture and trauma that took place within the institution of slavery was an exception. This can be also described as the good slave-owner /bad slave-owner argument. He supports his argument by referring to incidents like the Le Jeune case, where unchecked violence on the slaves by slaveowners went unpunished because of the collective resistance put up by the slaveowners who may not have indulged in the same violence but stood to lose power if any justice was dispensed.  The other assumption his work refutes is one that paints slavery as a thing of past that is disconnected from modernity. CLR James goes on to argue that everything about slavery in the West Indies was modern- almost all of what the slaves ate and wore was imported and the economy they contributed to itself was a product of modernity.

CLR James’ writing punctures the narrative around plantations that white histories try to project- one that glosses over the violence of slavery to paint an idyllic image of plantations in the Caribbean Islands. The violence is described in graphic detail from the moment of the slaves’ capture following detribalisation to their harrowing journeys first to slave ports and then to the New World.  He does not spare any detail in his discussion of the many terrors and tribulations of the Middle Passage and the back-breaking work that is demanded of the slaves in the plantations once they arrive in the Caribbean.  He offers no sanitised or deodorised account of slavery in Haiti because he is not writing to ease the conscience of white readers. He begins his book by making it clear that The Black Jacobins would not recount history with tranquility; tranquility in narration is the purview of great English writers alone.

In something that Fanon comes to share with him, CLR James does not concern himself with appeasing white readers by providing a watered-down description of slavery and what followed. Here, we can also draw similarities between the content of Malcolm X’s speeches and CLR James’ writing; both choose to distance themselves from narratives that centre themselves around the convenience of the dominant white population. Both show no concern for the white population, they do not feel the need to package their demands and sentiments in a manner that promises rewards to the white population for their support. In God’s Judgement of White America, Malcolm X expresses his disdain for the white liberal saying that the only difference that exists between a white liberal and a white conservative is that the former is more deceitful. He dismisses the possibility of ever working with white liberals or appealing to their sentiments when he says that white liberals lend vocal support to the black struggle only so they can use the black people as a tool in their ever “football game”. All white liberals offer is superficial changes to the black population.  In the same speech, Malcolm X goes on to warn the listeners about white America’s impending doom. There is no question of there being an escape from this Day of Judgment that awaits the white population of America and even if there is one, the burden of the salvation of white man is not on him.  He is not worried about the doom and his tone throughout is very matter-of-fact, with references from Scripture about the downfall of other civilisations who had rejected their prophets.

Both Malcolm X and CLR James complicate their analyses of race by exploring the gradation and differences that exist within the black population.  CLR James describes a privileged class of slaves- those who worked as foremen, cooks and other household servants. It was the accounts of these relatively privileged slaves that were used to romanticise slavery in the Caribbean. This minority of slaves looked down on those who toiled in the fields and often used their close relationship with the slaveowner to improve their education. Christophe and Toussaint L’Ouverture both belonged to this category of slaves and were given greater opportunities and liberties than those allowed to the ordinary slave who performed backbreaking work in the fields.  Those who bore the brunt of slavery were the ones who resisted these institutions. Their resistance culminated into rebellions, the greatest of which was led by Mackandal. The trope of the House Negro and the Field Negro is employed by Malcolm X to explain the difference between what he describes as the old Negro and the New Negro.  The Old Negro aligned closely with the Uncle Tom stereotype- he lived with the master, ate with the master and wore the master’s hand-me-downs. His association with the white master was such that he was unable to discern between his interests and the master’s, going out of his way in ensuring that the master’s interests were not threatened. The field Negro was the one who was assigned the most difficult tasks and therefore had no concern with the maintenance of the status quo. Since he suffered the worst under slavery, he would take up any opportunity of running away that he could find without any qualms about the master’s interests. Malcolm X argues that in the twentieth century, the House Negro lives on in what he describes as the old Negro- usually middle class black people who have been educated in elite institutions . The old Negro has no interest in dismantling the existing system; he is satisfied as long he can ensure some of this system’s rewards for himself- education, wealth and prestige. He identifies more closely with the white man than his fellow black people which is why he does not want a complete overhaul of the existing system. He is embarrassed of his color. The New Negro, much like the field Negro, constitutes the majority of the black population that suffers in ghettos and slums with little opportunity for upward social mobility. They are the ones who are not ashamed of what they look like. Unlike the older brand of Negro, the New Negro does not have the objective of appeasing the white masters.  These distinctions within the black community are integral to historical analysis because they help place movements and historical figures in a specific context that shapes their politics instead of painting a one-dimensional image of the black (wo)man.

“Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so we hone that radar. It is a kind of survival tactic, that people caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate.”

In the chapter ‘Entering into the Serpent’, Gloria Anzaldua introduces the concept of la facultad, which she defines as the ability to capture the depth of the world and the soul by breaking the habitual modes of seeing reality and perceiving consciousness. La facultad is ‘excruciating’; because it is enabled through fear, because only those who live in the borderland experience it, because it does not reside in reason but in the body, and because it is born not out of choice but out of compulsion; to protect, to survive. In other words, la facultad is to know that you are living in a borderland, to experience oppression as a part of existing, to feel fear and pain as an ever-present emotion, to be alert of a continuously lingering danger, and then, to live in a way that is reactionary. Reactionary because it is a reaction to birth in the borderland.  It is to be shaped by, and refracted through the white male lens. It is to live in ‘half and half’, and never as a whole. It is to suffer from ‘absolute despot duality’ such that you are reduced to either this or that. It is to be looted and silenced. It is to survive from within the power webs that aim to kill.

Anzaldua’s la facultad resonates with Frantz Fanon’s notion of the world ‘divided into two’, and native percipience. In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, Fanon talks about how “the native is always on the alert, for since he can only make out with difficulty the many symbols of the colonial world, he is never sure whether or not he has crossed the frontier.” The people on the border live a life of duality, denial, and dichotomy. They experience pain because they are unable to find themselves a ‘home’ where they belong. They experience fear because they are constantly being treated like a nobody. They are pushed to a ‘zone of non-being’, such that they are invisible, and assured to remain so by looting their language, and silencing their histories. However, for Fanon, pain and fear makes the ‘colonized man an envious man’ such that he desires to replace the colonizer and become the persecutor. He is dehumanized, and desensitized. On the contrary, for Anzaldua, pain and fear can open new possibilities if it is experienced by those that live on the borderlands but are not caught in the mode of acceptance and victimization. In other words, la facultad can be an opportunity.

La facultad is destructive and creative at one time. It is created when ‘one’s defenses and resistance’ are destroyed. In other words, it is here then, that pain becomes a survival tactic. Pain and fear destroys, but at the same time, it forces to know and see differently. If to know is to conquer, then for Anzaldua, to know is to achieve la facultad, and to conquer is to survive. To be able to achieve la facultad is to reject singularity; of past, present and future alike. Instead, it is to open up the creation of new possibilities, interception of multiple ways of being, and acceptance of plural futures.

This is the journey that Anzaldua undertakes for the creation of a new Mestiza consciousness. Rebirth, for Anzaldua then, is the realization of a human existence which transcends class, race, gender and sexuality, and wherein all people are of the same level as others.

“What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be one or the other”

Anzaldúa, describes the tendency to force people to fit into one category or the other based on nature, culture or identity. This cartesian duality of mind and body, represented as culture and nature, man and woman, white rationality and indigenous savagery and in other various forms carries with it the reduction of possibility of other ways of being. It deems all that is not “natural” as deviant. Anzaldúa mentioned how women themselves have limited possibilities because there is no room for different ways of being. Those who don’t fit into these binaries are those who are on the borderlands, they are those that are considered subhuman, inhuman and nonhuman.

These borderlands are created not only physically, but also sexually, psychologically and spiritually. Those who belong to the half and half, and those who do not align with these binaries are in the struggle of mitigating their duality. Of having to live with the fear of not belonging and the trauma of being silenced and the immobility associated with that. There is a turmoil that this process of violence causes, where language and identity continues to change.

There are ways that those on the borderlands come to terms with their situation and location. Anzaldúa referred to the use of Chicano Spanish that is born out of the need to have a distinct language. Those on the borderlands make ways for the alien to become familiar but it stays uncomfortable at the same time. The history of conquest, imperialism, displacement, genocide, and war have led to the production of borderlands, it has allowed for the borderlands to be separated from identity and history. The discomfort and the pain due to living on the borderlands is expressed by Anzaldúa:

“staking fence rods in my flesh,

splits me splits me”

Her own experiences as a Chicana, lesbian woman of colour placed her in a vulnerable position where she faced rejection. She described the possibility within the borderlands of finding home, where there is room for her and those who are half and half: “this is my home, this thin edge of barbwire.”

Anzaldúa, in her life seems to strike that balance between the universal and the particular. While holding onto her Chicana identity, she is able to distinguish between the injurious aspects of her culture but at the same time not does not immerse into whiteness. She is called a sell out, a betrayer by her own, but they are also those who silenced her. It is this silence that Audre Lorde refers to:

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

The transformation of this silence to language is important and through her writing Anzaldúa breaks this silence and  her beautiful instructive wisdom is encapsulated in her words:

“And if going home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture – una cultura mestiza – with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture”

Anzaldua in Borderlands carves out a beautiful journey towards a “new conscience” which begins from imagining new possibilities that results in the emergence of a new Self. It is this creation of a Self that I found most striking, particularly because I feel that Fanon and Anzaldua share the same passion and need to create this new Self as a diagnosis against the colonial forces which have rejected them the status of human.

It starts off with the realization  that concepts can not be held in “rigid boundaries” for “rigidity means death.”  This fear of death gives rise to seeing what was otherwise invisible-the countless doors to possibility which frees an individual from set patterns and goals and move towards a “more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes.” This inclusion is unprecedented one that was never experienced in the bifurcated world that has always existed and continued to oppress people like Anzaldua on the basis of their colour, gender, sexuality. It is the same compartmentalized world which Fanon talked about that was divided along rigid lines between those who possess the world and those who borrow it, the haves and the have-nots, the whites and the envious .Thus erasing all traces of heterogeneity. However, Andzaldua is seen as doing exactly the opposite that is retrieving this heterogeneity.

If the rigid boundaries dictated centering of the world to one location, to one way of living, the opening up of new possibilities meant decentering of the universe which gives rise to multiplicity of centers. It must be noted, however, that this is not a time of replacing one social order with another social order, one norm with another norm, one rigidity with another rigidity but it’s a time of closure. It’s a time of possibility.

It is for the longest time, our future belonged to Europe. Its values dictated the norm. But this time of possibility means that the future is not centered on one location. It does not belong to Europe. The future too needs to pluralize.

And it is this through this understanding, that Anzaldua presents a diagnosis which lies only in healing the split between this bifurcated world, “between the white race and the coloured, between males and females” that we see a multiplicity of the futures emerging and it is within this future that we see the birth of a new self.

This entails that you collect the pieces of yourself which were given to you and imposed on you when you first arrived in this world. It is then that you deconstruct them and after this tedious job you construct another image of yourself-an image that Anzaldua calls an “alien consciousness, a conscious of the borderlands.” Because it is the conditions in the borderland which enable her to be different and thus know the world differently where she has the courage to imagine “disengaging from the dominant culture and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory”

She therefore calls herself “an act of kneeding , of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of Iight, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.” It is questioning the very boundaries that has enabled her to break these rigid realities and live a new life with a new Self  which will in her best hopes bring an end to rape, violence and war. Like Fanon, Anzaldua finds the answer to colonization in opening up possibilities and allowing a new self to emerge which requires “massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective conscienceness.”  It sure is a long struggle but  a struggle which is worth every sacrifice, every pain.

‘Borderlands La Frontera’documented Gloria Anzaldúa’s experiences of existing in the borderlands of geography (Mexico and the US), culture (Indian-Mexcian-Anglo) and sexuality (as a queer woman). She subverted these artificially created boundaries by fusing poetry and prose, English and Spanish, and all aspects of her Chicana identity. One of the more striking aspects is Anzaldúa’s text was her gradual embrace of the supernatural and her reinterpretation of the mystical forces rejected by her society.

For Anzaldúa, the supernatural has been intimately tied to Chicano history and tradition. According to the myth, the Aztecs decided to settle on the land where an eagle sat with a writhing snake in its mouth (which also features on the Mexican flag) – a symbol of triumph for a civilization. She also talked about the three Chicana mothers: la Guadalupe, Chingada, and la Llorona who may presently be worshiped under different names, but their significance as old-world entities have remained the same to the Chicanos. Even on an everyday level, Anzaldúa recounted the Mexican love of storytelling the belief in superstitions into which she was socialized (which can still be seen in the way she narrates ‘Borderlands’). These beliefs, she recognized, are important ways of preserving indigenous spirituality that’s existence has been threatened by Western rationality and modernity.

But the problem is not just that these spiritual elements are in danger of being exterminated from the outside but also from within. She talked about how the myths and images of her people where dismissed as being irrational and pagan by white rationality. But more so, she pointed out how Chicano glorify myths which perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes by emphasizing submissiveness in women. One such instance was the story of Guadalupe who had been sanitized of her ambiguity and rebellion to be equated with the chaste and sacrificial Virgin Mary. But, even in her new sanitized image, she is held in regard as the patron saint of the poor and marginalized, whether they were the wrong race, sexuality or gender. Guadalupe can signify a greater emancipation from more ingrained divisions designed to suppress the wholesomeness of the feminine experience (the dangerous aspects and the maternal qualities). Anzaldúa did not necessarily suggest a subversion of the same gendered stereotypes so that women can dominate over men. Instead, she argued that the separation and subordination of masculine and feminine, the spiritual and the religious close off the possibilities of a multiplicity of identities and experiences which can bring meaning into our lives.

In reinterpreting Guadalupe, Anzaldúa attempted to redeem the otherworldly aspects of herself. Her unique take on her spirituality came from her position as a queer Chicano-Mexican woman, someone who has been on the borderlands of her community, as well as the modern world. She particularly recounted the time she drank the blood which gushed from a snake bite, feeling herself becoming snake-like. Anzaldúa went into great detail describing the importance of the serpent in pre-Columbian America as a feminine entity with a deep connection spirit world – that which wad both dangerous and familiar. Her snake-bite incident allowed her to tap into what was spiritual and powerfully feminine and that which society fought hard to repress. This may not refer to any particular aspect of her life, but it was a recognition of instinctive forces which gave her life meaning in a way organized religion could not. It also connected her to Coatlalopeuh, the indigenous manifestation of Guadalupe that represented the inexplicable and mystical. In recognizing Coatlalopeuh’s wholesomeness, perhaps she could recognize the harmony between the rational and supernatural within herself.

The conquering of rationality/organized religion over the mystical/supernatural is seen by Anzaldúa as a largely gendered process with multiple layers. One cannot ignore modernity and its benefits, but should also recognize its limitations as being oppressive and exclusionary. Especially to the women of color, Anzaldúa’s piece calls for a recognition of the ambiguities of our lives. To suppress the otherworldliness of our lives is to submit to language which seeks to subdue our potential wholesomeness. The way to subvert that tyranny is to allow for the existence of multiple identities and multiple possibilities.  

The most striking thing about Borderlands is probably its sheer unapologetic tone and non-standard structure. Anzaldua makes a point of demanding engagement on her ground, never translating herself for the audience, or apologizing for aspects of her context that might incite derogation from epistemic white morality or ‘knowledge’. This is specifically interesting for me, as I wrote my first blog on Rigoberta Menchu’s need to both translate herself into English to promote her people in an acceptable, legitimate, accessible language, and to defend those actions that she saw as otherwise ‘backwards’ on the white scale.

This then is Anzaldua’s rebellion against that need – a rebellion that is embedded into the structure of her writing as much as it exists in what she writes. The most obvious aspect of her demand for being ‘met halfway’ as she puts it, is her refusal to translate. The text is exquisite, not just in its refusal to engage only in English, but also in its subversion of English,

I read it, thinking of the production of ‘objective’ knowledge and the standardized structures there-of; the patterns of academic speech that provide the ring of authority – of ‘objective’ knowledge – white language, white knowledge. Anzaldua challenges them in form, structure and content. She switches her bilingual way through reminiscence, analytic discussion, theology, mythology, poetry, dreams, eloquently jagged edges to each transition of both content and language. The theme of borderlands demands a borderland language and a borderland structure – almost gratingly jagged edges and jarring multiplicity are only too appropriate. Her sentences swing from standard paragraphs to oddly structured, fractured, poetically repetitive – demanding engagement with her, beyond the text, from moment to moment.

When describing her experiences of the supernatural, her dreams and omens feature mythological beings – the serpents of womanhood, La Larona weeping for her stolen children. And yet – her point is not that this proves the existence and intercession of these beings, but the impact of the borderlands in its many forms upon her own consciousness. The spiritual is the expression of the conflict, of oppression, of society itself, to her. There is the borderland of subjectivity and objectivity that she straddles, that her writing straddles – the mind, the body, spiritual experience and societal analysis.

The borderlands of the text – between ‘knowledge’ and – let’s encompass poetics, spirituality and mythology into ‘intuition’ – between genders, between races, between textual styles, are not just explained, they’re demonstrated. In centralizing her own position within these borderlands, in centralizing her own experiences, spiritual, racial and familial, Anzaldua exposes the potential in these borderlands – in existing in multiple, overlapping possibilities and identities. Consider the example of the text itself – in its overlapping, strange existence, in its ability to defy pigeonholing or any limitation, any border defining its meaning. It is subjective and prescriptive, poetry and analysis, religion and sociology, biography and seminal text. It is English and not.

In living within this textual, linguistic borderland, it expands in meaning, in possibilities, just as Anzaldua offers meaning and possibility from within all sorts of borderlands.