Viewing James and X through each other(?)

The question of whether Malcolm X and C.L.R. James can be viewed in the same light is an interestingly complex one. I would use ‘rays’ of light in the attempt to understand one through the other and try to find one’s reflection in the other, for ‘light’ in itself is what they both were, and are. I have only, so far, reached the rays.

In his work called “The Black Jacobins”, James begins with the chapter called ‘Property’. What an intelligent, provocative and tragic word in the sense that he uses it. Needless to say, a purpose and an intent can be derived from it. The word ‘property’ alone, immediately evokes a sense of emotion and anger, uneasiness and discomfort. A necessary discomfort and unease, i would say. And this is primarily what Malcolm X did when he spoke. He invited discomfort, strain and sweat, he invited the truth that some realized and others didn’t or perhaps were forced not to. In this sense, both James and X are holding out and urging everyone to see and to recognize the torches of truth.

In Malcolm’s speech titled as “The house Negro and the field Negro”, the ‘property’ in James’ “The Black Jacobins” is perhaps what Malcolm is referring to when he speaks of the ‘house’ Negro. The Negro, the human being, who was made to be considered a property of the slave master, a debt to the master, answerable to the master, and indebted to feel a sense of pride by denying themselves agency, own will and independence for the sake of being in close proximity of the master. In other words, when James recalls the physical torments faced by the ‘property’, Malcolm brings into attention the psychological impact and its manifestation in the minds of many Blacks who were made to live as property for hundreds of years. While James sees the slaves through the lens of what was imposed and forced upon them, Malcolm also takes into account how some slaves reacted to that imposition by submitting further to the masters and perhaps deriving some sense of pride from it. Here one might sense a complementary relationship between James and Malcolm, while, of course, appreciating the uniqueness of both in viewing and expressing the question of slavery and the then present condition of the black people.

When James speaks of the dark past, he is vivid. Painfully vivid. He narrates the journey that every slave would have embarked on when they were taken away from their land, their home. He tells how they lived, and how they died. How they protested, even in their deaths. Perhaps James is more inclined towards the journey undertaken by the slaves, and their sufferings that made them what Malcolm could classify as the field negro and the house negro. James is probably setting the stage for Malcolm to build his classification on, and to give his voice on. It feels like both are standing at different stages of the same history which has been cruel, unfair, unjust and agonizing for the Africans. They are both talking about the same thing, but the tones, the lens, the emphasis is unique to each. There is tragedy, and a very close association to the on-going tragedy, in the words of both. They choose to speak about it.

In terms of expression, both occasionally use sarcasm and wit to express what they strongly feel about. Maybe wit was their way of balancing their emotions, when repeating, recalling and re-identifying the sufferings that had penetrated into their present. This is especially true for Malcolm. No matter how much he and his audience laughed during some of his speeches, he knew and they knew what he was saying and what he meant even behind the veil of the laughs. Similarly, when James starts his work with two ironic sentences about the hypocrisy of Columbus, what is his ironic style doing. Why is there an impactful use of irony, strong language and wit. The answer is simple, and it lies in the beautiful fact that they were both artists. They knew art, they recognized art and they spoke art. It is their words embedded in art and the language of art which has given immortality to them, their imagination and their extraordinary audacity.

The story that James is narrating, Malcolm is directly addressing the sufferers of that story, urging them to bring their suffering to a halt. He is telling them directly to know their rights and to change their conditions. His work does not end at narrating and recounting the miseries and pains, the blood and deaths, the homelessness and injustice of the past, but his work and his voice are dedicated to bring an end to the past, on his and his people’s terms. The past does not stop or blur his imagination. Malcolm is thinking present. Malcolm is thinking future. He is taking James’ story ahead. Malcolm is thinking hope, however his hope is neither theoretical nor imaginary, and neither utopian nor effortless, his hope is one which requires effort, action, determination and the compulsion of proudly ‘knowing’ what is one’s right as a human being.

Both him and James are also interested and deeply invested in the question of location, of situating the black people, making them visible out of the racist boundaries confining their existence, their imaginations and their potential. To address the question of location, they use what they own in abundance. Memory.

When going through the words of both, one may occasionally recognize the distinction between a historian and an activist. However, i will not confine the two to the prefix of either being a historian or an activist. They were obviously, undoubtedly and evidently much greater than the two or three labels or professional titles attached to their names. They were artistic existences. And art does not belong to a definition or a title.

Other than the aforementioned (sometimes abstract) commonalities and complementary reflections of Malcolm in James and James in Malcolm, perhaps the most striking and bright point of convergence, which brings them into the same rays of light, is the ‘courage’. Their courage, their audacity and their choice to recall, to speak, to make known what darknesses and veils were holding within themselves. If James was telling history, Malcolm was seeking to overpower that history while keeping its memory alive, and taking direction from the memory.

It is this memory, this courage and this voice that bring C.L.R James and Malcolm X together under one light, illuminated from one source and spread in both overlapping and distinct rays.

More than a footnote: History and Struggle of the Blacks in the Black voice

“I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”

I was grappling with the idea of the urgency of the black/white divide in Malcolm X’s speeches. His absolute opposition to joining hands with the white man in any way and his arguments against integration seemed counter productive when I first read him. I understood the need to claim one’s own identity, and the fact that the white Civil Right leaders would obviously dilute the agendas of the movement by propagating compromise and negotiations. I also understood the argument about the House Negro and the Field Negro, the latter a figure too familiar as the moderator, or the native elite, we’ve read so far. However, why was it that he did not even call himself American? I questioned if there was not something to gain by being both American and African? Until I realised that blackness is only given a status of a footnote, an afterthought in white history, European or American.

When I read CLR James’ The Black Jacobins and Malcolm X’s speeches again after discussing the notion of ‘pride’ in class, I realized that perhaps the reason the latter insisted on a complete doing away of anything American and identification only with blackness was to emphasise the existence of the black individual as a human, as someone who had their own history. It was about remembering what the whites deemed so important to forget, or to claim to not exist at all.

In order to define this alternative history of the New World, CLR James goes to lengths to describe the torture that the slaves went through in the plantations in Haiti. He gives the slaves a face that was taken away from them in mainstream, Western history.While the fact that plantations were extremely tortuous and dehumanizing was not new, he also identifies the constant recognition of the slaves’ own humanity. For example, when he talks about how a traveller noted the difference of attitudes when the slaves were before their masters and when they were on their own, or that despite the fact the masters would “work them alongside an ass or a horse and beat both with the same stick”, there was still something invincibly human about them. He recognizes them more than just numbers, more than pawns in an entire system of economic and human exploitation.

Two of the most potent paintings I recently came across on the Middle Passage by an Haitian artist, Keith Morrison, captures what I mean by when I argue that CLR James shows the slaves’ perspective of this entire history:

The paintings show the middle passage from the eyes of the slave. The slave that was human more than anything else. We know the accounts of the journey, we know the conditions of the ships through accounts kept by merchants and ship captains. But these paintings evoke so much more because it places one inside and eyes of the slaves as they looked outside. It shows the suffocation, the claustrophobic conditions, the lack of light, and the ever present outside. When CLR James writes about the plantations in Haiti, he takes this vantage point as well. He shows history through the vantage point of those who were enslaved when he does not gloss over the details, or when he shows the sides of them that make them human.

When I read Malcolm X’s speeches in light of this perspective, the need to bifurcate the blacks and white became clearer. In one of his speeches, he points to the importance of the need to realize the ultimate goal behind any revolution: land. Blacks needed their own land, their own black nationalism, and they could not be made to sit on a table and reach a middle ground. They needed their own identity, their own humanity, which they defined themselves without any involvement with the whites. He seems to rejoice when he reflects back on the Bandung Conference, when he say that the only one who was kept away from the conference was the white. He brings together all of the colonizers and says that they are always Europeans, always white. The white, the European, who chartered the course of history and then presented it as the only history, the white history.

As CLR James draws a history of slavery and revolution from the black perspective, Malcolm X keeps the white at bay within that history. He does not want shackles that come with integration, he does not need limits that come with it. So much so that he does not even want the movement to be for civil rights, but for human rights. Because the black is also human. And this is the fact that white history did not emphasise. And this recognition comes from no one, but people who are consciousness of their blackness, of black history, and their black nationalism only. Malcolm X cannot be American because the American does not recognize him and his history existing in and of itself. In order to be recognized, he needs to carve out his own self, a self which is only black. And this is what CLR James and Malcolm X both do.

The House Negro: a Revolutionary or a Pacifist?

This essay will explore the similarities and differences in the analysis of the “house nigger” or the “privileged class”, in the words of Malcolm X and C.L.R. James respectively. Both Malcolm and James explain the same phenomena but arrive at different implications. James reasons that the privileged class fosters the leaders of the revolution. On the other hand Malcolm holds the house nigger, his expression for the privileged class, to be a detractor of the revolution.

James highlights the extent to which the privileged class aped their masters; the French:

Dressed in cast-off silks and brocades, they gave balls in which, like trained monkeys, they danced minuets and quadrilles, and bowed and curtseyed in the fashion of Versailles.

Malcolm similarly illustrates this point:

He identified the master’s house as his own. If the master said, “We have a fine house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, our house is a fine house.” Whenever the master said, “We,” he said, “We.”

The class they describe lives comfortably and wishes to emulate the white class. They blind themselves to the oppression that the field niggers face. Instead they herald the vast improvements that the white man has brought. They do not empathize with the less fortunate, more overtly oppressed classes, and instead wish to become like the oppressor.

But in this class, James also sees potential. Their unique position allows them education, awareness and inevitably the tools needed to lead a revolution. C.L.R James states:

But a few of these used their position to cultivate themselves, to gain a little; education, to learn all they could. The leaders of a revolution are usually those who have been able to profit by the cultural advantages of the system they are attacking, and the San Domingo revolution was no exception to this rule

Here we see the utility of the privileged class, amongst them some eventually become self aware, leading them to become the perfect leaders of the revolution. They use the skills they acquired through their special position to the detriment of those that oppress their people.

Malcolm however sees this class as completely harmful for the revolutionary cause because they derail the revolution by trying to pacify the masses. He views the actions of the “big six” as indirect attempts by the Kennedy administration to control the African American revolution. He sees traces of the “old Negro” who begs for his civil rights. The revolutionary field Negro would understand that they already have human rights. They instead need to hold Uncle Sam accountable for trying to deprive them of what is fundamentally theirs. Integrationist approaches, according to Malcolm X, fall into the trap of begging for rights. This pathway, he reasons, comes from the leadership of the privileged, who have colluded with the oppressors. In this way all revolutionary zeal is sapped from the movement.

The question that is raised by an inter-textual reading is; If the privileged class can truly be revolutionary? C.L.R James would argue it is inevitably revolutionary, while Malcolm X would show their pacifist nature.

Malcolm, a high school dropout who took to the streets, hustling, had his personal renaissance in prison. C.L.R James on the other hand was certified as a teacher and worked for The Guardian. Malcolm is the leader from the streets, from the field. One who did not need doctoral degrees. C.L.R James and Toussaint, a leader he holds in high regard, illustrate that privilege does not lock you in apathy and betrayal. They are the leaders who abandon privilege. Both leaders can co-exist in this world, there is revolution in everybody.

An act of reading: Malcolm

To read is to be haunted. But to read Malcolm is to be transformed. It is to be touched to your very core by the chilling vibrations of his words. It is an evocative art. You cannot read Malcolm without reacting to him; without standing (by him) suddenly, nodding (at him) ferociously, talking back (to him) with such intense affirmation and laughing (with him) freely. He reads like a symphony, beautiful and melodic, moving you to tears. Each word is heavy, each word cuts through the silences woven between time, like the cracking of a whip; leaving behind a searing pain so strong that it ignites a fire within, and forces out a cry. He is relentless, he pushes against the edges, tests how far he can go, and he goes very far, beyond the point of no return. There is no return when you read Malcolm, it is as if each time you begin anew.

But there is an ethic involved in reading Malcolm. He is undeniably angry, enraged by the state of things and while his speeches are often read as sermons of rage, still, one cannot be estranged from the reality that shaped this man’s life when assessing his position. There is a sense of urgency defined in his tone, in his choice of words:

You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite;
and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it’s true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea’!

and here we can see his method to the madness. Malcolm speaks in front of the white man but never addresses him. Instead, he is speaking directly to his audience – Black Americans- and gives power to their truth. He weaves himself into his speech, making himself apart of his audience, placing himself among them and not above them. He is not speaking to them, rather, with them. And he does this deliberately, integrating the personal with the political; he has a personal stake in what he says and this gives it more life:

This is the way it is with the white man in America. He’s a wolf-and you’re sheep. Any time a shepherd, a pastor, teaches you and me not to run from the white man and, at the same time, teaches us not to fight the white man, he’s a traitor to you and me. Don’t lay down a life all by itself. No, preserve your life, it’s the best thing you’ve got. And if you’ve got to give it up, let it be even-steven.

This is why it is important to read Malcolm generously and not sparingly as limited to the role of just the reader, but also as a writer, as Malcolm himself. In breaking down this glass between reader and writer, one can uncover the many interpretations of Malcolm. The subject of his dream is the dreamer, but not just one. He is the light; prophetic in his message. Although he speaks in reference to the Black struggle, he can be read to inspire change for any struggle. He is the preacher, guarding his parish and leading the way to the righteous path. He is the artist, in his seemingly effortless dance with words, he paints a masterpiece of memory. Reconstructing the point of focus away from the individual and towards the collective. He is a brother and a friend, someone you can trust blindly to be saying all the right things. Malcolm is you, he is me, he is all of us because his message is universal. And this is a choice. His choice. Malcolm’s words do not come from a formulaic sense of the world. He is raw and unapologetic, he does not conform, no. Malcolm destroys the norm, he tears it apart and transforms it, constantly. He reinvents it and exposes the lie in it, when he says:

Let the world know how bloody his (the white man) hands are. Let the world know the hypocrisy that’s practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot or the bullet.

Malcolm is human. He speaks from his soul to the souls of others, establishing an incorporeal connection, reaching the depths of humanity. With the force of an uncontrollable fire that consumes everything in its path, even the air, Malcolm spares nothing. He lays it all out to the world, as if he has understood and given life to each person’s pain. He is not static, he creates space for his kind and his kind is not just Black America, it is anyone who recognizes Malcolm’s anger in their own life. To read Malcolm is to speak truth to power in no other way, it is to feel pride and restore dignity to oneself. To read Malcolm is to feel his desperation, to understand his constant reinvention of himself to understand more people and give voice to more pain.

But above all, to read Malcolm is to witness the extent of his affliction and experience the fierceness of his love.

‘El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

I know he’s gone… but he’s not forgotten.
I know he died just to set me free… yes Malcolm’s gone, but he’s not forgotten,

he died just to save me, give me back dignity.’

The Black Internationalism of Malcolm X and CLR James

In 1938, CLR James published Black Jacobins in an attempt to give black history as the staring point of world history as we know it. About twenty-five years later, Malcolm X aimed to subvert racial order by making African-Americans feel pride in their identity and struggles. Among the things both highlighted, they mention the need for internationalizing racial emancipation. While Malcolm X explicitly called for a worldwide black nationalism, James – at least in the first edition of Black Jacobins – did not really engage with that idea. But by using Malcolm X’s words to understand the history presented by James, one can understand how an international struggle has always been a part of racial emancipation as imagined by black people.

Although James and Malcolm X focused on the West Indies and the United States respectively, they both speak of experiences of slavery. Both used their sharp command of language and irony to articulate the suffering and degradation of identity that came about through the institution. Malcolm X pointed out that those who attended Bandung realized that the Belgian, Englishman, Frenchman were all white colonizers who viewed their individual colonies as racially inferior to them. That statement makes sense once we look at James’ text because slavery was used to advance the colonial project. But through Malcolm X’s emotive imagery (and the reaction of the crowd) can one orient oneself in James’ anger and sarcasm as he explained the conditions of the slaves. And even as the colonies became nations, there were few to no laws which could alter their conditions for the better. The need for international solidarity existed because the state failed to guarantee rights and safety for the black slaves. And if that occurred in the United States, then black people in other countries could be facing similar circumstances.

In light of this stance, the only way to ensure international solidarity was to frame the issue as a human rights violation. In The Ballot or the Bullet,Malcolm X insisted that considering black freedom a human right would legitimize their struggle in the eyes of the international community. Human rights are both internationally recognized and universally accepted. Once those rights were curbed, black people could seek the support of international organizations like the United Nations. One can see seeds of this thought in Black Jacobins. James recounted Abbé Raynal who used Enlightenment ideas of freedom and liberty (which now constitute the basis of European liberalism) to mobilize a slave revolution for the relief of Africa and Africans. And, as James mentioned, these ideas were later used by Toussant L’Ouverture during the Haitian Revolution. So, when Malcolm X called out for seeing the civil rights struggle as a human rights struggle, he was movingly echoing the words of L’Ouverture, who was the first black man in world history to successfully turn these ideas into action.

That is not to say there have not been other efforts to create international links since 1791. In the Appendix, James connected the revolutionary ways of L’Ouvrerture with those of post-WWII revolutionaries like Castro. What was pertinent here is how he traced proto-Negritude feelings among the Haitians lead to the creation African Bureau and the idea of Pan-Africanism. All these movements were the attempts of black people to reconnect with their ancestry and seek to define themselves in their own terms. Malcolm X witnessed legacy of these movements when he traveled abroad 1964 and encountered worldwide support for him. He believed that the same could be achieved in the black national movement once people focused on their shared struggles as opposed to individual differences.

One can look at the words of both men in succession: the ideas which originally sprang up with the Haitian Revolution and in James’ work remained within intellectual tradition till they ended up Malcolm X’s ideology. But this idea can also be inverted: the emotion and the frankness used by Malcolm X to state the condition of black people can help us not just appreciate the boldness of earlier black revolutionaries (like L’Ouverture, Lumumba, Nkrumah etc.) but that of James who told their stories. It was James who went against conventional narratives (just as Malcolm X), and wrote a history which placed black people at the front and centre of it. And one can conclude from looking at both texts together that the strength found in a large community of proud black people in an international arena would surely prove to be a powerful and formidable force.

Rap Mixtape: Personifying the Post-Colonial/Third World

The demo mixtape that I aim to present for my final project, will consist of a collection of tracks recorded by myself. The concept behind the tape is to give the Post-Colonial State/Third World a voice. It seeks to explore its different nuances, internal struggles, issues with identity, grief and lost sense of pride. The mixtape will hence be in first person and each track will end with a narration of different writers from our course e.g: Cesaire’s Journal of a Homecoming and the crux of that narration will inform what the following track will address. Hence, as listeners you will be aware of whats to come next but where its eventually leading to is this very question of “what is there left to redeem?”.

By personifying the Post-Colonial/Third World I intend to explore its different personalities through the African/American/Indian experience. The sonics of each track and the instruments etc used will represent that very locality, trying to transform the listener into the heat of that particular situation.

Lastly the picture used above is Bibighar Well which during the final stages of the Siege of Cawnpore 1857 (India) was filled with both bodies of Indian Sepoys (Colonized) and British Soldiers/Families (Colonizer). I aim to design and use this particular picture as the artwork for the tape as it (in my opinion) perfectly captures the dual effect of colonization in terms of dehumanizing the colonizer and the colonized. It shows that in the end both lay collectively in a dark pit.

Against Objectivity

For this weeks blog, I have chosen to focus my attention on C.L.R. James’ preface of The Black Jacobins, to unpack his methodology. His work, the story of the successful slave rebellion of San Domingo, led by the revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, goes beyond a mere account of causality and event. Rather, it is an exercise of the imagination – a plunge into the world which made possible such a revolution, with an investigation of all the possibilities and alternate directions history could have taken accounted for. The journey is described in such detail, so richly, that it is almost cinematic.

What is truly distinctive, to me, is how unabashedly present C.L.R James is in his description and analysis. His account does not merely present multiple images and voices passively for us to make sense of. He directs our journey into the past – his work is a curated history told from the vantage point of the people with a drive so evident that his emotions are uncensored in his retelling. His work is no churning out of supposed objective, apolitical literature – if such a thing could exist. His loyalty is very evidently to the people, and he makes it apparent. He is their storyteller, deliberately emotionally charged, to tell a history complete with the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations that were part and parcel of the revolution. It comes as little surprise, then, to find out that he is a Marxist historian.

In his preface he argues that analysis is the science of history, and the telling of it, art. He clearly asserts that his telling of the revolution is shorn of the tranquility of Wordsworth’s definition of art, of poetry, as the overflow of emotion, recollected in tranquility:

“The violent conflicts of our age enable our practiced vision to see into the very bones of previous revolutions more easily than heretofore. For this very reason, it is impossible to to recollect historical emotions in that tranquility which a great English writer, too narrowly, associated with poetry alone. Tranquility today is either innate (the philistine) or to be acquired only by a deliberate doping of the personality. It was in the stillness of seaside suburb that could be heard most clearly and insistently the booming of Franco’s heavy artillery, the rattle of Stalin’s firing squads and the fierce shrill turmoil of the revolutionary movement striving for clarity and influence. Such is our age and this book is of it, with something of the fever and the fret. Nor does the writer regret it”

He cannot feign objectivity. For those who feel the tremors of history today, there is no way to speak of it outside “the fever and the fret”. He writes as a black man from Cuba in the 80’s, and one imagines that his choice in writing a book on the history of the revolution of an island not so far from his own, is one that cannot be anything but interested. It reads as a very conscious immersion into the past with the aim to make sense of the present, both for himself and his readers. He writes to see where his people have succeeded in the past, and where they had failed, and how those in the present can learn from their example. This drive for context, for a deeper understanding of his place is evident in that his final chapter links Toussaint and the revolution to Cuba’s history and to Fidel Castro.

His method reflects this drive, his approach is not one of simply glorifying of romanticizing the revolution – this immersion must be productive, must be understood. Here is the science of this historical method. He remarks, disapprovingly, that it is routine practice for historians of the revolution to romanticize Toussaint L’Ouverture’s leading role. Though he concurs that “no single figure appeared on the historical stage more greatly gifted than this Negro”, and that his present work too will convince them of this fact – still:

“Toussaint did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint. And even that is not the whole truth…great men make history, but only as much as it is possible for them to make. Their freedom of achievement is limited by the necessities of their environment. To portray the limits of those necessities and their realization, complete or partial, of all possibilities, that is the true work of a historian”.

He uses, what is to me, a beautiful metaphor to describe his task:

“In a revolution, when the ceaseless slow accumulation of centuries bursts into volcanic eruption, the meteoric flares and flights above are meaningless chaos and lend themselves into infinite caprice and romanticism unless the observer sees them always as projections of the sub-soil from which they came. The writer has sought not only to analyze, but to demonstrate in their movement, the economic forces of the age; their molding of society and politics, of men in the mass and individual men; the powerful reaction of these on their environment at one of those rare moments when society is at boiling point and therefore fluid”.

If I were more efficient in writing to save room to go into the text itself and put forward what his method looks like in practice, this would be a more thorough blog. I can, however, quickly mention my favorite technique he employs, particularly in his chapter on the slave trade titled The Property. He juxtaposes long, richly detailed account of lives of the Native Americans, or the black slaves, with empathy, with emotion, against a short and sharp ironic shift to how the colonizer responded to their misery, or how they justified it. It is here where his obvious partiality, his lack of objectivity, is most apparent. For example, in the very first paragraph, in describing the slave ships as so horrific that “the Africans fainted and died, the mortality in the “trucks” being over 20 per cent.” And yet, “outside in the harbor, waiting to empty the “trunks” as they filled, was the captain of the slave ship, with so clear a conscience that one of them, in the intervals of waiting to enrich British capitalism with the profits of another valuable cargo, enriched British religion by composing the hymn “How Sweet the Name of Jesus sounds!” It’s laughable, it’s horrific. There is no question of accepting in context the white man’s prejudice – they are immediately condemned. He does this repeatedly, and it builds a tempo, an energy, a frustration that demands release. C.L.R. James has, in his first chapter, achieved his aims – to ensure your sympathies are with the suffering, and has made you eager to see how they resist. This first chapter very much exemplifies how the telling of history is indeed an art.

Blues Museum Tour

I intend to create a project based on the African American blues tradition. This will be to highlight the influence of Blues music in identity creation. There will be an investigation of regularly occurring troupes and symbols in the music which promote a certain identity for Black Americans. The project will try to represent as accurately as possible the blues experience of the African American. What was the experience the blues genre was trying to impart on the listener? Why was the music structured a certain way? Why were the lyrics trying to convey? There will be a concerted effort to historically contextualize the blues, so that an understanding can be formed of why the genre evolved as it did, and how it influenced the African American in viewing himself as an individual and in the context of the African American community.

The importance of this lies in that any oppressed community turns to music for expression. This reflects the collective experience and in turn empowers marginalized groups to retake the narrative. Blues tapped into slavery and racism and retold the story of the African American through their music, reclaiming the voices that would otherwise not be heard. The influence of the blues has been massive with Jazz, Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues and Hip Hop all taking some inspiration from the genre. These genres still exist and are widely heard in the mainstream music today, indicating the far reach of the influence that the Blues has had on the African American.

The project will consist of three inter-related parts;

Blues song list
Pictures
Analysis

Blues Song List

An album of blues song will be provided to the listener. There are two distinct directions the project can take with the song list. It could either try to cover a large variety of recurring themes in identity formation or one specific idea could be the focus. Restrictions can also be made on sub-genres and geography. The most accessible sub-genre will be electric blues of the 1950s based in Chicago, due to the superior recording quality.

The project will require the listener to put on the album of selected songs while viewing pictures and then reading the analysis. The track list is thus the lynchpin of the project, meaning the selection of songs will be crucial in shaping the direction of the project. It will be the basis through which pictures are chosen and analysis is made; the reason being that a project on music should give greatest importance to the music itself.

Pictures

A visual representation of the song will be part of the attempt to situation the reader in the moment of the African American. The picture will be neither of the singer nor of the album art but rather it will be a depiction of the plight of the African American; a way to illustrate the source of inspiration for the blues. It will also attempt to draw attention to the conditions of the African American community. The pictures are meant to elucidate the larger point that each individual blues song is making. The use of pictures will be paired with an analysis underneath it.

Analysis

After the audience has “heard and seen”, this section will attempt to explore themes related to identity formation for that particular song. There will be reliance on secondary sources and various interpretations will be provided of the song. Focus will be on identity but general information and other important themes will also be discussed for the sake of completness. The section will therefore be where I will attempt to link the music, the visuals and the entire “guided tour” into one coherent whole. This section will not serve as an essay and instead will serve as a supplement. It will aim to leave food for thought of the entire “exhibit”, as opposed to shoving the words down the readers throat.

The Remnants of Colonization in the Normative Values of the Pakistani Society

For my final project, I intend to discover the deeply ingrained effects of colonization on the normative values of a society and its subsequent implications. The idea is to investigate the conventional values of a system that appear to have evolved from within, however, have the deep-rooted effects of the colonial past of a society. In other words, the inability of a society to ‘break’ from the imposed and infectious values of their unfortunate past. My area of study in this regard is Pakistan. I will be researching on the deeper corrupted values that I have found contradictory to the normative understandings of people in Pakistan.

I derive the importance of this investigation based on my personal experiences and from what I have understood and experienced as I have grown up in this society. What rather concerns me is the over-arching dilemma of identity and the elements of influence that I found contradictory and demeaning to our everyday conduct and existence. I believe it is elementary to point out the inherent differences that lie between the colonizers and the once colonized peoples of the subcontinent. We have so profoundly incorporated ideas of the colonizer that have corrupted our normative values and belief systems. I want to bring to the front a realistic image of these very corruptive values and what undesirable impact they have on our society.

At this point in time, I aspire to give my study and investigation a more pictorial shape. I intend to create a directory of images that are a living representation of these micro-level corruptive values. I want to humanize these problems and so, I will want to give it a structured outlook by organizing visual representations of such subjects. The images will incorporate people, sets, streets, art, old newspapers, advertisements (old and new), lyrics, poetry, speeches etc. to elaborate on the over-arching conventions and will try to bring forward the incoherence they exemplify. The medium of this directory will most probably be Instagram as it is a platform where I can make a sequential collection of pictures and short videos which will be followed by detailed descriptions for every post.

Soul Food

My project is based on the way food was used as a form of decolonisation amongst African Americans. Soul Food originated in the South and incorporated a diet and cooking techniques that were born out of the slave experience and the reconstruction era. Soul food includes: cornbread, fried chicken, sofkee, black eyed peas, biscuits, watermelon, collard greens etc. Amiri Baraka was one of the proponents who advocated the concept of Soul Food and through his work and others’, I will attempt to understand food as a site of decolonial struggle and repair.

It is important because it signified the shared racial and class oppression that caused this form of cooking and food to emerge. It was criticised by the African American community itself for contributing to unhealthy eating and Muslims amongst the community for the consumption of pork. More importantly, it was re-appropriated by the Black Power Movement and it marked food as a part of African American identity in the 1960’s. The Black arts movement was about redefining what the black body meant and tied to it were food consumption and cooking techniques. Deep fat frying was one of these techniques that was a part of soul food cooking. It represented the conditions of African American diaspora as there is an element of intuition and spontaneity when it comes to cooking depending on the availability of ingredients.

I anticipate it taking the form of a a pictorial essay explaining the context of particular food and how food was a part of the de-colonial struggle or a cookbook with a commentary, for cookbooks were also the way African Americans started passing on the recipes for soul food.