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A Splinter to the Heart: On the Possibility of Afro-Pessimist Aesthetics

2020; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/asa.2020.0018

2381-4721

Adrienne Edwards,

Race, History, and American Society

A Splinter to the Heart:On the Possibility of Afro-Pessimist Aesthetics Adrienne Edwards (bio) Informed by the critical and historical contributions of Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Ronald Judy, Orlando Patterson, and Hortense Spillers, Black studies scholar Frank Wilderson posits Blackness as an ontology of slavery, measured solely in relation to the State, its apparatuses of power, and ultimately the structure of that power relation. A cursory review of Wilderson's writings exemplify his thoughts on the matter: "the Black, a subject who is always already positioned as Slave," the Slave lacks "Human capacity," "the Slave is a sentient being but not a subject," "a Black is the very antithesis of a Human subject," [End Page 273] "no slave is in the world," "the Slave is not a laborer but an anti-Human, a position against which Humanity establishes, maintains, and renews its coherence, its corporeal integrity," "a being outside of relationality," and so on. 1 The awesomeness of his language resides in its invariably different sameness, supported by a myriad of examples that might buttress its veracity ever more daily by the invariably different sameness of the conditions of contemporary Black "social death," to use the parlance of Afro-pessimism, where gratuitous violence, the state, and precarity intertwine, which is to say at every instance either is present. For Afro-pessimists, the distinction of being a slave has one neither in nor of the world. Indeed, Wilderson insists that no analysis concerning a slave can be approached in relation to civil society "unless and until the interlocutor first explains how the Slave is of the world." 2 This reflection makes such an attempt. This essay departs from what Huey Copeland describes in his introduction as "an oxymoron at best" in reference to approaching the possibility of Afro-pessimist aesthetics. The crux of the matter for Blackness is, if race is a concept, understood as yet one of the State's assembly of apparatuses, how does the concept express itself? 3 Indeed, Wilderson describes Blackness as a "conceptual possession of civil society." 4 Moreover, if there are "protocols of structural positionality," what might be the protocols of structural possibility, particularly concerning the concept of Blackness in art? 5 Evil.27.Selma (2011), by conceptual artist Tony Cokes (b. 1956, Richmond, Virginia), is productive in thinking through the stakes of an Afro-pessimist aesthetics (Figs.1 and 2). Precise, at eight minutes in length, the video employs the style and pacing reminiscent of slide-tape performances common in audiovisual works from the 1970s to 1990s as well Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Tony Cokes, Evil.27.Selma (2011). Digital video, color, stereo. 9 mins. Edition 1/5, 2AP (TCo.009.1). Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles; and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Tony Cokes, Evil.27.Selma (2011). Digital video, color, stereo. 9 mins. Edition 1/5, 2AP (TCo.009.1). Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles; and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. [End Page 274] as the PowerPoint presentations prevalent in educational and corporate settings today. The majority of Cokes's video and installation projects operate within such an aesthetic. In Evil.27.Selma, groupings of white words float on a black, then eventually gray background. The story unfolds over the duration of the piece as what feels like "slides" shift left with an affect more akin to a journalistic account than a narrative. The conceptual through-line of the work is the paradigmatic events of the civil rights movement, including the three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956), precipitated by Rosa Parks's arrest, which set off an organized protest that formally launched what was the largest action in the United States against Southern apartheid. The first three slides, a kind of prologue, present the lyrics "And I wonder does anybody feel the same way I do?" "And is Evil just something you are or something you do?" from British alternative rock singer Morrissey's 1988 song "Sister I'm a...