The Problem of the Human: BlackOntologies and “the Coloniality of OurBeing”Rinaldo Wa/colt

Introduction

What it means to be Human is continually defined against Black people

and Blackness. The very basic terms of social Human engagement are

shaped by anti-Black logics so deeply embedded in various normativities

that they resist intelligibility as modes of thought and yet we must attempt

to think them. The profound consequences of having Humannessdefined

against Black being means that the project of colonialism and the ongoing

workings of coloniality have produced for Black people a perverserela

tionship to the category of the Human in which our existence as human

beings remains constantly in question and mostly outside the categoryof a

4ft, remains an existence marked as social death.1 This global anti-black

condition produced in the post-Columbus era, still and again manifests

itself in numerous ways that have significantly limited how Black people

might lay claim to human-ness and therefore on how Black people might

impact on what it means to be Human in a post-Columbus world.2

This essay is about the ways in which anti-blackness continually pro

duces Black people as out of place in (post)colonial locations and aboutthe

consequences that entail from such out-of-place-ness. But it is also about

the ways in which what I call a pure deco/onialptvject remains an impossible

project as long as attention to the deathly production of anti-blackness will

not become to future political desires.3 Only by positioning anti-blackness

I See the work of Jared Sexton (2010; 2011) as he re-engages Orlando Patterson’s term

social death as it relates to plantation slavery.

21 capitalize Human when refernng to its post-Columbus orientation. When seeking to

express human in terms broader than Europe’s idea ofwhat it is, I use lower-case.

31 am adapting the idea of apus decolonia!project in this essay from Derrida’s notion of a

pure hospitality. Indeed I am inspired by Derrida’s (2000) insistence on modes of being

for which we cannot predict their outcomes in advance of the ‘event’ ashe proposes in

OfHospitality as a method for••gabout a future decolonial ‘event.’

94 RINALD0 WALCOTTTi-ia PROBLEM OF THE HUMAN 95

as central to the ways in which European modernity has cemented its

global rein, and thus taking on the predicament of Black social death as the

instantiation of modernity’s project of unfreedom, as will movements to

interrupt and indeed to bring to a conclusion Europe’s and now the

West’s, horrific global rein be successful. It is precisely by engaging the

conditions of the invention of blackness, the ways in whith its invention

produces the conditions of unfreedom and the question of how those

conditions produce various genres of the Human, genres that are continu

ally defined against blackness, that any attempt to engage a decolonial pro

ject may avoid its own demise.Taking seriously the insights of the philosopher of the Americas Sylvia

Wynter’s (2003) claim that the Human is always hybrid—that it is bios and

logos—we might begin to more carefully glean how Black peoples’ insist

ence on their humanness alters and changes the genre of the Human con

tinually—as Wynter would put it. In the realm of the post-Columbian

colonial project and its resulting global “coloniality of being” (Wynter

2003) Black people have been its most phantasmagoric creation. While it is

clear that slavery and other forms of captivity existed prior to transatlantic

slavery, the unique ways in which transatlantic slavery became a central

plank of the European colonial project as well as of its Enlightenment

narrative of the Human as not a slave, as one of the single most important

ideological frames of coloniality, continually require careful reconsidera

tion. Snyder (2010) suggests in her study that if we do not adequately un

derstand other forms of captivity, especially as those forms of captivity

which sometimes promised kinship only to be transformed into chattel

slavery, it is impossible to fully grasp the ways in which racial slavery is

fundamentally different. Consequently, Frank B. Wilderson, working out

of an intellectual tradition that recognizes the uniqueness of modem racial

slavery points out

“But African, or more precisely Blackness, refers to an individual who is by defini

tion always already void of relationality. Thus modernity marks the emergence of anew ontology because it is an era in which an entire race appears, people who, apriori, that is prior to the contingency of the ‘transgressive act’ (such as losing awar or being convicted of a crime), stand as socially dead in relation to the rest ofthe world. This, I will argue, is as true for those who were herded onto the slaveships as it is for those who had no knowledge whatsoever of the coffles.” (2010,18, original emphasis).

Wilderson narrates Black corning-into-being and thus Black being. It is my

contention that Black ontology needs to be central to a radical or new

humanism as Frantz Fanon (1967) articulated it,. in these times of para

doxical and contradictory planetary human intimacies.4The post-Colum

bus colonial frames for experiencing Humanness and the absence thereof

for Black bodies continue to overdetermine postmodern conversations so

that the possibilities for creating significant and lasting cross-racial and

indeed cross-human solidarities seem to remain out of reach of our desire

to bring to a close the dreadful duration of Human organization and life.

Resolving the multiple ways in which anti-Black coloniality frames our

Human present is central to achieving a possible decoloniai future.

Wilderson’s idea of the “void of relationality” (2010, 18) helps us to

make sense of the ongoing stability of anti-Blackness. This essay will also

employ Sylvia Wynter’s articulation of the coloniality of being to engage

contemporary debates in and on settler colonialism in North America, and

more specifically the nation of Canada. It is precisely in the context of anti-

Blackness that the language of settler colonialism reaches its limits of use

fulness and precision. In particular, my essay probes the ways in which the

enforced Black being in the world, indeed the very invention of Black

people as art and parcel of European colonial expansion has aided the

practice of settler colonial societies but simultaneously undermined them

by producing a new kinds of indigeneity of the West. The invention of

Black people troubles understandings of land, place, indigeneity, and be

longing because the brutal rupture that produced Blackness has severed

Black being from all those claims now used to mark resistance to moder

nitv’s unequal distribution of its various accumulations. We might thus

have to think of indigeneity as more a flexible process of critique and re

sistance to modernity rather than an organic identity; and I further suggest

that to invoke it as ‘other’ identity is already to accede to Europe’s Enlight

enment and modernist anthropological project of categorizing Humanness

on its terms and logics.Some contemporary arguments against the ongoing colonization of in

digenous people in North America do not adequately sustain a thorough

going critique of colonialist capitalism, because such a critique would rec

ognize the non-Human status of the Black and the ways in which Black

people’s legacy as a commodity has thus been haunting the very status of

4 Black Skin, White Mask.s (1967) is where Fanon calls for a new humanism.

96 RINALD0 WALcoTTTHE PRoBLEM OF THE HUMAN 97

the Human and indigeneity in the present. Bypassing such an engagement,

those arguments and discourses find themselves—even if involuntarily-

embedded in anti-Black thought. As commodities of the colonial pro5ect,Black people have remained outside modernity’s various progressive

and/or libertarian re-inventions of the Human (in terms of gender, sexual

itv, disability, or trans-practices) and have always remained overdetermined

by racist epistemology. I must point out that I am not attempting to pro

duce some kind of competitive oppression exceptionalism. Rather, my aim

is to point to the profound ways in which Black being is directly implicated

by negation and devaluation, as a negative foil, that is, hi the ongoing pro

duction of diversity of what Wynter calls the “genres of being human”

(2003, 331).

No Happy Story: Modernity’s Humans are Not Black

The colonial history that gave rise to contemporary life in the West haunts

our present, it is not yet behind us despite our best desires. Every Atta

wapiskat, every riot in London, every police shooting in local neighbor

hoods, every deportation, every dead child in Haiti, could be looked at as

the fruits of the violence seeded in collective colonial encounters and their

aftermath.5The ways in which those diverse but interconnected colonial

trajectories continue to frame our relationships to the ‘happy story’ of an

egalitarian, democratic West and its unfolding possibilities of assumed

rights and identities must continually be called into question. Any social,

political and cultural proximity to the ‘good life’ in the West still and again

largely depends on our historical relationship to the hierarchal practices of

colonial ordering and management, and on the ongoing purge of the Black

from the category of the Human. An administrative system of rule

founded on ‘indigenous’ genocide, and on the making of Blackness as

social death, and of Black people as the ultimate anti-Human others,

frames our social relations, our intimacies and remains the immediate

ground of living life in our present. Crucial to this ordering and manage-

5 In 2011 a housing crisis, both materially and otherwise, in the Aboriginal communityof

and at Attawapiskat brought to light significant neglect of Canadian governmental policy

action concerning Aboriginal peoples. Artawapiskat became a symbol of the ongoing

colonial conditions in Canada for Aboriginal peoples.

ment is production of what Wynter calls “behavior-directing signs” (1990,

449) by and in colonial histories and their ongoing legacies, even ina puta

tively post-civil tights and postcolonial world.Since I write from within the geo-political borders of Canada my

thinking is influenced by witnessing the Canadian state’s production of

forms of being it deems less than Human. As a response to thosepractices,

there has recently been, a push by conservative indigenous movements to

align themselves with neo-liberalism, instead of seeking a radicalintimacy

against colonialism and anti-Blackness. The political urgency for this pro

ject remains unmet. One of the central conceits to remove Black people

from Humanness is that Black people are constantly understood tobe out-

of-place. This out-of-place-ness especially of poor Black people, is one

which has profound life and death consequences; it becomes highlighted in

the extreme by the carceral state of the USA (see Gilmore 2007) but also

by practices like the enormously disproportionate stop and frisk and

‘carding’ measures used against young Black men across the NorthAtlantic

zones (New York City, Toronto, London), as well as the state practice of

deportation and restriction of labor options for Black men labor toimpe

rial armies, prisons and the informal sector called the drug trade—danger

ous and deadly labor all of it. These are the profound anti-Black conditions

of our global past and present.The oppressive technologies of modern and postmodern capitalism

have adapted and renewed themselves in inventive ways, so as torepro

duce a global neo-coloniality to which there is no outside for anyone.

However, there has been a pervasive silence vis-I-vis individual ‘ethnic’

neoliberals in debates on settler colonialism (Lawrence and Dua 2005;

Amadahy and Lawrence 2009), as for example on Canada’s Aboriginal

Conservatives (Leona Aglukkaq (Parliamentarian in the Conservativegov

ernment), Patrick Brazeau appointed Senator by the Conservativegovern

ment) and others, Shawn Atieo (Chief of The Assembly of FirstNations,

the leading organization that negotiates with the government andconsid

ered to close to the Conservative government) roles in the current gov

ernment and extra-governmental organizations, that have attempted to

bypass and ignore the issue of coloniality. Given, the ways in which Abo

riginal abjection is shaped by the ongoing colonial project of theCanadian

nation-state, the language for considering Aboriginal coloniality of being in

contemporary debates remains at this time fairly inchoate and/or not pos

sible. And yet, a push for Aboriginal capitalism, alongside theattempt to

98 RINALD0 WALCOTT THE PROBLEM OF THE HuMAN 99

produce continually wasted populations of ‘non-resourced’ Aboriginal

communities is an important example of the ongoing adaptability of late

modern capitalism as neoliberal incorporation. But, most importantly,

resistances to these practices and incorporations call for relational political

logics, if resistances might begin to undo the coloniality of our being(s).

Indeed our studies of marginality remain silent on these relations because

so much of our political discourse remains locked in demonstrating our

subaltern realities and committed to inclusion in a paradigm of expansion,

which sits at the core of the colonial and neoliberal capitalist project. Eve

rybody can produce a perverse desire to belong to that, which does not

guarantee life. A significant element of the contemporary debate has

shifted to making indigenous claims that reproduce Euro-centered nativ

ism, expressing a desire for an emancipation, the terms of which can only

result in continued and new forms of unfreedom for Black people (Sexton

2010). One of the significant problems of the contemporary debate in and

on settler colonialism is the conceptual assumption that assumes every

one—individuals and groups—to belong and be entitled to some kind oforiginal homeland, to have their own place somewhere. Such a claim does

not work in the context of post-enslavement, and post-Enlightenment

epistemic anti-Blackness, violent displacement and the rupture of Black

kinship (Amadahy and Lawrence 2009).One of the central and complicated dynamics of geo-political spaces

like Canada or the U.S. is how to think through the complicated challengeof a coloniality which has been maintained within new neo-liberal modes

of individualism, citizenship, identity and belonging, producing a global

space of competition and overlapping strategies of disadvantaged and dis

posed groups. To use an example from the United States, the Cherokee

Nation’s attempts to evict the descendants of Black Freedmen from the

tribe shows how coloniality functions to produce Black people as continu

ally out-of-place, even in indigenous contexts. The Black and ‘mixed raced’

descendants of freed Cherokee slaves had long held citizenship in the

Cherokee nation, until 2007 when a vote was taken to deny them theircitizenship. This ‘battle’ over who is a Cherokee or put differently who

belongs, who is in place, who has claim, highlights the way in which theasymmetries of contemporary neoliberal economy, politics and culturework in our time (see Nieves 2007; Strernlnu 2011).

The distribution of resources, in terms of access and ownership, and its

concomitant multiple forms of dispossession produce relationships to

capital that force, but also allow white and non-white groups to act within

the historical legacies of colonial racial ordering, a practice which extends

beyond internal Canadian space. Accordingly, one of the shortcomings of

scholarship on settler colonialism is to assume that Canada’s colonial prac

tices end at the geographical border of the modem nation-state. The work

of Peter James Hudson (2010) on the history of Canada’s banking system,

vaunted post-2008, amply demonstrates that Canada’s colonial project

stretches far beyond the geo-politics of the ‘entity’ we now call Canada.

Thus articulating Canada’s role exclusively as a former settler colony in

North American does not adequately address its various colonial trajecto

ries. Hudson’s work on the Canadian banking system and its exploitation

of the Caribbean region reminds us that Canadian colonialism has not only

meant the occupation of indigenous North American land and territories,

not only the management and curtailment of peoples rights and the ex

ploitation of the land and its resources on the North American continent.

To address Canada’s role must also entail a discussion of its economic,

political, and cultural activities, which move beyond the traditional markers

of its historical colonial geographies to produce forms of life in the global

realm that are distinguished by a white capitalist assigned value and non-

value (Barrett, 1999).A number of major Canadian banks (Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian

Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Nova Scotia) have long occupied the

financial landscape of the so-called archipelago of poverty in the Caribbean

basin. These Canadian financial institutions have not sought to service nor

to invest in the region, but rather to extract ‘resources’ back to the nation

of Canada. This kind of ‘overseas’ neo-colonialism coupled with an ‘at

home’ colonial project produces some very complicated conceptual di

lemmas for thinking about the culture and politics of coloniality in Canada.

That such practices of Canada’s colonial project go beyond its geo-political

borders as a nation, means that how different non-white bodies are placed

within and/or arrive at the borders f the contemporary Canadian nation-stateis a complex story of placemaking or the denial thereof of arrival and

becoming or of constantly being made to exist out-of-place.6

6The work of Lawrence and Dua (2005) fails to adequately recognize these dynairucs.

Sharma and Wright’s (2008) response is an excellent rejoinder in an attempt to point to

various moments of migration to complicate the argument that Lawrence and Dua fail

to make. Sexton’s (2010) work also allows us to further complicate these concerns as

well.

100

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OFTHEHUMAN

101

Acriticalengagementwith

colonialitythereforedemandsthatwesee

themutualimprintandtheoverlapbetweenthe‘reservation,’the‘housing

project,’and‘thepriorityneighborhood’(thelatteristhenamegiventothe

archipelagoesofpovertyinToronto),theprojectofdeportationandthe

dispossessionofpeoplebeyond

Canada’sborders.Ineachcasethevery

terminologydelineatesaspecific,iflimitedspaceandanout-of-place-ness

forthosemarkedasabjectandwastewithintheboundariesofthenation

stateofCanada.Suchrangeofabjectionhasbecomepossiblebecauseof

thecapitalistandconstaritlyflexibledynamicsofcoloniality,which

also

producespermanentleaksintheinterconnected

formsoforderingthe

disposablebodiesbetweenandacrossthevarioussites. Progressiveschol

arlydiscoursesthatrefusetoacknowledgetheseleaksremainembeddedin

theverytermsofHuman

lifethattheyseektoover-turn(Lawrenceand

Dua,2005;ArnadahyandLawrence2009).SoforexampleAmadahyand

Lawrencewritethat:“FromIndigenousperspectivies,thetruehorrorof

slaverywasthatithascreatedgenerationsof

‘de-culturalized’Africans,

denied

knowledgeoflanguage,clan,family,andland

base,denied

even

knowledgeofwho

theirnations

are”

(2009,127).Suchthoughtfailsto

comprehendtheinventivebeingofBlacknessasonlypossibleinthecon

textoftheterribleupheavalsofwhichthisessayhasbeenaddressingand

thesim

ultaneousrelianceonananthropologicdiscourseoforiginslost

Criticalarticulationofsettlercolonialism

needstoengagethecondi

tionsandideasoftheplantation,thereservation,theghetto, andneo-colo

nialdispossession,revealingtheparticular euphemismsofthosediscursive

andviolent materialconstructions, butalsotheirlinkedandsharedrealities

astheresultofthelogicandpracticeofanti-Blacknessandthus

awider

reachofcolonialitv.Onlythisrelationallogiccanaddresstheprojectof

Canadawhich

hasskillfullyproduced

thesesites

asnon-relatedentities

withseparatedynamicssothat‘priorityneighborhoods’havenothingtodo

with

ban/ieuesandneitherofthosehave

anything

todo

with

European

colonialpracticesinCanada’spaston

thereservation,northeeconomic

andculturalbackyardsintheCaribbean.Againstthislogicwhichrepro

ducesexclusiveframesofHuman

value,andBlackun-value,weneed

a

pedagogytoworkthroughthechallengeofBlackbeingwhichcoloniality

configuredemployed

asitsmostsignificant andfoundationalHumanpro

jectofracistmanagementandorder.Consequently, theBlackbody

isnot

themostabject bodyinacompetitionofabjectionandoppression,butthe

Blackbody

isthetemplateofhowtheabjectionbywhichtheHumanwas

produced.Eventhough

oppressionsandtheseductionsofcapitalismin

latepostmodernitydonotsimplyreplicatecolonialism

’s“Red,W

hiteand

Black”past(Wynter1995;W

ilderson2010)—afterall,a

Blackmanreigns

intheWhiteHouseandintheCanadiannationstateAboriginalpeople

participate—allnon-whitebodiesaremasteredinto

aprojectofdisposa

bility.Onecannotstressenough

capitalism’sfoundationaswellasitscon

stantandcontinuoustrajectoryofaproductionofdeath.

IReallyWanttoHope

Significantly,atagatheringinpartproduced

bythevisualitvofongoing

colonialism

atAttawapiskat,andcompoundedbytheexcessesofcolonial

ityelsewhere,acallforameetingandameetingbetweenAboriginalleaders

andtheCanadiangovernmentoccurredinOttawain2012.Theconserva

tivegovernmentframedtheconversationatthemeetingasoneofaccess

tocapitalismanditsmanyresources,with

aconstantrefrainofbringAbo

riginalpeoples‘in.’Infact,acynicalreadingwouldbethataninvitationto

participatemorefullyincapitalismwasofferedasaformofjusticebythe

colonialstate.Aparticipationincolonialistexploitationbecomesjustice,

butonlyifandwhenresourcesonterritoriesorterritoriesthemselvesare

neededforcapitalism’sexpansion.Indeed,formerCanadianPrimeMinis

terPaulMartin

hassetup

afoundationtomakesurethatFirstNa

tions/Aboriginalpeoplescanbemoreintimatelytiedtocontemporary

Canadiancapitalism.Martin’sfoundation,with

supportfrom

thebanking

industry(Scotia

Bank)teachesAboriginalstudentshowtoproducebusi

nessplans,asan

educationalprogram,amongarangeofother‘skills’

meanttoalleviatetheir‘outsider’statuswithinthenation.Theseprograms

aredrivenbothbyAboriginaldemographicsandby

awhitedesiretose

curethefutureofcapitalismbyincorporatingapreviouslyignoredpopula

tionintolatemodem

capitalismbywayofthelureofsmallrewards.How

ever,toachievethekindsofjusticeAboriginalcommunitiesrequiredif

theirformsoflifeweretobefullyacknowledgedwouldmeantocreatea

significantoppositiontocapitalisminallitspresentforms,andtherefore

alsoneededtoalignindigenousclaimswith

radicalBlackdemands.What

wemightcall“Blackfreedom”isonlypossibleindistinctoppositionto

capitalism,historicallyandpresently.GiventhattheBlackbodywasindeed

102

RINALD0WALCOTT

THEPROBLEM

OFTHEHUMAN

103

aninstrumentofcapital,aswell asasignificantproducerofit—thatitwas

bothcommodity

andlabor—thequestionoffreedom

andcapital

isapar

ticularlyknottyoneforBlackbeing.Thus,giventheintimatecrossingof

Blacknessandcapitalism,“Black

freedom”as

aclaim,as

apossibility,

challengesustoimagineandtoproducenewmodesoflifethatmightbein

accordwith

someofthemostradicalglobal‘indigenous’callsforadiffer

entkindofworld.It ispreciselyinthemoment thatBlackbeingcanenjoy

fullhuman

(thesmallhforhumanheresignalW

ynter’s

concernsfora

humanismbeyondEuro-Americanarticulations)status,inthesensethatits

beingiscounter-hegemonictothatofEuro-Americanarticulationthatnew

indigenisnisentertheworld.

Engagingtheepistemologicalformationsofanti-Blacknessisnotand

cannotbemerelyoneamongothermodesofthought,becauseonlyen

gaginganti-Blacknessasfoundationallimittoourcollectivelivabilitymakes

visibletheoverarchingracialcapitalistorderingofneo-coloniaipeoples,

indigenouspeople,and

Blacks.Thinkingthroughanti-Blacknessgivesand

activistsalenstoseetheHumanradicallydifferently,toseethatitspresent

incarnationhasbeencontingenton

theproductionofotherbeings’un

Human-nessandun-freedom.The

siteofliberalism

’scompromisebyway

ofinductionandseductionofselectedBlackandAboriginalindividuals

and/orgroupsonlyshoresup

asacomplementaryfeaturetoviolentintru

sionandtheproductionofdisposabilitywhich

iswhythoseBlackand

Aboriginalpoliticiansmentionedabovemaybeengagedinthedestruction

oftheirowncollectives.

AtthislatestageofcapitalistmodernitytheCanadiannation-state’s

flexibleconceptionsofsovereignty,ofnation,andofself-determination

aremeanttoensurecapitalistlongevitysothatthestakesneedtobese

curedthroughincorporation.InthecaseofplaceslikeAttawapiskat,no

such

flexibilityisevidentinthefaceofanabsenceofdesirableresources.

Attawapiskatisaninterestingcasefor manyreasons.Asaterritorylacking

innaturalresourcesandasitenotneededforthetransportationofthose

resources,itsappealstothenationalgovernmentaretreatedwith

disdain.

Thisdisdainisformetheevidencethatthoseterritoriesthatpossessthe

resourcestocontinuetoaid

intheproductionofcapitalcanfindaplacein

thelatecapitalistmodernnationregardlessofracialhistory,andthose

withoutresourcescannot.Thepointisthatcapitalismcontinuallymodifies

and‘includes’ onitsowntermsandgiveswayto‘old’designationsifthose

designationscannowfuelitsengines.Attawapiskatcannotfuel itsengines

thusitmustbe

managed.Radicaldiscoursesandpracticesthatseekto

overcomecolonialitymightwanttorefusethelogicofbelongingtoplace

inthesenseofpastownershipofland,andinsteadforgearelationallogic

withFanon’s(1963)landless“damnedoftheearth.”Suchaclaimisnotto

ignorethathumanbeingsneedtobelong,butratheritistopositionbe

longingoutsideitshistorical,naturalized,quasi-organictrajectoryandto

createanotherformofsociabilitynotpremisedon

ahistoryofracistsocial,

political, andculturalgradationsandexclusion.

TheongoingdisposabilityofBlackbodiesinCanadiansocietyhascre

atedBlackseveranceandasaconsequence,estrangementfrom

thegeo

politicsofnationhood,nomatterhow

broadlyorinclusivelydefinednation

mightappearinthemulticulturalCanadiansense.Wecanconceiveofanti-

Blackracism

asthecruciallyimportantelementoftheproductionofna

tionalist colonialityinwhichtheBlacksubjectisneverabletooccupythe

siteofincorporationintothenation-state,becauseBlacknesswasdeemed

asfundamentally

disjunctwith

theideaof

anationoffreesubjects.The

fundamentalout-of-place-nessforBlackbodiespersists,evenifambiva

lentlyattenuatedbypartialinductionstoinlatecapitalismasitseeksnew

bodiesinitsconstantcrises.Butthemorefulsomesocialreality

isthat

thoseinductionsoftheselectfewdonotoutweighbyanymeanstheso

cial,cultural andpoliticalexcorporationson

amassscale.

Apuredecolonialp?vjectthusgivesup

thepoliticsoforganic‘identity’in

favorof

amobile

‘politicsofthought.’This‘politicsofthought’willbe

abletocritiquecoloniality’smostprofound

epistemicoperations,which

haveproduced

knowledgesofbodies

‘in’and‘out-of-place,’anditseco

nomicandmaterial practiceswhichhaveresultedindeath-worldsforBlack

people. Toacknowledgethesedeathworldsisanurgency:from

thatradical

vantagepoint itbecomespossibletoconceiveofformsofrelationalityand

intimacy,ofnewmodesofhumannessbeyondcapitalist(post)modernity.

Inapost-communist world,andaneoliberalglobe,thinking,articulating,

andmovingtowardsdifferent andnewmodesofhumanlifeisour present

challenge.Apuredecolonialproject workstoproducenewmodesofrelational

logicsandconditionsinwhichtheraciallystructuredintimaciesthatEuro

peancolonialexpansionproducedforusmightberefashioned.

Thesenewmodescallformovingbeyondandmaybeevenagainst the

‘happy

story’ofprogressiveliberationofindigeneity

inthe‘nativeland,’

against theillusionofamoveintothebountyofrightsandfreedoms.To

refusesuch

a‘happy

story’istoaccountforthewaysinwhichhistory

104

RINALD0WALCOTT

mightofferus

abettercalculationofhowtoalterthe

humanyetagainin

ourtime(Walcott201Ib).Suchanalternativewillrequire

theproduction

of“new

iridigenisms”ofourglobeandthosenewincligenism

swillrequire

ofusconversations,debates,politics,andpoliciesthatarecenteredinthe

“catastrophicculture”(Brathwaite2006,n.pag.)thathasbroughtusto

gether.KamauBrathwaiteinalecture,articulateswhathecalls“thelitera

tureofcatastrophe”

astheby-productofEuropean

colonialexpansion

(2006,n.pag.).Brathwaitepointsoutthatthiscatastropheofcolonialism

producesdeath,racism,environmentaldegradationandsoonbutitalso

produces

jazz,Caribbean,AfricanAmerican,andIndigenousliteratures,

andotherculturalformsandpracticesthathavereshapedtheglobeand

human

life.Iadapthisterm

toarticulateacultureofcatastrophe,which

drawson

hisinsights.Such

acatastrophehasthepotential,however,to

shapeprofound

humanpossibilitiesandpotentialities,asBrathwaitealso

pointsout.ApufFdecolonialprojectworkstheruinsofcatastrophetoshape

anotherhumanintimacybasedonwhatIcallthe“politicsofthought”and

thuson

mobileassociation,notonpre-ordainedbelongingstoplaceand

gradatedidentities.

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