coldhearted scientist وداد

I must work on this abstract, which is due soon. The point of presenting at this conference is to restart work on that essay and thus, this book. The presentation must get me back to what I was doing, not just be another fragmentary spin-off.

In Being and Blackness in Latin America (2006), Patricia D. Fox highlights the floating, dynamic and ever-changing nature of culture and, specifically, of Afro-descendant culture in Latin America and in the diaspora. In order to make her description more specific, she uses the concept of “Uprootedness” which is related to Deleuze’s concept of the rhizome [Deleuze and Guattari 1977] and Edouard Glissant’s concept of Créolité [Glissant 1981], where creativity, rupture, and hybridity are elements that are fundamental in understanding the Afro. In her text, Fox indicates how, when researching such a particular cultural aspect and contemporary culture in general, it is no longer possible to focus in the traditional way from one viewpoint alone. On the contrary, she advocates reviewing and interpreting elements that have demonstrated the diversity and multiplicity that characterizes the cultures undergoing a permanent process of exchange and transposition.

Read it all.

The cultures of the African diaspora are hybrid, just as First Nations cultures have become. But hybridity and mestizaje as commonly understood mean whitening. That other hybridity is something I want to think about as I work on this.

Axé.