Thank you for this. I’m trying to figure out what you term “the vernacular of survival” Granted I maybe being overly dramatic, or not, but we are in a moment of all that is solid is melting! Surely to survive we need to create a new solidity? What good will seeds be when earth can no longer produce? Now we need to develop other survival tools? I’m a bit off here! Outraged by the threatened deportation of supporters of Palestine; the existence of a list of “1000” names. We need new survival vernaculars as we are being rounded up and thrown into garbage bins full of rabid hate.
I've been thinking about international solidarity and what it means to borrow—I'm not sure borrow is the right word, perhaps be inspired by?—freedom dreams and practices from elsewhere. Anticolonial history is full of moments when the enslaved and colonized looked to Haiti or India or Ghana or Kenya or Algeria to see freedom practices (of resistance) and to hold on to freedom dreams, even and especially when doing so seemed futile.
Survival is necessary. We can't imagine or practice freedom without being there. Or without a sense that others will survive our struggles and practice freedom in a time to come.
Perhaps naively, I think it's still important to cultivate and hold on to freedom dreams and practices even when survival is the most urgent task. I think without an after named freedom, survival mode can impede imaginations. (I have examples from Kenya, but this comment is already too long!)
Thank you for this. I’m trying to figure out what you term “the vernacular of survival” Granted I maybe being overly dramatic, or not, but we are in a moment of all that is solid is melting! Surely to survive we need to create a new solidity? What good will seeds be when earth can no longer produce? Now we need to develop other survival tools? I’m a bit off here! Outraged by the threatened deportation of supporters of Palestine; the existence of a list of “1000” names. We need new survival vernaculars as we are being rounded up and thrown into garbage bins full of rabid hate.
I've been thinking about international solidarity and what it means to borrow—I'm not sure borrow is the right word, perhaps be inspired by?—freedom dreams and practices from elsewhere. Anticolonial history is full of moments when the enslaved and colonized looked to Haiti or India or Ghana or Kenya or Algeria to see freedom practices (of resistance) and to hold on to freedom dreams, even and especially when doing so seemed futile.
Survival is necessary. We can't imagine or practice freedom without being there. Or without a sense that others will survive our struggles and practice freedom in a time to come.
Perhaps naively, I think it's still important to cultivate and hold on to freedom dreams and practices even when survival is the most urgent task. I think without an after named freedom, survival mode can impede imaginations. (I have examples from Kenya, but this comment is already too long!)
Thanks for thinking with me, Sokari!
Thanks for reading! I’m glad many of us are reading and rereading Octavia Butler now.