Littoral

« L'omniprésence de la mort, l'habitude des deuils, la dévalorisation de la vie noire, l'exposition à l'aliénation, à l'expropriation et au génocide lui donnent une signification particulière. Il s'agit moins d'une forme-de-vie que d'une forme-de-mort. Non pas un refus de la mort, une absolue volonté de survie, mais une capacité à habiter la mort. Vivants parmi les morts ; morts parmi les vivants. L'une des raisons de la ténacité des populations noires partout où elles ont eu à subir des violences démesurées tient à leurs propres traditions de pensée. S'ils étaient déshumanisés, abandonnés à un flou entre la mort et la vie, leur dignité résidait dans des imaginaires, des ontologies, des visions de la mort et de la vie qui les rendaient aptes à faire face à ces catastrophes. »

— Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, p. 57

« Pour qui se donne la peine d'observer l'histoire de la négrophobie à travers le regard des intellectuels et des activistes afrodescendants qui l'ont étudiée et combattue, un tout autre tableau se dessine. La déshumanisation des Noirs cesse d'apparaître comme un phénomène générique et se présente comme une singularité. Les navires négriers et les plantations du Nouveau Monde furent des laboratoires de la discipline et de l'exploitation capitalistes. Ils se sont bâtis pour accompagner un déplacement de populations sans précédent : des lieux comme les Antilles, le sud des actuels États-Unis, le Brésil ont été repeuplés de captifs noirs qui n'étaient pas conduits là pour fonder sociétés et civilisations, mais pour travailler beaucoup, enfanter parfois, crever toujours. La colonisation du continent africain l'a balafré de frontières hasardeuses, a imposé une économie dévouée au monde blanc et une dévalorisation intégrale de la vie noire. La mutilation, la réécriture et la confiscation de l'histoire, des œuvres d'art, des sciences et des savoirs africains demeurent sans précédent. Aujourd'hui, aux États-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne, en France, au Canada, les Noirs sont largement surreprésentés dans les prisons. »

—Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, pp. 19-20

“Society takes no responsibility for Black people’s poverty and their social exclusion and isolation, even though the history of our continuing mistreatment and subjection at the hands of that very same society is well-known; rather, our poverty and exclusion are offered as evidence of our inherent inferiority.”

— Rinaldo Walcott, On Property, p. 40

je marche longtemps

sans savoir si je cherche

ou si je retarde

mais la ville elle sait déjà où elle va

light catching on ledges before it settles

stone holds it then lets it go

glass refuses the gesture, keeps everything moving

a figure caught in the wall, holding what arrives unchanged

below, the street moves through it slowly

as if nothing here is meant to stay— and still something does

“The thing is that I think Blacks in the Diaspora carry the Door of No Return in our senses. It is a passport which, after boarding the plane, we are unable to make disappear by tearing it up and throwing it in the toilet. We arrive with its coat of arms, its love knot, its streamers, its bugle, its emblem attesting to our impossible origins. This passport is from the territory of the Door. The territory is vast, its nature shiftable. We are always in the middle of the journey.” (pp. 48-49)

— Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return, pp. 48-49

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“To live at the Door of No Return is to live self-consciously. To be always aware of your presence as a presence outside of yourself. And to have ‘others’ constantly remark on your presence as outside of itself. If to think is to exist, then we exist doubly. An ordinary conversation is never an ordinary conversation. One cannot say the simplest thing without doubling or being doubled for the image that emerged from the doorway.”

— Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return, pp. 49-50

here is the air holding its throat in the doorway light folds against my cheek like a quiet instruction

somewhere a train exhales iron into the morning

somewhere the sea keeps a ledger i'm not allowed to read

i've lived inside ceilings that vibrate vents counting the room in mechanical breaths fluorescent bones buzzing their soft warning

i learned which corners let the body loosen which floors remember weight without complaint

i say the word home and the walls listen for papers

silence answers in triplicate

i sign my name the ink hesitates

once twice i sign again

the signature returns unfamiliar / the paper refuses the name

i carry a map made of salt and forgetting— it curls when handled edges dissolve on the tongue routes appear when i walk them barefoot and vanish when i turn

some rooms smell of rain and iron some keep their windows turned inward

i practice an ordinary face i practice the art of leaving slowly

a moth lands on my wrist i let it rest there

even light has teeth

i've lived inside many winds

under the concrete circuits singing

the radio in the air replies with snow / i try again / it hisses my name back wrong

i listen i pack i stay i leave

the body writes its own grammar forgets mid-sentence

breath interrupts and the page agrees

at night a corridor opens behind my ribs keys sleep in a bowl of water the suitcase won't close all the way

i press the lid down the hinges change their mind my name folded at the bottom like a shirt i no longer wear i remember someone once folded my collar like that

if rest exists it may be a hum with no owner a room that smells of rain after metal hands that do not count what they touch time without a checklist no barcode for longing no passport for breath

the air doesn't fall— it listens back

glace sur le trottoir

le remorqueur   daniel mcallister   attaché au quai

derrière   les vieux silos

le fleuve s’ouvre   vers l’aval

je reste là   un moment   à penser

que l’eau   finit toujours   par partir

Archival records document the extraction, preservation, circulation, and material use of Black flesh within the operations of slavery and colonial regimes. Medical harvesting, the movement of skulls and bones, the retention of severed limbs as curiosities, the transformation of teeth and hair into usable materials, and the verified binding of human skin into objects illustrate a domain in which Black flesh functioned as materially available matter. These practices occurred without initiating legal proceedings, moral disquiet, or gestures toward repair, and they were enacted within scientific, domestic, and institutional settings as routine extensions of proprietary use. Black death did not necessitate ceremonial mourning or cultural restoration, and no ontological transformation was required for Black bodies to become usable. The continuous accessibility of Black flesh, in both biological life and physical death, affirms the claim that Blackness occupies a position exterior to the category of the Human. Within this structure, violence does not presuppose the negation of personhood, and material use does not signify the loss of human status, because neither recognition nor protection were present to be removed. This condition delineates a modality in which injury is not measured against human suffering and use is not constrained by the norms that govern the treatment of remains.