lowendtheory:

Sylvia Wynter, circa 1972.

i dug this photo up from the institute of the black world archives (at the schomburg center) in 2010. i was wynter’s research assistant at the time. i lived then, as now, in oakland, california, and three times a week made the long aggravating commute from the lower bottoms in west oakland to the wynter’s house in the oakland hills

i was also writing a chapter on wynter for my dissertation. hence me finding this photo, in the midst of an intense two weeks of through and cataloguing documents, including an unpublished 900+ page manuscript wynter had written.

i took this photo of wynter’s picture then. when i got back to oakland, i showed it to her, with no prompting.

her response was with a characteristic wynterian curiosity:

“is that me?”

the photo ultimately became the cover of the great katherine mckittricks volume on wynter. i’m proud to have made a tiny contribution to that wonderful work.

thank you, phife.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION and SHARE!

From Korean American Coalition to End Domestic Abuse:

In July 2014, Nan-Hui Jo, a single Korean mother and survivor of domestic violence, was separated from her six year old daughter, Vitz Da, and arrested on claims of child abduction. In 2009, Nan-Hui fled to Korea with Vitz Da to escape physical and emotional abuse by her then-partner and father of the child, Jesse Charlton, a combat veteran of the Iraq War with PTSD and anger issues. Using a common manipulation tactic to control a partner’s attempts to regain independence, Charlton retaliated by reporting Nan-Hui for child abduction. Last July, when Nan-Hui arrived with her daughter to Hawaii, she was handcuffed, arrested, and immediately separated from her daughter.  Nan-Hui has not seen her daughter in over seven months.

Charlton has publicly testified about his repeated violence against Nan-Hui, confirming that, on one occasion, he “grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall.” Charlton has also admitted that, on a separate occasion, he “broke his hand hitting the wall and punched the car’s steering wheel.” When Nan-Hui fled and attempted to rebuild her life, Charlton “sent emails saying he was ‘considering spending thousands of dollars on a scary bounty hunter.’” These incidents of violence are only the public ones against Nan-Hui. Like many survivors of domestic violence, Nan-Hui was concerned that if he had hurt her, that he would hurt the child.  According to a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, 30 to 60% of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children in the household. As advocates for survivors of domestic violence, we know that domestic violence thrives behind closed doors, away from the eyes and ears of the public.

well, this week gave me occasion to return to something i’d suggested should happen a while back.

Brandon Barnes, you raised a fist on Jeopardy last night and I love you for that.

Class Prep: Trying to map—in a vulgar but systemic way—the biopolitical structure and gendered techniques of Latin-Christian Europe’s (post-Doctrine of Discovery) approach to enslavement and settler colonialism in Africa and the Americas. Emphasis here is on the ways in which the mission of saving souls and the mission of accumulating wealth (in the form of lands and of bodies-as-commodities) operated as two sides of the same coin as the mode of producing wealth converged with the mode of producing, and reproducing, Christianity as an imperial project.

• • • • low end theory turned 5 today!

(so, wow. i haven’t been on much recently–still trying to figure out how to fake the prof thing until i make it. or don’t. but thanks to everyone who’s been reading this thing for a while. more to come soon.)

(Source: assets)

From Out of Time–Out of Control–Lesbian Committee to Support Women Prisoners, Issue #37, April 1997.