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Question 1

How does Said’s exploration of orientalism detail the silences, as Trouillot would say, in history?

Answer 1

Framework: Trouillot discusses how silences in history occur at the level of fact creation, fact assembly, and narrative production. Said’s Orientalism identifies how the West’s construction of the East creates silences by privileging certain voices while marginalizing or erasing others.

Key Points:
Said’s argument that Orientalism is a discursive framework shows how colonial powers silenced indigenous voices, histories, and cultures.
The representation of the Orient as “timeless” or “backward” erases the complexity and agency of these societies, creating a “silence” in the historical record.
Trouillot’s concept of “archival silences” parallels how Orientalist texts become authoritative by excluding alternative narratives.

Question 2

Thinking through two authors, discuss how we can understand racial structures through embodied or material forms.

Answer 2

Framework: Explore how racial structures manifest physically (through bodies) or materially (institutions, infrastructure).

Possible Authors:
Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks): Discuss how colonialism racializes bodies, embedding inferiority into the psyche and creating an embodied experience of race.
Cedric Robinson (Black Marxism): Explore how capitalism and racialism intertwine, materializing in economic systems and labor structures that exploit racialized bodies.
Connection: Both authors highlight how racial structures exist not only in ideology but in the lived, bodily, and economic experiences of marginalized groups.

Question 3

Using any of the authors we’ve read, discuss the forms violence takes. How does violence exist in the world and for the authors you choose to discuss how do structures like colonialism, settler-colonialism, and enslavement expose violence?

Answer 3

Framework: Examine physical, structural, and epistemic violence.
Possible Authors:
Edward Said: Discuss epistemic violence through Orientalism, where knowledge production about the “Orient” justifies colonial control.
Achille Mbembe (Necropolitics): Analyze how colonialism and slavery create zones of death, where life is dehumanized and rendered expendable.
Saidiya Hartman: Explore how the violence of enslavement persists in the present through the afterlives of slavery.
Key Connections:
Structures like colonialism, settler-colonialism, and slavery institutionalize violence, embedding it into legal systems, economic practices, and cultural ideologies.

Question 4

Thinking through Baker and DuBois, how was Black racial inferiority propagated within academic spaces? Why does that matter?

Answer 4

Framework: Examine how science and knowledge production were used to perpetuate racial hierarchies.
Lee Baker:
Anthropology and early social sciences constructed Blackness as inferior through pseudoscientific studies.
Highlight the role of exhibits, textbooks, and universities in institutionalizing these ideas.
W.E.B. DuBois:
Criticized how “scientific racism” framed Black people as biologically inferior, legitimizing systemic discrimination.
Advocated for the use of knowledge to challenge these narratives and uplift the Black community.
Why It Matters:
The perpetuation of Black inferiority in academia justified policies of segregation, exclusion, and violence.
Recognizing this history reveals how knowledge production is intertwined with power and helps deconstruct these lingering effects.

Question 5

What else does thinking about the diaspora make clear, beyond Indigenous dispossession, according to Hartman, Williams, and Oirji?

Answer 5

Framework: The Black diaspora reveals interconnected histories of oppression, resistance, and cultural production.
Saidiya Hartman:
Focus on the “afterlives of slavery,” emphasizing how the legacy of enslavement continues to shape Black life globally.
The diaspora makes visible the enduring structures of racial capitalism and global anti-Blackness.
Bianca Williams:
Explore affective dimensions of the diaspora, such as joy, hope, and resilience, which counteract the narrative of dispossession.
Oirji (or possibly Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí?):
Examine how gender and social structures intersect within diasporic identities.
Key Insight:
Beyond dispossession, the diaspora highlights cultural survivals, global solidarity, and the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice.