Week 7 Flashcards
Why does the professor include the Land Acknowledgement in the course materials?
- has religious themes
- the land was regarded with sacredness by those who arrived and worked there before
How does the camera function symbolically in “Daughters of the Dust”?
- Mr. Snead’s camera represents Western documentation and a male gender sense of history
- The camera attempts to capture history but fails to fully capture the island’s history as understood across different settings of time, ancestral beliefs, and intermingling influence
How does the professor define religion in relation to revelation?
“a response to revelation. A response is created, often towards contemplating a redemption or rescue from an anticipated event or judgment for which we might have few or no words.”
How is religion described as a category for questions?
“a category into which we might file our open and seemingly impossible questions” and “a set of ineffable things, of ideas and beliefs and anxieties and doubts that I just don’t have words for yet.”
What is meant by religion being a category of “unprovable” things?
“a category of things that I think I know, but cannot prove yet. Maybe I will prove them, and they’ll become truths. Or maybe, for me, they are truths that I do not need to prove, or that I believe to be unprovable.”
How is the Unborn Child dressed in “Daughters of the Dust,” and why is this significant?
- The Unborn Child is dressed in white with a blue ribbon in her hair
- This allows Mr. Snead to initially assume she’s one of the island children who ran into his frame, but when he looks away from the camera, he cannot see her.
What does the Unborn Child represent in “Daughters of the Dust”?
- The Unborn Child represents both present and future
- She interrupts Mr. Snead’s historical record and challenges the “maleness of the moment,” serving as a temporal device that breaks chronological time
According to the professor, what does the scene with Mr. Snead’s camera reveal about historical documentation?
- how Western documentation and male-centered history fails to fully capture experiences across different settings of time, ancestral beliefs, and intermingling influences
- The camera attempts to create a visual memory that is “theoretically gendered male”
What is the significance of the sea in the background of the photograph in “Daughters of the Dust”?
- represents “a segment of the middle passage” - another past and a container of another history
- It symbolizes the journey that brought enslaved people to the island and connects to themes of memory and historical trauma
Who is André Brock (shown in slide 60) and what is his relevance to the discussion?
a scholar whose work relates to the intersection of maleness, whiteness, and technoculture. The professor mentions that these intersections cause us not to see certain things, connecting to how Mr. Snead’s camera fails to fully capture the island’s history.
How does the Unborn Child function as a temporal device in the film?
She exists beyond conventional chronological time, challenging the usual ground rules of birth and death. She represents a fluid connection between past, present, and future generations
How does the Unborn Child relate to political and economic themes?
The tension between “spend now” versus “invest in the future”
How does Warsan Shire’s poetry title “Teaching my mother how to give birth” connect to the themes in “Daughters of the Dust”?
- Temporal inversion (future teaching the past)
- Reclaiming and redemption
- Creation and revelation across generations
- Poetry as a way to narrate outside the constraints of biological/chronological time
- The fluid relationship between generations
How does the Unborn Child challenge conventional notions of time in the film?
- Is unbounded by chronological time
- Exists simultaneously in past, present, and future
- Creates dialogue between generations
- Represents hope and possibility not yet realized
- Challenges Western binary definitions and linear time concepts
What is the significance of the blue skirt worn by Eula (the mother of the Unborn Child) in the film?
- The passage of time
- A reclaiming act (indigo was a cash crop that white slave owners profited from)
- The possibility of redemption
- A connection to the ocean/sea (representing both the Middle Passage and future journeys)
- The Unborn Child as redemption and future possibility
How does Warsan Shire’s poetry line “I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together” relate to the themes in “Daughters of the Dust”?
- The mother and father had come together in the child
- The mother and father are not the same person
- The child embodies both parents even if they are not together in real life
- Identity is formed from multiple sources/generations
- The past continues to exist in the present through inheritance
What is the significance of Warsan Shire’s line “At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before”?
- Life and identity aren’t fully determined by the past
- The future is open and undecided
- The future can be a safer time precisely because it’s not already determined
- Home is something to be discovered, not just inherited
- This connects to the Unborn Child’s perspective of looking forward rather than backward
How does Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” connect to “Daughters of the Dust” and what religious themes does it explore?
- Pays homage to Julie Dash, director of “Daughters of the Dust”
- Uses poetry to create a phenomenological setting that invites viewers to co-create an experience
- Demonstrates both intense acknowledgment of pain and voluntary detachment from it
- Represents a religious approach of witnessing to something while not being ruled by it
- Uses visual imagery that references “Daughters of the Dust” to connect to themes of cultural memory and redemption
Why is the future meaningful in “Daughters of the Dust”?
for two reasons:
1) Because Nana is here now
2) Because Nana tells us why it is.
Nana serves as the connection between past, present, and future.
How does “Daughters of the Dust” characterize poetry in relation to time?
Poetry is characterized as “temporally unbound,” meaning it exists outside the constraints of chronological time
- It creates a sacred space of autonomy that doesn’t require a clock and can narrate experiences apart from the structures of biological time.
What was significant about the isolation of the Sea Island Gullahs?
As a result of their isolation from the mainland of South Carolina and Georgia, the Gullah people (descendants of African captives) created and maintained a distinct, imaginative, and original African American culture that was less influenced by mainland practices.
What is the significance of the poetic quote “I am the first and the last…”?
challenges Western binary definitions and represents the fluidity of identity
- It evokes Exodus 3 and represents a statement of uniqueness that defies conventional categorization
- It’s a declaration that the speaker won’t be defined by others or subjected to conventional historical narratives from the mainland.
What is the significance of the quote “I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the barren one and many are my daughters”?
challenges Western binary definitions, reflecting a more fluid and nuanced reality. It pushes back against rigid categorizations and represents Nana’s resistance to being defined by conventional mainland narratives.
How does the phrase “I am the silence that you cannot understand. I am the utterance of my name” relate to Exodus 3?
Similar to God’s self-identification to Moses in Exodus 3, this phrase asserts uniqueness and defies categorization.
- Silence represents a “negative space of sound” and a moment of potential change, while “utterance of my name” signifies self-definition that resists external classification.
How does the film conceptualize sacred place and journey?
- The film presents the island as a sacred place where one may either stay or leave
- Even when one leaves, they remain present through hope and memory, and even when one stays, they continue to be newly discovered
- Memory and hope traverse time and space “as if without bound.”
What is the significance of the JOURNEY concept in the film?
represents both physical movement and spiritual/temporal transformation
- The film explores journeys both inward and outward, often occurring simultaneously
- The ocean journey symbolizes reclaiming narratives and opening possibilities for a different future.
How does the film connect hope to creation?
“If I hope, then I create. I believe that there is a tomorrow. I create for the sake of that tomorrow.”
- Hope is presented as the foundation for creative action, suggesting that belief in the future is necessary for meaningful creation.
What is the relationship between hope and revelation in the film?
“If I hope, then I can reveal. I believe that there is another who will receive this revelation.”
- Hope enables revelation because it assumes there will be someone to receive and understand what is revealed, creating a communicative relationship across time.
How does hope connect to redemption in “Daughters of the Dust”?
“If I hope, then I can redeem and be redeemed. Then I can resolve and rescue what has been wronged.”
- Hope creates the possibility for redemption by allowing for the resolution of past wrongs and the creation of a new future.
What does the film suggest about hope and temporality?
“If I hope, then this time right now is ripe for envisioning a future that I haven’t met yet.”
- Hope transforms the present moment into a space of possibility, allowing characters to imagine and work toward futures that don’t yet exist.
What symbolic significance does the horizon have in relation to hope?
The horizon represents the liminal space between the known and unknown, the present and future. Gazing toward the horizon is both a literal and metaphorical act that embodies hope and the anticipation of possibilities not yet realized.
How does the ocean function as a multivalent symbol in the film?
simultaneously represents creation, revelation, and redemption
- It symbolizes the journey to enslavement in the past but is being reclaimed as a place of hope and return
- The ocean embodies both painful history and the possibility of transformation.
How does “Daughters of the Dust” represent different approaches to revelation?
- Viola (Protestant Christianity focused on modernity)
- Yellow Mary (experiencing the sacred place anew upon returning)
- Nana (representing ancestral wisdom and memory)
- Unborn Child (representing future possibility).
How do the teaching styles of Viola and Nana contrast in the film?
- Viola teaches by reading from the Christian Bible, conveying words written by someone unfamiliar with her experiences
- Her teaching is unidirectional and teleological
- Nana teaches from her memory and personal experiences, drawing from ancestral wisdom
- This contrast highlights different approaches to revelation and truth.
How does this quote highlight the importance of children and elders in the film? “They’re the most important members of the family: the children and the old souls.”
emphasizes that those at the beginning and end of life hold special wisdom and connection to both past and future.
What is Roland Barthes’ “Camera Lucida” and how does it relate to the film?
- Barthes’ philosophical exploration of photography
- It relates to the film by highlighting how photographs capture something verified but aren’t the thing itself—they’re our interaction with the image
- This connects to how Mr. Snead’s camera captures the Unborn Child that he cannot see in reality.
According to Barthes, what is the relationship between the self and its photographic image?
“For Barthes, the self is never the image it produces, in the same way the light fluttering motions of a butterfly are never the same as the heavy caught specimen fixed on a display.”
- The photograph cannot capture the ever-changing, fluid nature of the self.
