What I Say to My Friends Behind the Scenes

Dear Maryemma and Howard,

The ideas we have been exchanging do much to inform the "internal" agenda for PHBW, the things we can actually accomplish. Our "external" agenda has to do with that vast space of topics in African American literature and culture that other scholars must tackle. One typical external agenda item is illustrated by all the information Rose Anne Gentry has shared with us about her husband and now about Bill Hutson. A small portion of that information can be used in shaping some narrative about Allen Polite as a poet in exile, and it is to be supplemented with information from Michael McEachrone. The rest properly belongs to inquiry about the lives in exile mainly of visual artists, to inquiry we can suggest should be pursued. Our field is immense. We must know the limits of the intellectual burdens we can bear. Otherwise, we shall collapse upon ourselves. There is unfinished work enough in the PHBW inventory; for example, who will write about the three self-published novels of John Hatch?

Through the NEH Institute, we shall contribute to the study and teaching of poetry. After the Institute, the continuation of that effort is to be shared by Furious Flower with some assistance from PHBW. Exploration of popular culture, Funk, music and performance depends on where Tony Bolden takes it. Again, PHBW will provide some assistance, but we can not take the lead.

As far as Kenneth Warren's "pushing us to take a stand and name what we are doing as different from before" goes, PHBW (by way of the three of us) is an ideal model. Let us not forget that our PROJECT does as much as several professional organizations and author societies to push difference. Let me itemize.

A: MARYEMMA ---PHBW itself, 30 years of continuing effort to link teaching, scholarship and criticism, scholars and students from many generations, special attention to Hughes, Morrison, and Wright, the nurturing of graduate and undergraduate students in ways I doubt they are nurtured at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. If we need more difference, it shall come by way of stronger insistance that graduate students practice DISCIPLINE in terms of 1) work ethic and 2) acquistion of knowledge about the professional contures of their chosen topics. The practice of discipline, if these students are at all attentive, complements INNOVATION, which is maximum use of imagination, critical thought, skills in mastering emerging technologies and in critiquing those technologies, and developing their independent networks with peers in social sciences and hard sciences ---these networks are absolutley necessary for a future. The process that is PHBW makes very clear why awareness of history of the OLD helps one to avoid, as much as is humanly possible, the unknown and unpredictable traps of the NEW.

B: HOWARD ---How does one teach Afrofuturism? The work at SIUE concentrates on documentation, discovery of patterns in literary and cultural territories, ways of teaching poetry and fiction through very imaginative, collaborative exercises with students, actual use of digital humanities and new media technologies, and taking forward what Alondra Nelson's Afrofuturism unveiled about technology and new directions. Howard's work on book covers sketched out a new methodology for talking about literary politics, reputation, and reader reception. If that important methodology has been lost in the shuffle, the dance of the digital, it may be good for PHBW to bring it to the foreground yet once more. In the age of minute attention-spans things have to be repeated and repeated and repeated. Another strength is Howard's willingness to disclose, to acknowledge, to share, to make collaboration with his peers and his elders more real that the fashionable lip-service that condemns the humanities. Let us take this as a beacon for behavior within PHBW.

C: JERRY --The key is the pre-future stance, the effort to unite the OLD and the NEW in a free space of sharing (mainly blogs) and focused work in China: the effort to help Chinese colleagues and students to know and to understand more about African American literature, an effort of international exchange. The pre-future makes trouble and cultivates irony and retreats from the temptations of correctness and popularity. Damn correctness when one major problem is dealing with the undeniable vanishing of the once potent myth of "the black community" which gave credibility to saying one's work was for one's people. There is no unified "black community" to address, although small "black communities of interest" abound. I sincerely doubt that young scholars think they have any obligation to do anything for any people other than themselves and a few of their friends. SO BE IT. Thus, I resist the loss of memory, the loss of sense of responsibility, by being the lone and mysterious voice in the wasteland, the voice addressing colorblind air, the voice that says HISTORY (the making of narratives of the past) IS ALWAYS IMPORTANT. My voice tries to say that the humanities has participated in its own future demise by ignoring opportunities to have dialogues with other disciplines, by pretending to be ignorant that the worlds of business, economics, the sciences, and applied technologies all think the humanities is a cosmic joke, a body of nonsense to be dismissed as a small nuisance. I seek to reaffirm common sense by sticking needles in balloons. DOUBT EVERYTHING AND BE JOYFUL WHEN ONE'S DOUBT IS PROVEN TO BE WRONG!!!

The three of us complement each other in very positive ways.

I do not think Dana Williams will get far with breathing life into CLA without the help of young scholars. The young scholars will have to decide that CLA is a forum wherein they can be mentored. If they do not make that decision, CLA will become a noble fossil in the history of our profession.

I also think the MLA Division of Black American Literature and Culture has no discernible or public agenda. It seems so oblivious to knowing why Darwin T. Turner worked tirelessly for its formation. In the last five years, I can think of nothing that the Division has done as a Division to enrich the field, to participate in MLA's Options for Teaching series or any other initiatives within MLA. Yes, individual members have done a lot, but the Division is quite an invisible body.

Peace,

Jerry