"FIXED IN THE ETHER OF HISTORY"

From A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging by Dionne Brand.

The body is the place of captivity. The Black body is situated as a sign of particular cultural and poltical meanings in the Diaspora. All of these meanings return to the Door of No Return––as if those leaping bodies, those prostrate bodies, those bodies made to dance and then to work, those bodies cursed, those bodies valued, those bodies valued, those bodies curdling under the singing of whips, those bodies cursed, those bodies remain curved in these attitudes. They remain fixed in the ether of history. They leap onto the backs of the contemporary––they cleave not only to the collective and acquired memories of their descendants but also to the collective and acquired memories of the other. We all enter those bodies."

"The Black body is a domesticated space as much as it is a wild space. It is domesticated in the sense that there are set characteristics ascribed to the body which have the effect of familiarizing people with it––making it an irrefutable common sense or knowledge. It is a wild space in the sense that it isa sign of transgression, opposition, resistance, and desire. The Black body is culturally encoded as physical prowess, sexual fantasy, moral transgression, violence, magical musical artisty. These ascriptions are easily at hand for every day use. Much as one would use a tool or on instrument to execute some need or want."

All of this can be brought to bear on what has happened in the past two weeks, before the past two weeks, what is happening still. Excess and enjoyment.