by Shana L. Redmond
about Shana L. Redmond
Shana L. Redmond (she|her) is an interdisciplinary scholar and author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora and Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson. She is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race at Columbia University and President-Elect of the American Studies Association.
Diaspora
“Diaspora” is a contested term. The African diaspora is, like the nation, an “imagined community” (B. Anderson [1983] 2006) conceived of and performed based on imperfect memories, evidence, and agendas. As the historian Colin Palmer asserts, “In many respects, diasporas are not actual but imaginary and symbolic communities and political constructs; it is we who often call them into being” (2000, 29). Within Black studies literatures, diaspora is mobilized as a method in pursuit of collectives whose histories and cultures were/are otherwise hidden or forcibly taken as part of the development of Western epistemes (formal and informal) and the violences of chattel slavery and colonialism. Variously referred to as “Black,” “African” or a series of national monikers prefixed by a version of “Afro-,” the actors who called for the African diaspora are loosely tied together by a recognition of indigenous Africa as origin as well as a relation to Blackness as sociocultural identity. No more stable than “diaspora,” “Black(ness)” too is a contested term. The literary scholar Michelle Wright argues that “from the start, Black identity has been produced in contradiction” (2004, 1), noting the irregularity of the category and appellation as well as the fact that Blackness as production—becoming—and...
Critical
The discursive time in which we find ourselves is particular but not unprecedented; in fact, the vitriolic sputtering of conservatives in response to the straw person of "Critical Race Theory" (CRT) is but the latest incarnation of ideo-warfare against the dispossessed. We should be clear: the recent attacks on Critical Race Theory are not exclusively---or even primarily---about [CRT as a specific field of study](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003111399-5/critical-race-theory-patricia-hill-collins). Some of the loudest in the anti-CRT lynch mob have demonstrated little to no understanding of [CRT's primary tenets](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/) and are [entirely unapologetic in their declarative ignorance and dimwittedness.](https://flux.community/samuel-hoadley-brill/2021/07/chris-rufo-obsessed-critical-race-theory-he-also-doesnt-understand-it) This ([multiculturalist](http://216.92.121.75/racewire/archives/2008/11/the_dreadful_genius_of_the_oba.html)) white nationalist mobilization seems to have less to do with Critical Race Theory than it does with the fundamentalist impulse to raise Confederate statues rather than raze them. The anti-CRT movement contributes to a [rich history](https://www.sarahlawrence.edu/archives/exhibits/mccarthyism/) of [right-wing reaction](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1991/09/26/illiberal-education-an-exchange/) that periodically garners [cooperation and participation](https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/18/closing-american-mind-20-years-later) from [self-identified liberals](https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-have-the-honest-liberals-gone-11602025882). This movement signifies a much broader aspiration to incite a populist repression of *critical thought*---that is, to marginalize, defund and otherwise destroy the robust, dynamic fields of knowledge, research, art, curricula, and intellectual infrastructure that demystify, analyze, and potentially intervene on relations of power, dominance and oppressive violence. In this sense, the recent emergence of the anti-CRT...