(3) Religion 095 Lecture Notes PDF

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Complied lecture notes from the textbook reading. Outlines all of the important concepts from the second half of this course....

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READINGS DISCUSSED: ______________________________________________________________________________

“Can dead homies speak? The spirit and flesh of black meaning” - Monica Miller ● The sacred and profane again ● Why did Lamar use a dead homie to alchemize ○ Take away from flesh and moves more to spirit (looking toward the past) →

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moves to ○ Now he looks to dead homies to ask what to do now ■ Alchemizing a technological approach→ Pac, Nelson Mandela ○ Lamar is looking to black spirit to ask a question of black flesh Album cover→ shows black bodies dying in the street up and against power Space ○ Album comes out of him traveling ○ Concept of home becomes expanded→ its about south africa, washington dc Space and time ○ How he is traveling and how he is occupying pace and time ○ Technological alchemizing and remixing ■ alchemy→ taking one thing and making something out of it ● Turning of one substance to another ● Transmuting the death ■ time→ isn't ethnographically linear for him ● To pimp a butterfly alters method ○ Bringing dead homies back to life and technological allows black bodies to be seen but are also seen by these black spiritual bodies ● Lamar conceptually takes up different time zones ■ Black omnipresence ○ Space and time are both important ■ He is still in 1619 too ● slavery→ 40 acres and a mule ● Pac Consumed by the matter of black flesh Something about the wisdom of the past that will Got a lot of survivors guilt→ talks around depression ○ No matter where he finds himself he always thinks about home→ what dead

body is he going to come home too? ○ The psychosocial ○ How do you write a song (we gon be alright) when you dont think your people will be ok ○ Writing about the future of who lamar could be ● Lamar has been stuck in the cocoon of the mad city ○ He sees his celebrity as more of an influence ○ Portrayal of the public consumption of these black bodies laying on the street dead (Treyvon Martin) ○ He is more vulnerable now thinking that he left compton to see more black death than he ever has ● What does it mean to feel black and blue→ the blues find its answers in the black and ●

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blue body Do you think that Lamar refers to black spirits such as Mandela, Malcom X, and Pac because he really appreciates their work and does not think that modern activists reach their level? ○ Lamar is trying to artistically position himself with those activists In the For Free-Interlude Lamar mentions the line I need forty acres and a mule not forty ounces and a pitbull. Obviously this connects to how African American weren’t given the forty acres and the mule after they were “released from slavery” but what else could’ve he have been connecting this too in modern times? ○ Internal critique to the black community but also external critique ○ Taking already racialized things ○ If the government would have just given then the 40 acres and a mule maybe they wouldn't be in that situation Can you talk about the conversation between Pac and Lamar, where Pac refers to a bible verse to answer Kendricks question about what impacted his life and career. What is Pac saying here , and how does this relate to Lamar saying he is more than just black flesh, hes not a mortal man? ○ Using pac to riff on the end times ○ Kendrick sees us bring on the precipice of something ○ Lamar getting escatological ○ The end of the world means different things in different traditions ○ Could also mean a race war → literally or battle What do you think the end of Mortal Man suggests? What does it mean when Lamar calls out to Tupac to ask for his perspective, but Tupac doesn’t respond? Is this significant? I know you touched on this a little in the book but was wondering if you could expand ○ Its the way these prophecies work but they only work to a certain extent→ Pac isn't alone in this

○ We can do all this work but can only deal with ○ silence→ lamar is waking up from this dream where he talks to pac and pac says its you, you have to do this work not (silence of Pac is his affirmation for Lamar of what Lamar is supposed to do for this generation) ● I noticed throughout the album that Lamar repeated a few sayings and one that stuck out was “misusing your influence, sometimes I did the same” do you think there was a reason behind that and if so what was Lamar’s reasoning ○ Telling Pac that he forgives him from inheriting that from Pac ○ Concerned with morality ● In the reading, Lamar says that he doesn't believe that any of his friends, or people in general are naturally evil. He said that it's evil spirits and the devil who influence us to do the bad things that we do. So what does this mean in relation to the "good kid maad city" perspective Lamar previously imparted? ○ Hes christian on this album→ conversation happening ○ Evil is a spirit that can influence a person but people aren't born evil ○ Psychological crutch to understand why he has used his influence for bad ○ Should be seeking consistency in his work ● Throughout his albums and time etc. he uses fictional women like Kesiha, Lucy, in these walls etc. all as women. Where these women usually represent sin or a siren that tempts him to sin. Do you think that he uses women on purpose? Or is women to him such a temptation? Or another explanation... ______________________________________________________________________________

“Loving [you] is complicated. Black self-love and affirmation in the rap music of Kendrick Lamar” - Darrius D. Hills ● “Self-love contributes to a well-spring of personal and communal freedom. However, for minoritized men and women, as I intend to discuss, self-love is a profoundly political act of reclamation.” ○ It is considered a political act to love one self despite the efforts of dehumanizing black/brown flesh - going against these larger efforts that attempt to disrupt the wholeness of black selfhood. ● Self love is NOT unbridled vanity - Darlene Weaver says that self-love is a ‘commitment to one-self’ ● “Self-love is a commitment to and affirmation of the wholeness, integrity, and coherence of one’s existence, material and discursive.” ● More concerned with a heightened awareness of WHO you are, accepting that and finding ways to move forward with that. ○ “...heightened awareness of one’s integrity and dignity as a human being.”

● In order to embrace the dignity and integrity of black bodies, one must understand the criticism amplified in society - a society that consistently attempts to oppress and destroy black life. ● Lamar turns to religion and religiously significant activities that create spaces of clarity and insight - his writing and music serve as a kind of spiritual discipline. ○ “Its so much of a spiritual process in making the album; I gotta feel connected to the music and feel connected to what I’m talking about.” ● Lamar’s song “i” on the album TPAB is the most explicit articulation of self-love… asserting a narrative of black selfhood, purpose, and survival despite the vicious assaults and negativity at the roots of black life/well being. ○ He interprets his own conflicted state of being in this piece - so many people he knows have struggled to survive, similarly to him in Compton, but as he flourished they were destroyed. ○ “i” is commentary on the crippling poverty and lower prospects for the “procuring generational wealth” and the various mechanisms of death and discommunity that have destroyed black peoplehood. ● I notice that the author uses the word DESTROY a lot throughout the piece - very important in my opinion. ● Lamar uses and describes self-love as an effective weapon in society. ● “The social forces meant to kill have NOT determined the final meaning of black life…” ○ Have the power, with the help of self-love, to preserve their ontological and material integrity. ● “Lamar’s description of these features of black life sheds light not only on the ebbs and flows of the African American experience, but ever articulate in his assurance of redemption, Lamar remains confident in his affirmation that “we gon’ be alright.”” ○ Really important because the entire paragraph he talked about the negative things they face in life - and then sums it up at the end with a positive notion. ○ Indicates his optimism and assurance of survival despite the many forces aiding oppression. ● WHOLISTIC chapter - focuses on self-love in a society that tries to tear that from the black body. ● Lamar is going back to his roots to remake and repurpose. Alice Walker creates a “womanist theological thought” in which she supported and promoted the holistic and robust formation of human identity. ● First touched on black female survival within “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” (1982) ● Womanism works from ‘real, lived experiences’ - NOT a real life experience, but a hypothetical distillation of what real life experience is and has evolved over time ○ Occurs because historically ‘we don’t believe black woman’ in society, in the courtroom, in the doctor’s office

○ See black women ONLY as a problem THOUGHT Movement 1968 - James H. Cone ○ “Spirituals and the Blues” (1972) ○ Wholistic and political articulation ○ Black theology black power ○ Upset that black churches were not addressing the cry of black power ○ Because of that, a lot of youth were leaving black churches and going towards the nation of Islam ○ Cone is fundamentally a CHRISTIAN - religion of his Mother, that he cannot turn back from ○ Needed this religion to be in conversation with black power BLACK THEOLOGY ● Black power IS Christianity ● Blackness is the heart of the Christian gospel ● God is black ontologically, and on the side of the oppressed The SILENCE of white academic theology to speak a word of the black condition at this moment? ‘Countermemory’ ● Form of reclaiming a memory that HAS been DENIED. ● CULTURAL memory, tells a story of black selfhood. ● What does the dominant narrative involve? ● Countermemory provides a resistance strategy housed in the practice of revivifying the collective memory of black people, which resists the “measuring [of] Black realities” by ideological stereotypes, the denigrating myths, of the fantastic hegemonic imagination.” ● Countermemory is a necessary reversal of the damage done to African American self and peoplehood as ingrained and entangled in the collective white American racial imagination…. “Celebrates noxious stereotypes of Black women, children and men.” All he was left with was self-love and that he’s ‘gonna be alright.’ He has to turn to that to write off the nihilism? ● He has a responsibility to his fans, to his people, even though he is struggling, to direct his energies towards helping other people - within that he finds a way to love himself. ● Sacred scripts of faith become therapeutic to him - he is then able to do work on different parts of his body. SELF-LOVE IS REDEMPTIVE Nihilism - Life has no real meaning?

● “Nihilism thrives in the context of Black Death, dehumanization, and disregard” ● Collapse of hope and eclipse of meaning takes place ● Meaning isn’t something we get from God, it’s something we have to make… then nihilism becomes a lack of having the capacity to create meaning ● Having no reason to live - as interpreted by Cornel West Is love necessary in the process of meaning making? ● “Loving oneself inaugurates a greater sense of one’s dignity and selfhood…” ○ Love can instill confidence but also anxiety? ○ Enter a space of vulnerability so that someone can love YOU ○ Love - the WHO and WHAT is about ○ Love is a type of respect, dignity and claiming of identity despite odds. ○ Being able to GIVE love, reflect on something that you love, is to always necessarily objectify that thing? ○ Being able to love the other even when they don’t love you back? Giving love in the absence of love ______________________________________________________________________________

“From ‘blackness’ to afrofuture to ‘impasse’” - Jon Gill Afro-diasporic - Commonly used to describe the mass dispersion of peoples from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades, from the 1500s to the 1800s. This Diaspora took millions of people from Western and Central Africa to diff erent regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. ● That which descents out from Africa, the dispersion outward of people (slave bodies out of Africa) Afrofuture - Cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of history that explores the developing intersection of African Diaspora culture with technology. It was coined by Mark Dery in 1993 and explored in the late 1990s through conversations led by Alondra Nelson. ● “Afrofuture is not Afrofuturism, which for many people, refers to an addressing of new Afro-diasporic identities and the complex elements that accompany it through the context-shifting mediums of technology, science fiction, and Afro-diasporic history.” ● “Many would cite the movie Black Panther as a cinematic display of Afrofuturism” ● Attempts to answer the question, “what does it mean to be ‘Black’ in a world where the categories of ‘Blackness’ don’t account for the ever-evolving novelty of ‘Black’ life?” ● In the 1960’s, blackness turned into a ‘mode of response.’ Otherwise, it turned into something that wouldn’t participate in the system ‘blackness’ was built on - a way of thinking about new possibilities, political mobilization, new modes of imagining, etc. ● If life is fixed in terms of limitations (by whiteness), we can use our imagination to

escape this worldly and enter a new world where one is free from constraints. Ontological Blackness Lamar reinforces a static production of ‘blackness’ ● Rather rigid perception ● Operates as if there isn’t a ‘thou,’ it is objectifying rather than subjectifying ● Blackness = as a subject (a thou) ● Lamar is reimagining royalty - again, a lot of imagination around afro thought “For Kendrick, ‘blackness’ is not synonymous with an expendable commodity for the expansion of ‘white’ supremacy, but points toward a self-determined economic future for the U.S.-born Afro-diasporic people that redirects them from chasing the products of consumerism we created for free at one time and for low wages in the present.” ● There is the blackness that whiteness created, and then there is the blackness that blackness creates as a way to respond to whiteness. ● There are two different over-generalizations of different expressions, of what it means to be human. Gill attempts to carve out space for proliferating options. ● Lamar isn’t thinking about blackness as it concerns the white version of it, but rather about understanding one-self. ● Gill is saying that Lamar is shortsighted about the subjectivity of blackness, but is NOT arguing that it reinforces white supremacy. Other identities in regards to ‘blackness’ ● Kendrick focuses on ontological blackness, but it doesn’t really talk about women or sexuality (queerness?) ○ Rooted in a very particular identity formation - he is speaking for and on behalf of straight black men ○ Women have been used as totems of sin throughout his work ○ Important to understand that his ontological blackness is NOT always a good thing ○ If we open up blackness, break away from the STATIC behavior, then will ‘blackness’ go away in society? ● Is afrofuture queer? Leaves possibility for these things… Is Jimi Hendrix COLORBLIND? ● Gill was presenting Lamar’s view on ‘blackness’ and contrasting it with Hendrix and Havens' perspective, who have separated from that distinction. Other than what we already have discussed about Lamar, Gill says that Lamar isn’t capable of providing the liberation for the black community/‘blackness’ in general I guess. Where on the other side, Hendrix was black, understood what blackness meant in context of American

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history, but refused to allow the notion of blackness to define him OR his music. Which I find really cool. Lamar is using music to define and express his ‘blackness’ and black identity, but Hendrix uses it differently. As an artist he is producing work that he wanted to produce. It shouldn’t revolve around history that depends what music is written about. I think that it’s his decision of whether or not he wants to craft his music around the topic. Hendrix is not ignoring his blackness, but rather not letting it define him. A lot of what Lamar is trying to do is stay connected to his roots - he made it out of Compton and now struggles with representation. Compare Lamar’s growth and escape from Compton to Hendrix disconnected, dysfunctional, lack of ‘roots’ or familial experience - how does that affect what they’re music is about?

Ontologization - The rendering of the characteristics of one of us as the norm for all of us. ● To convert into ontological entities or express ontologically ● The conversion of black bodies into representing the race. ______________________________________________________________________________

“Beyond flight and containment” - Joseph Winters ‘Alright’ music video - black male is pushed to the ground, handcuffed by while male police, and Kendrick’s voice plays over it saying “But while my loved ones was fighting a continuous war back in the city, I was entering a new one. A war that was based on apartide, and discrimination.” The scene ends with the black male running away from the cop, and the cop pulling out a gun and firing.

“He carries the hole or wound with(in) him even as he enjoys access to new horizons and develops a different relationship to home.” ● No escape from the HOLD, and/or the black hole. “...his music indicates that the black hole in time extends beyond Compton, beyond his initial sense of home. Antiblackness anticipates and awaits the fugitive.” ● Antiblackness is the condition that we can call white racism - there is a particular kind of anti blackness that awaits the fugitive, which in this sense is black bodies. ● Afro-pessimism (notion of fugitivity) shifts its point of orientation across modernity and the world, rather than thinking about white people on top, we see a more universal condition that everyone has a problem with black people. ○ SHIFT from white supremacy to anti-blackness. ○ Axiom of afro-pessimism - which riffs on a certain sense of fugitivity.

○ Fugitivity is the space where blackness is deemed outside of normal confines. ○ None of us respect black sovereignty? ● Antiblackness is a foundational feature of the contemporary moment. ○ The pessimistic piece of this is that there is not a liberal notion of finding a way forward. ○ Civic or political possibilities predicated on the reliance of blackness historically. “FLESH” - a way to distinguish in the flesh, and containment within the spirit, or the flight from black flesh (more spiritually) ● “Flesh is carved out to make legible bodies” ● “Black flesh does ‘not escape concealment’ under the brush of discourse…” ● Hypervisibility can sometimes be seen as an invisibility. But it is a kind of ‘quality’ of black flesh. ● In concrete epistemological terms OPACITY = capacity to reveal knowledge. ● Transparency = EMPTY ● Quality that has been a fundamental quality of whiteness; or the Enlightenment; that certainty can be achieved vis-a-vis transparency ○ Think about the ‘Great Chain of Being’ Kendrick faces difficulty representing WHO he is while also trying to find an escape from/a transcendence - cannot escape condition of black flesh, which connects back to afro-pessimism. ● There are multiple slave ships, multiple efforts of black bodies chained together. ● Make meaning WHILE in the HOLE - he might at moments get flight away from the hold, as a celebrity/on tour, etc. but he knows he will have things to come back to at home. ● NON SUBJECTIVITY of the black body - there is NO starting point for affirmative possibilities! “Wholeness” - Being a COMPLETE entity ● Emerging out of existential condition/tradition ● In the 19th century construction of the human, it was understood to be a civilized creature as an entity unto itself was ALWAYs, and already juxtaposed over and against the primitive, to judge that which is human. ● The notion of the human was maintained on the fact of BLACKNESS. Constantly...