I am at a
loss. Hemp lollipops and unbearable sun. This day would seem unbearable to the
people enjoying it if it was ten years ago before they had stumbled upon their
‘true selves’ on social media and learned to worship the sun god that my
ancestors did. Pineapples being consumed as if it were a symbol of their
connection with the earth that has rejected them here. Outfits meant to offend
the eye under the guise of political profundity but only speak of conspicuous
consumption. Who are these clowns in this clown house? A room of smoke and
mirrors that will not allow me to find an Archimedean point so that I may stand
and make a judgment of this distortion. We lack this point because the generation
that inhabits the present has allied within themselves against themselves a
treaty that prohibits the use of reason while reasoning. Cryptic because it is
not meant to be understood, because understanding is the opening of revelation
to the fact that we are dealing with myths.
Marcus
Garvey paintings that betray their very subject because the man painted would
not have enjoyed becoming a commodity and being sold. Who are the consumers?
Young black professionals, who only so recently embraced their blackness, since
their environments and private schools that spawned them did not allow them to
think such a thing. Young blacks who ten years ago would not be caught in such
a black borough because it yields no conversation at home. The home that has
been designed primarily to imitate those that have destroyed their homes. No.
Family is a European concept, but in order to appropriate and parade around
one’s supposed intellect, one must take on an economic understanding that is
exclusively found in the European industrial revolution. Thus making themselves
inherently unlike themselves. Let us examine the appropriation and mythologizing
of figures such as Marcus Garvey.
The sound
pattern, the message, or the signifier of Marcus Garvey was that without
knowledge of ourselves, we are like a tree without roots. The message signified
that knowledge is power and when we understand our history, we become active.
The sign for this message could be seen as the very continent of Africa, which
is a representation of the Pan-African philosophy advocated for. Pan-Africanism
is the recognition of the separation of many black people from their ancestors
across the continent due to the diaspora. Marcus Garvey spoke of repatriation
to Africa because he saw no hope in a country that was committed to black
subordination. He suggested that black Americans found their own businesses in
hopes of gathering money in order to complete the project. But this all becomes
hollow for another purpose in this generation.
The
printing of Garvey on tee shirts at Afro Punk is a kind of metalanguage. As
Barthes has stated in the study of myths, the myth relies upon language that is
already there and thus is not creating any new material. Rather the purpose of
the mythologist is to distort the message. The tee shirt is ripping Garvey out
his context while ripping off his philosophy. The selling of these shirts is
not for the possibility of repatriation. But to have a gaze fixed upon you. It
is a status symbol of one’s liberation at the most superficial level. To be
more provocative, this shirt is a conversation starter. It is the attempt to
have three audiences. The first audience is those who frequent the same
locations where we may find these shirts (the insiders). The insiders provide a
measuring stick on which they may measure themselves on the longitudinal
development of consciousness. The relation is not to be an uplifting one, but a
competitive one. They attempt to out due one another by garnishing themselves
with collected symbols (Pan- African colored pants, Garvey shirt, and a
Egyptian symbol as a necklace).
The next
audience is of the same community (black), but of fewer resources (the
outsider). This group consists of those who might be invested in the liberation
movement but do not have the means or the desire to display it for transient
observers. The insiders use this as an opportunity to test their ability to
educate, or to do what they think education is actually supposed to do, shame. The
shame comes from the inability of one to keep up with the endless creation of
myths from a pseudointellectual and pseudohistorical motivation. The outsiders
are the people the insiders use their confused vocabulary on. The blend a
mixture of fact and bullshit in order to make a deadly combination that cannot
be separated under the tool that allowed them to put it together (faulty
reasoning). But they prowl around for the opportunity to use their faulty
reasoning on the outsiders and speak quickly and incoherently in order to place
the blame on the unreceptive (or just critical) receiver. The outsiders thus
become the people who are not down with the struggle. The relation of the
insider to the insider and the insider to the outsider reveal a characteristic
that is inherently unlike the movement (distortion). It depends upon the same
educational structure that Garvey was attempting to alleviate us from. An
educational system that bases one’s success upon physical demarcations of
success is of a Protestant work ethic (imported and European).
The last
audience is white America. The use of symbols is a kind of imaginary revenge
that the insiders hope to inflict upon white America. It is the act of begging
to be seen but unseen. That is, the insiders wish to demonstrate to this group
that they are aware of the unforgiveable enslavement and falsification of
history. All this can be communicated without the myths, but that would require
the very effort that Garvey desired and that they are committed to not allow to
be realized. Why not allow it to work? It is not allowed to work because to do
so would to require more of the superficial use of myth through consumer
symbols. It would require, as Baldwin and Diop would say, a confidence and
resilience in oneself to compose of every work that we do with the utmost exertion.
To them this is unthinkable because their end game is actually the very thing
they wish to attack white America for, profit. Nietzsche once said that virtue
without an observer is unthinkable to a nation of actors. The effort of
understanding is unthinkable to a nation that has no audience. The system they
have constructed is about stratification (the very thing we were subjected to).
And their intentions are made obvious on Monday through Friday when they hurry
to their professional jobs to generate and somewhat collect the white man’s
loot that they will spend on showing their resentment.
The man who
inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance is brandished on a black tee shirt. His face
is of the seriousness that he was speaking decades ago. Now, however, something
is missing. ‘A quote? Another person? No no, another color!’ Or possibly a
historical understanding. The image of Marcus Garvey has been emptied of its
historical context.
Why ask them
to explain what they are or what they are doing? This pseudointellectual
movement based upon appearances has an alibi in appearances and, therefore, to
ask for an explanation of their contradictions is to attack our ancestors. Or
even worse, to ask them to use the very tool that has been distorted and used
against them, reason.
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