“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
On Labour eds. by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Ibrahim Cissé with Antonia Alampi, Amal Alhaag, Zippora Elders, Krista Jantowski, Aude Christel Mgba (Archive Books, 2021)
This reader is a culmination of direct and tangential deliberations on labour. Notions of labour appreciated across geographies and mediums. Newly commissioned textual manifestations in a multilogue with historical positions. The reader could be perceived as a negotiation of positions, as the strive towards utterances, towards becoming. Each text could be imagined as a stanza in a song. This is also a strive towards musicality. Or at least a wish for this reader to be a choir, in which we collectively sing, in which we all listen to each other to be able to sing, but most importantly, in which we afford ourselves the privilege of ‘hearing the eloquence of silence’, ‘seeing the inner vision beneath the closed eyes’ and ‘listening to the chastity of inner music that defies betrayal by the wayward wind.’
With contributions of Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Panashe Chigumadzi, Maurizio Lazzarato, Danielle Child, Anne Moraa, Philomena Essed, Djuwa Mroivili, Anivia Beylard, Jana Keijdener, Iheb Guermazi, Alia Mossallam, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Simone Atangana Bekono, Lionel Manga, Kodwo Eshun, Amal Alhaag, Precious Colette Kemigisha, Guy Ossito Midiohouan, Akila Richards, Mwazulu Diyabanza, Ibrahim Cissé, Léon-Gontran Damas.