Sarah Stefana Smith
Towards a Poetics of Bafflement asserts that blackness baffles—confuses and frustrates—the order of knowledge that deems black subjectivities as pathological. This dissertation argues for the importance of the psychic and affective spaces that emerge in the work of contemporary black women and queer artists. A poetics of bafflement is foregrounded by racial slavery and diaspora formations that inform contemporary racial antagonisms. The visual work of Deana Lawson, Zanele Muholi, and Mickalene Thomas, if read through a poetics of bafflement, engages blackness differently and conceptualizes new possibilities for world making. Black artists have long since occupied spaces of creative and critical thinking about aesthetics, race, and the politics of vision, which inform contemporary social, historical, and cultural climates. Multiculturalism and subsequent post-race concepts are inadequate in thinking about alternative possibilities of world making as they suggest racism and anti-black sentiment are somehow no longer prevalent.
Multiculturalism’s claim of diversity negates the continued logics of anti-black sentiment, whereas post-racial suggests a time and place in history where race no longer informs political, economic, and socio-cultural experiences. Black cultural production continues to be at the crossroads of these debates. The complex interplay between race anxieties and the politics of contemporary visual culture remains opaque, even as it proliferates. Deana Lawson, Zanele Muholi, and Mickalene Thomas are among a generation of artists who have gained a certain level of North American and European recognition. Common to many of these artists is a concern with the limits of form and genre, particularly in relation to the photographic image, the queer body and the undoing of gender, and ruminations on desire and the erotic. Towards a Poetics of Bafflement responds to the absence of affect studies in addressing racial slavery—and, specifically, bafflement’s imprint on the present.
Deepest gratitude to Rinaldo Walcott for the intellectual inquiry and rigorous provocation you have presented to me. Your work in black cultural production and humanism continues to inspire me to think beyond the boundaries of the obvious. Your intellect regularly conjures considerable contemplation on my part, while simultaneously disarming me in equal measure. A special thank you to Dina Georgis, whose poetics of affect and questions towards diaspora have helped me to think through highly theoretical ideas with relative ease and beauty. I am truly grateful to Roshini Kempadoo, who—from across the Atlantic—has contributed her critical perspective as an art practitioner and scholar. This has enabled me to locate the artists in all of this. I would also like to thank my external examiners, Uri McMillan, for his careful engagement with the interdisciplinary impulses of my research and Lance McCready for his close attention to queer of color community in all of this.
The support of my friends, family, and colleagues over this span of time has been instrumental to holding me within the world of people. Writing this dissertation has been a diasporic journey and it has taught me the great pleasure and pain in thinking beyond the boundaries of myself. To Nataleah Hunter-Young, Leah Burke, Erika Olgesby, and Nakish Jordan, whom I quite literally have had the pleasure of running the world with. Here I have discovered the deepest parts of possibility and I thank you for joining me in that work. You have helped connect body, mind, and soul through the most challenging of terrains, and for that I am most grateful.
To the artists in my life—in particular Michael Andrew Carter, who has shown me courage in creation through collaboration, but also the desire to push beyond the boundaries of the comfortable. To Bettina Judd, Matthew Carter, La Boi Band Collective, Jardyn Lake, Angela Denis, and Celestine Edwards, for reminding me that we create in the smallest and biggest of moments. Also, to the collaborators of my earliest artistic work, that in no small way informs many of the questions of this project. You have trusted enough in the very seedlings of an idea to allow me to photograph you. C. Riley Snorton, thank you for providing direction that has literally and figuratively shifted the course of my intellectual inquiry. To Melanie Knight for your constant encouragement, honest feedback, and direction.
To my colleagues and friends, Cassandra Lord, OmiSoore Dryden, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Chandni Desai, Laura Kwak, Christopher Smith, Ricky Varghese, Kate Milley, Raygine D’Aquoi, Tara Bynum and Kristen Hodge-Clark, for all of the fellowship that may have occurred over dim sum or in the late hours after full-time work. Thank you for your wisdom in uncovering the bureaucracy and burden of academia. Most importantly, thank you for participating in cultural inquiry into the practicum of the party.
Princess Dixon, Kira Shepherd, Tiesha Mckenzie, Cherina Booker, Tangynika Young, Akudo Ejelonu, Tanya Sullivan-Thompson, and Stepheni Williams, thank you for your continued friendship. We always pick up where we leave off and it is this shift in time and space that reminds me that true friendship is unbreakable. Michelle Osbourne and Verlia Stephens, I am immensely grateful to you for giving me a home when I did not think I had one.
To my family, thank you for being the place I return to, always. To my mother and father, who were among the first to cultivate my curious mind. Not only have you fostered the earliest incarnation of my creativity and intellect, but also you have done so much to support the Dream, however far fetched it might have been. To my aunties, uncles, and cousins, in no small way am I grateful for the closeness we have. Even in distance and the passing of time, I know that I can rely on you to show up. I am fortunate. Thank you. To my surrogate family, the Jordan clan, you are from another world and you remind me of how all kinds of elsewheres exist simultaneously.
To Nakish Jordan, for coming into my life during a transitional time, holding me down, and holding me up to achievements that I could not always see or acknowledge. Thank you for teaching me much about having a sense of humour, companionship, and communication. I am grateful to for your generosity, wisdom, and love.