When I initially created the independent study syllabus, I did not want to include work that was authored by an individual. I've seen the limits of singular visions in telling stories that speak for/to the experiences of many. However, as I thought more critically about the syllabus in relation to authors that inspired my thinking about archiving and creating last semester, as well as events at Colgate featuring some of those authors, artists, creatives, etc, and understanding the purpose and potential in an independent study course to be defined by my intellectual curiosities (especially where those curiosities have not been fulfilled in other courses), I had to include Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs' Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity on the syllabus.
Dr. Gumbs was featured at the first WMST Brown Bag of the semester as part of MLK Week. Her presentation "Evidence: A Black Feminist Archive of the Impossible" further challenged my assumptions on individual ability to "create multitude" (in Dr. Gumbs' words), that is, to express the influence of other humans and their experiences in the shaping of one's own experiences and intellectual becoming. In Dr. Gumb's presentation, she used multiple exercises to channel her intellectual, spiritual, and personal influences as well as the audiences. One exercise asked audience members to talk about one artifact they carry with them that represents an influential person in their life. We do not always have the opportunity to physically be surrounded by the people that influence our lives and creative work, but it is still possible to create space for those people and make their influences known. In lieu of a traditional Q&A, Dr. Gumbs activated an Oracle Q&A in which she answered carefully-reflected-upon questions from the audience with a story from the life of one of the Black feminists central to her research. Nothing Dr. Gumbs did was without influence from and care for a community and lineage beyond herself. The same sentiment is expressed in Spill. Spill is a compilation of poetic representations of Black women in different phases of "fugitivity", the practice of getting free. The poems appear disjointed within themselves and in relation to one another, but this seems to be a direct representation of fugitivity. The practice of getting free is messy, unpredicted and, true to Gumbs' title, a spilling of self to the unknown or uncharted. I have come into this course questioning the notion of linearity, yet there is still something that brings different pieces of a story together. I would like to center my analysis of the works in this course around Dr. Gumbs' notion of creating multitude. My goal is to uncover what brings each work in this course together in its binding and in relation to other works in the course and who/what each author carries into the work. I hope that this will go beyond what is explicitly stated by the authors. Gumbs equally questions desires for linearity in her dedication to "Black women who make and break narrative." The thread that links the pieces in Spill, alongside Gumbs' influence by Hortense Spillers, is the definition and practice of "spill(ing)." Each poem is prefaced by a unique definition of spill. The vast territory covered by one word is significant, and enough to bring together the vast experiences of the women and girls represented in spill.
Collective Breathing for me, is not only about telling a story for my own sake, but also about telling one that matters because it is situated in a larger discourse about what it means to be a first-generation Black immigrant lower middle class intellectual, on a campus that does not recognize these identities as important. I hope that Breathing, in whatever way it is defined by each individual in collective breathing is a strong enough thread to center our work together.