Sister, You’ve Been on My Mind: Perceptual, Affective, and Expressive Practices of Lived Flesh Público
Warmack, Andrea (Summer 2022)
Abstract
“Sister, You’ve Been on My Mind: Perceptual, Affective, and Expressive Practices of Lived Flesh” is an interdisciplinary project that pairs Black Feminist and Womanist Thought with Critical Phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s thought.
This project intervenes in Merleau-Ponty’s construct of the human subject. Merleau-Ponty’s account assumes that humanity and subjectivity is commensurate with being homo sapiens. This understanding that all homo sapiens are the human subjects excludes american Black folk who—in the silence of his texts on racial, gendered, sexed, and class differences—emerge as homo sapiens but not human subjects. Where the human subject is never an object for another and can never be perceived by the subject as though outside of itself, the american Black person lives an ongoing historical engagement with objectification, abjection, and double-vision.
I explore and critique Merleau-Ponty’s account of the human subject via readings of Black Feminist and Womanist texts notably Anna Julia Cooper, Hartman, Morrison, Lorde, Musser, Sharpe, and Spillers. Through these readings I sound out a geography for the lived flesh of american Black people, propose an “ear-forward” sensorial organ/ization, and offer Blues as an example of the expressive, affective practices, and ethical frameworks that lived flesh creates that distinguish it from the acquisitive and limiting way of being in the world of the (white) human subject.
This work is guided by my interests in the ways that marginalized peoples—especially american Blackwomxn—do more than just endure injustice and oppression, but develop practices of thriving. This is not an interest in those practices as solely oppositional or resistance. This is an interest in the way these practices have and create meaning and relations in themselves and cannot be totalized by the oppressive contexts in which they emerge. This is an interest in these ways of being-in-the-world, as ways-of-being otherwise.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
I: Brief note on terms. 2
II: Where I Wade In 8
III: Where You Wade In 12
CHAPTER 1: WE FLESH: MUSSER, SPILLERS AND BEYOND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL BODY 15
I: The Lived Body of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Method 17
II: The Lived Body of Flesh 22
III: Other Bodies: Feminist and Critical Phenomenologists Problematize Flesh 27
IV: You can Keep Your Humanity to Yourself, Thank You Very Much. We Good. 36
V: We, Specifically, Flesh: Spillers and Insurgent Flesh 44
CHAPTER 2: EYE CAN: SIGHT AND HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY 74
I: The Body Proper 75
II: Eye Can 79
III: Eye Cannot 92
IV: The Little Phrase 96
V: Eye and Mind 106
VI: The Sonic Subject? 111
VII: The Bluest Eye 118
CHAPTER 3: LISTENING FLESH: PITCH COMPLEXES AND THE SOCIAL OTHERWISE 130
I: Eye’d Rather Not 132
II: Eye Hesitate to Say 137
III: Pitch Complexes 139
IV: Social Otherwise 150
V: Mostly Ears 157
INTERSTITIAL: SMILING LESSONS: TOWARD AN ACCOUNT OF AFROSKEPTICISM 165
CHAPTER 4: SHAMELESSLY BLUE 181
I: Little Girl Blue 185
II: Sun’s Gonna Shine in my Backdoor Someday 193
III: Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil: Positive Accounts of Shame 198
IV: Go Way Devil, Leave Me Alone: The Negatives of the Positive Accounts of Shame 204
IV: I Love Myself When I am Laughing... 209
VI: Til You Do Right By Me: Toward Shamelessness 215
VII: Prove It On Me 227
OUTRO: SONGS TOWARD HOME 230
I: Co-Work 231
II: Home-Work 234
III: Sounds of Homing 236
IV: Coda 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY 240
MEDIA CITED 250
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