Do or Die: Affect, Ritual, Resistance Open Access

Pecou, Fahamu (Spring 2018)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/vh53wv80d?locale=en
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Abstract

Historically, a threat—both physical and social—has worked to control and coerce Black subjectivity into the prevailing social order. This threat of violence and death is woven into the cultural fabric of society and remains so pervasive that it has become a kind of spectacle; a spectacle of Black death. My dissertation, “Do or Die: Affect, Ritual, Resistance” is a visual dissertation that privileges the affective and phenomenological language of art and ritual to counter this spectacle while encouraging new modes of communication, understanding, and resistance. “Do or Die: Affect Ritual Resistance” re-members Black subjectivity through an interrogation of the Black body, mind, and spirit, represented respectively through concepts inherent to hip hop culture, Négritude, and Ifa (Yoruba spiritual cosmology). 

 

This visual dissertation features original artworks-as-texts which function in opposition to the overwhelming societal forces that maintain brutal and dehumanizing assaults on the Black body. As narratives within visual culture continue to depict Black bodies as dead or dying, “Do or Die” explores concepts and themes that ultimately, reorient the Black experience around death. 

Table of Contents

Introduction, 2

 

Part 1: The Body, 12

 

Chapter 1: Egún Dance Drawings, 36

 

Chapter 2: Emmett Still, 43

 

Chapter 3: Emmett Still album, 47

 

Part 2: The Mind, 58

 

Chapter 4:  Visual Oriki, 77

 

Part 3: The Spirit, 84

 

Chapter 5: New World Egúngún, 102

 

Conclusion, 119

 

Bibliography, 124

About this Dissertation

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Do or Die: Affect, Ritual, Resistance () 2018-04-10 19:49:05 -0400

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Actions
Emmett Still (Short Film) 2018-04-10 19:49:05 -0400
Emmett Still (Explicit) (Emmett Still Album) 2018-04-10 19:49:09 -0400
Emmett Still (Clean edit) (Emmett Still Album) 2018-04-10 19:49:11 -0400
Flight of the Ancestors (Emmett Still Album) 2018-04-10 19:49:13 -0400
God (Emmett Still Album) 2018-04-10 19:49:15 -0400
Opening Procession (Video Documentation ) 2018-04-10 19:49:17 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:19 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:21 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:24 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:26 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:28 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:30 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:32 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:35 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:37 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:39 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:42 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:44 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:47 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:49 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:51 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:54 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:56 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:49:59 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:50:01 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:50:04 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:50:06 -0400
Opening Procession (Photograph) 2018-04-10 19:50:09 -0400
Strange Fruit (Audio) 2018-04-11 13:40:14 -0400