becoming-cow bros
Author: joebamford7
Bearing witness to the wake-differend’s of slavery.
How can one tell the story that can't be told, which must be told? M. NourbeSe Phillip's seminal poetry collection Zong! seeks to answer this pertinent question. Her answer through 'not telling'. This essay proposes a collation of the works of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard's The Differend with Christina Sharpe's In The Wake to bear witness to stories that cannot be told; by bearing witness to the wake-differend.
A morning coffee:
This was written as a free-write exercise while my train was delayed in Bristol and then while I was on the next train I finished it off. Not really sure what I think ah well. A short quasi-story about a lecturer drinking coffee before their lecture. However, the drinking soon leads the narrator to ascribe existential speculative problems onto the protagonist.
a triptych on writing poetry:
A triptych on the process of writing poetry. Each example grapples with a difficulty in writing (and reading) poetry, and all at least engage with different philosophies that compose poetry. Each poem has more or less been influenced by Henryk Górecki's third symphony and the implications of its second movement, lento e lento.
Performing manhood: Hypermasculinity and quare representation in Moonlight and The Dark Knight.
An essay exploring the problems with hypermasculine presentations in Nolan's 'Dark Knight' trilogy. And how Barry Jenkin's 'Moonlight' presents a deconstruction of Nolan's hypermasculine tropes through a bildungsroman celebrating black quare life in its ontological negation and difficulties.
A Necropolitical analysis of the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs:
An essay exploring the nature of being at the margins in the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. This essay explores the notion of the pushing of the slave subject's body to the margins of life; therefore, the subject is controlled through Achille Mbembe's notion of Necropolitics.
‘You Have Always been the caretaker’: A DeleuzoGuattarian analysis of Maya Derren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Meshes of the Afternoon, has long been read under the dead, myopic lens of psychoanalysis. This, short, essay attempts to provide a schizoanalysis, one that resonates more with the texts representations of dreams and desire to construct the notion of a fluxed female identity.
Address tae a cheesy chip
An address to some cheesy chips a girl is eating in a kebab shop who probably wants me to leave her alone.
A Twin Fantasy of an Exeter cell and a Leeds drunken stroll:
A tirade, written by a student, a prisoner, in their halls reflecting on life in isolation both in halls, and at home - the urban environment is essentially being trapped in a constant feeling of day release, so I am imprisoned in both realities, both fantasies.
In principio erat Verbum:
A first-'person' narrative poem, told from the perspective of God on the opening phrase of the New Testament; 'In the beginning there was the word'. Heavily influenced by T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', as it is a pastiche written by the character Chris, an embodiment of the aforementioned poem