{"id":37,"date":"2020-05-11T18:11:07","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T22:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/africana-studies-3020-spring-2020\/?page_id=37"},"modified":"2020-05-16T04:10:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T08:10:39","slug":"resistance-and-surrender","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/africana-studies-3020-spring-2020\/resistance-and-surrender\/","title":{"rendered":"Resistance and Surrender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resistance and Surrender are themes that have come up throughout the texts we have read in our course. <\/span>Resistance <\/span><\/i>typically places blackness in relation to whiteness, as something against whiteness – \u201cresistance is, in fact, the dominant expectation we have of black culture\u201d (Quashie 3). We see interpretations of action as resistance in texts such as <\/span>The Fire Next Time, <\/span><\/i>in Baldwin\u2019s words, and <\/span>A Raisin in the Sun, <\/span><\/i>in Hansberry\u2019s characters. In his book <\/span>The Sovereignty of Quiet, <\/span><\/i>Kevin Quashie exposes us to the idea that resistance is often something that reduces the \u2018black experience\u2019 to a monolith, and therefore using the language and logic of resistance as the prominent narrative about blackness is actually racist and reductive of black people\u2019s experiences to their public expressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quashie introduces us to the notions of interiority, intimacy, and <\/span>quiet, <\/b>that make up surrender. Surrender is something so individual and abstract that it is difficult to put into words – it is the exact opposite of resistance in that it is not at all performative, it is an internal process that one experiences only for oneself. Examples of surrender can be found in any of the books we read this semester, if one looks hard enough, but are especially evident in <\/span>The Sovereignty of Quiet<\/span><\/i>, mentioned earlier, and <\/span>Looking for Lorraine<\/span><\/i>, which provides us with insight into Lorraine\u2019s inner thoughts and inner life beyond the narrative of resistance that she is often placed into. With a photograph from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City of two black athletes who placed in the 200-meter race, Quashie shows us how an act commonly interpreted as a performance of resistance can alternatively be seen as an act of surrender. He analyzes the athletes\u2019 body language and facial expressions to find evidence of internal processing amidst the public expression of resistance in their outstretched arms and hands formed into fists in support of black rights. Quashie\u2019s analysis of this photograph pushes us to confront a truth in each of us — our trend to read black bodies as inherently political, expressive, resistant. Quashie pushes us to move beyond this tendency and to learn to look for and appreciate the quiet interiority that is surrender, and that renders one person\u2019s experience individual. This section of our website seeks examples of Quashie\u2019s ideas of resistance and surrender, and explores the relationship between the two through examples from everyday lives and media to illustrate these categories.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Black Interior Photography Project created by Destiny Kearney\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

“A Photographic Response To The Sovereignty of Quiet by: Kevin Quashie”<\/strong><\/h3>\n