The construction of time and our understanding of it is largely a linear one: stories are told with a beginning and end, lives are thought of as starting at birth and ending at death, most conceivable entities have an origin, and memory is understood much in the same way. The mechanisms through which time is measured even mirrors this linearity (calendars, for example, have a certain angular rigidity to them). Foregrounding our exploration of time with Michelle Wright\u2019s text The Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology, Wright urges for the use of epiphenomenal time \u201cthrough which the past, present, and future are always interpreted.\u201d (4) She further writes that this conception of time \u201cdenotes the current moment, a moment that is not directly borne out of another (i.e. causally created).\u201d (4) In short, Wright calls for a less linear, more fluid, rhizomatic understanding of time and history, which she names \u201cthe now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using this epiphenomenal time framework then, blackness, as Wright explores, is not really a what but more of a when and where. In texts such as Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman and The Sovereignty of Quiet by Kevin Quashie, the examination of blackness, return, history, memory, and time all intersect to shift conventional constructions of blackness.<\/p>\n
By examining blackness through the prism of when and where blackness is not stagnant. It becomes a moving target, something that is unfixed, ever-changing, ever-expansive. Using Wright, Hartman, and Quashie\u2019s texts, as well as other contemporary works from visual artists, this section of the website, will provide us with the opportunity to reimagine blackness and its multitudes through non-traditional modes of time.<\/p>\n
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