Again
By THE EDITORS
in Fall 2017
Sedrick Miles, "Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte II," 2017
Existence is growth. Life is movement.
The words in this issue remind us that cycles of life define us and define our humanity. Learning to cope with change is learning to live. But it is not in constantly seeking what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten call “improvement” [1] that we make life meaningful. It is learning to be like those “in front,” those who mapped out what it is to exist, what the Yoruba call iwa. We do not need or require development, we simply require that we move forward toward our ancestors. This is the move.
In navigating these cycles and changes, how do we resist movement for movement’s sake? We must keep from flailing as we resist the urge to go with the current. We ask questions. We question God. We question ourselves. We question our memories. We gather together and question each other. We ask many questions--we challenge--anyone who will listen. And we gather answers that beg more questions. They become rafts and paddles. Prayers of observation that move us how we want to go.
In going, we will find ancestors, their being, their energy all around us as we inhabit the world, their world. And when we recognize their presence, we know that we have moved toward them. For they have moved us.
It is good to seek and find. It is better to be open to being sought. Movement requires both. And both require movement. Sometimes movement is painful. And we need art to usher us through, for that is not all there is.
A Gathering Together moves now to a rapprochement with the past in order to say that where and what we are now is both beautiful and necessarily impermanent. This issue features writing that takes critical stock of the present and thinks about what the past might mean and how it might look in the present. In the "present order of knowledge," there is less of our past.[2] So we need grandmothers, Sisters, and other little reminders of the things we used to be. Or, the things we still are and do not know.
References
[1] Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, "Improvement and Preservation: Or, Usufruct and Use," in Futures of Black Radicalism, eds. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (London: Verso Press, 2017), 83-91.
[2] Sylvia Wynter, "A Black Studies Manifesto," Forum NHI: Knowledge for the 21st Century 1 (Fall 1994): 3-11.