On Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism (w/ Marquis Bey)

How do we think about “Nah” vs  the “I would rather not to” of Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville- in other words, how does Blackness re-situate refusal? Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, mothers of Tamir Rice and Richard Risher who were murdered by the police, released forceful statements calling out the opportunist infiltration of BLM LA and Shaun King into the movement. This inadvertently catalyzed a conversation on Twitter around “Abolish Black Men” This episode unpacks what that phrase means, What is gender abolition? How does class mediate this discussion around gender and is leaving the hood a precondition for Black studies? Marquis Bey joins the WBI show to vibe on Lil Wayne’s A Milli, Katrina, digital infrastructure for mutual aid, and the utility in being unrecognizable to the state. 

Marquis Bey is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, and core faculty member of critical theory, at Northwestern University. Their work concerns black feminist theorizing, transgender studies, abolition, and critical theory. The author of several books, including Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism, most recently they are in the midst of revising a monograph entitled Black Trans Feminism to be published in 2022 with Duke University Press. Bey is committed to thinking rigorously and radically about subjectivity, blackness, nonnormative gender, and thoroughgoing abolition.

**You can send personal donations to the CashApps of $SamariaRice and $LisaLee693 and/or make contributions to the Tamir Rice Foundation

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Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:
Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism
Tina Campt: Black Feminist Futures and the Practice of Fugitivity - Classroom
Melville, Herman. 1853
Spike Lee turns cameras on New Orleans
Spike Lee Paid $200,000 By NYPD For Consulting On Ad Campaign
Fred Moten Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) – Dean Spade
Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures
Samaria Rice Calls Out Prominent Black Activists In Scathing Statement
Samaria Rice Has Demands for Shaun King, BLM Activists
2Pac Speaks On Malcolm X Grassroots Movement 1992
Otherwise Movements – The New Inquiry
Nikki Giovanni Speaks on her "Thug Life" Tattoo
Denise Ferreira da Silva – Hacking the Subject: Black Feminism, Refusal, and the Limits of Critique
Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book Author(s): Hortense J. Spillers
Alondra Nelson
The Race for Theory by Barbara Christian

Recommendations:
Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
MAGIC: THE GATHERING