“The Messages We Refuse To Learn From” - Felicia Denaud on the Unnameable War and Afro-Assembly

This is part one of a two part conversation with Felicia Denaud.

Felicia Denaud is a writer, poet, and professor of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She writes, in the words of Sylvia Wynter, toward the end of empire, war, and accumulation by elimination. She’s listens, in the words of Dhoruba bin Wahad for “the last of the loud.”

In this part of the discussion we get into Denaud’s work around two key and very interesting concepts within her work. One she describes as the “Unnameable War,” and the other the “Master-State Complex.” We also begin to talk about the piece that spurred this conversation, Denaud’s recent essay “Into The Clear, Unreal, Idyllic Light of the Beginning | A Will of the Night,” which was published by The Caribbean Philosophical Association. In our discussion of that essay here we ask Denaud about what she draws from revolutionary Grenada and Safiya Bukhari. And we close this part of the discussion with Denaud sharing some of the areas of Haitian history that are not examined and appreciated with the care and inquiry they should be if we truly have a dedication to defending revolutions.

Felicia wanted us to highlight the fundraising campaign for Lawrence Jenkins, an incarcerated abolitionist who will be coming home soon in Washington state and the campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. We will include links to both of those campaigns .

And as always if you appreciate the work that we do bringing you conversations like this on a weekly basis, please become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month, our work is only possible through - and only funded by - the support of listeners just like you. Support at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Part two of this conversation with Felicia Denaud will be released this coming week.

Links:

Lawrence Jenkins

Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2 // Our episode on this struggle

“Into The Clear, Unreal, Idyllic Light of the Beginning | A Will of the Night"

­­­­­­­"we’ve barely begun to speak/scream/sing: on frankétienne’s dézafi"

Renegade Gestation: Writing Against the Procedures of Intellectual History