PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Greg Thomas

Funny enough, I’m no longer “conscious” of when we decided to make this the theme of our fourth issue of PROUD FLESH: “Consciousness?” The question mark and quotation marks are essential. “Consciousness” is a problem. The Black Consciousness Movement of earlier years recognized that our mental landscapes were a battlefield, thanks to slavery, colonialism, racism or white-supremacy, neo-slavery and neo-colonialism. But this movement for Black Consciousness was actively and intimately associated with that movement for Black Power, concrete and practical Black Liberation, anti-imperialist De-Colonization, etc. Today, however, when certain, too many people speak of “consciousness,” out there, there is no action implied--let alone militancy. For them, it is only a state of mind, somewhat of a mirage devoid of bodies, masses and certainly militants. It is instead the source of bougie or pseudo-bourgeois social divisions that are in actuality boldly anti-Black. This shoddy, snobbish notion of “consciousness” is first and foremost concerned with separating the “unconscious” people from the “conscious” people who never have to walk their talk, make their words flesh or even scream out loud . . . especially if no mics are on! There will be no self-consciousness or critical self-reflection here! Where is the Black Consciousness moved by militants, masses, and the threat of guns amidst this other thing called “consciousness” which seems to be all about manners and bogus class distinction?

Where is that “consciousness” which made its way into the subtitle of this very organ, PROUD FLESH: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness? This other stuff is the pseudo-consciousness of accommodation, just more middle-class non-sense. They get on stage or chitter-chatter in public, denounce the majority of Black folk, feel good about themselves as a result, and they keep the status-quo moving. They engage in nothing but this retrograde behavior, evidently. They do not notice that they exploit the terms and concepts of a movement for mass liberation merely in order to degrade the masses and distance themselves from the masses and any meaningful movement, to boot. This would mean they are themselves “unconscious” in every way. No? They certainly show no consciousness of the need to subvert this white racist bourgeois system of values--its empire--as a system of thought/non-thought or a foreign landscape where we need to do serious battle. For them, “consciousness” is not a problem. It is not to be rethought or reconsidered from a collective, Black militant point of view. It is carte blanche, something that privileges them in their own minds as they hypocritically uphold virtually everything which needs to be undone.

Who are they, after all? They must be the new, the latest/greatest “good negroes.” You know them. They have “good” jobs, or at least pretend to . . . They still don’t cuss in public, as if this were a pathway to freedom! They only use the word “nigga” negatively. They are elitist in their rhetoric and elitist in their actions, to paraphrase Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (or Les damnés de la terre). Although they fetishize mis-education, and “they schools,” they show no signs of reading very much--for real. Academic or non-academic, they don’t get down with the Black radical tradition. Yet they often think they are it, or “artists.” They are wretchedly contemptuous of the wretched as a rule. I wish there were just a few of them; then we could name names. Lately, they may be among the few who continue to throw this specific language around all too casually: “Consciousness?”

It is ironic therefore that Sylvia Wynter identifies “consciousness” as the one great thing that the West can’t arrogantly define or understand, intellectually. It is ironic because so many of us are misled into thinking we (too) can just take this thing for granted and then lord it over others--who are far afield--arrogantly and “intellectually.” Personally, I am caught up in the poetry and clarity of Wynter’s latest offering, which systematically thinks through the Black Arts Movement, the Black Aesthetics Movement, the Black Power Movement and Black Liberation Movement in general. That piece is entitled, “On How We Mistook the Map for the Territory and Re-Imprisoned Ourselves in Our Unbearable Wrongness of Being, of Désêtre: Black Studies Toward the Human Project.” Hell yeah! We dare the “elite,” “conscious” crowd to deal with it.

Not that we invest a whole lot of hope in their “uplift.”

Class suicide would be a must, for Black people: Amina Brown brings this point home artfully, for PROUD FLESH #4. First, Jean Lowrie-Chin makes it clear that some folks need to change their mind about Lee Boyd Malvo. I was flooded with positive vibes when I heard her live in Miami at “The Caribbean Woman Writer as Scholar Conference” put on by Carole Boyce Davies and company. This was also the site of some of Opal Palmer Adisa’s fine contribution here. Her “Trapped” poems fuck with received ideas about “consciousness” something wicked! Lena Delgado de Torres can be said to look at consciousness and petit-maroonage from the vantage point of a Pan-African archaeology, just as Lissette Norman does in poetry with her woman’s “Warning.” Adding to my points above, Ewuare Osayande exposes fake artists and the need for art against war; he writes for the embattled in the Hurricane Katrina fiasco as well. Angelique Nixon confirms this in “Sisters,” not to mention her rethinking of “consciousness” concerns in “a philosophy of thought and emotion” and “disTorted noTions of fReeDom.” The stunning visual art of Michael Roman’s paintings provoke us to think about how we think and then some. The “Articles” section of this issue close with Adisa Kamara a.k.a. Steve Champion’s “The Geography of Death Row: Essays from Inside San Quentin.” We are thrilled and so lucky to bring them out in PROUD FLESH with the assistance of Tom Kerr. What better handling of this theme of ours than his incredible essays on everything that matters; and how fitting that he closes with the words of George Jackson! Our “Reviews” section is filled by Aaron Kamugisha’s writing on tourism in the Caribbean and, appropriately, Leketi Makalela on Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness. It’s been a minute coming, but a very poetic PROUD FLESH #4 is here.

And we are here with a climactic exchange (or “Inter/View”) with another revolutionary elder, thankfully, Sylvia Wynter herself. Big! To think, we almost had to file this one under “The Lost Tapes.” They can have “philosophy” as long as we have her “heresy” and the power to back it on up . . .

This and more urges me to re-examine the whole concept of “consciousness,” as our term of choice for the mental liberation that must be at one with our physical liberation, to be sure. Isn’t “consciousness” too rationalistic in a classical Western fashion? Too ego-centric as well as Eurocentric, in fact? Too bourgeois and individualistic in origin? Isn’t it normally absolutely empty of spirit and soul? Aren’t there all manner of things that are crucially a part of us but of which we are not exactly or fully “conscious,” in truth? What about our ancestral connections, for instance? How about when we get the Holy Ghost? What about the important shit that lies beyond our explicit “consciousness,” “sub-” and “semi-” included? The ways we continue to embody Africa from the oldest days to Real Hip-Hop internationally, etc.? Can any of this be adequately captured by “consciousness” or does much of what we are and what we need exceed this one little term-concept? In any event, may these new materials inspire you and us to think and act toward Black liberation--bona fide.

Citation Format:

Greg Thomas. “Editorial: Consciousness?,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 4, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Africa Resource Center, Inc.