These remarks were given at a University of California African Studies workshop held at UC Berkleley in March 2022. I’d like to begin with an epigraph from queer Kenyan intellectual Keguro Macharia, drawn from the article “On Being Area Studied”: “I am not really sure I have anything to say…

“Althusser writes about the three great fatherless children of modernity: Marx, Nietsche, and Freud. And then ya know you get from those guys up to Heidegger and Sartre and then you know whatever. Poststructuralism and all those folks and Derrida and Foucault and Lacan. But what if it turns out…

Racial slavery remains an under-theorized and misunderstood condition. We live in the afterlife of slavery. Two hundred years ago, when the slaves in Haiti rose up, they, of necessity, burned everything: A French officer asks a slave prisoner: “Why do you burn everything?” “We have a right to burn what…

These were my prepared remarks as an invited student panelist for the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Diversity, Equity, and Student Success Panel delivered on March 26, 2021 Moderator: Following the public killing of George Floyd, as protests erupted across the country and around the world, there was a…

This essay originally appeared in the Abolish The UC’s 2020 Disorientation Guide — https://disorientation.guide/ A number of scholars have done excellent work documenting how universities in the U.S. emerged as a function of settler-colonialism. The 1862 Morrill Act converted 11 million acres of violently expropriated unceded indigenous lands into the…

This piece is from a presentation given for Dr. Frank Wilderson’s seminar on Afropessimism. The piece is based on the article “Speaking the Hieroglyph” by Dr. Selamawit Terrefe. There is a link to a playlist located directly below this line of text. The audience is meant to listen to the…

Have I ever had an original idea? If the answer is yes, then do I “own” that idea? Is that ownership automatic? Do I have to file the correct copyright paperwork? Is it possible for me to own ideas that did not originate with me? Academic writing is distinguished by…

When I first got my dreadlocks I knew nothing about the history or significance of the style. I just did it because my bestfriend in undergrad had just started his. I had always preferred letting my hair grow out so it was an easy transition (only a few rare pictures…

“If you’re an undergrad and you need help figuring out what to do in this University administrated chaos, please reach out to me. I live in Orange County and I’ve got space to hold people’s things if necessary (or any other help you may need). …