news from kintespace.com ::: Thursday, June 29, 2006

“Two things emerged from the annual Odenigbo Lecture given by Chinua Achebe on September 4, 1999 at Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. First, the lecture brought Achebe into a head-on collision with Igbo Linguistics scholars. Secondly, it forced scholars of Igbo Language and Literature to start debates again on the problematics of creating literature in an indigenous language in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual situation where a foreign language as official language, has gained national currency even at the grassroots and marginalised the status of mother tongues, as is the case in Nigeria today.”

::: Mike Thornton: Black Farmers vs. USDA

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/p_full_logic_reverse0.html

Mike Thornton of Full Logic Reverse interviews Gary Grant, former president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, about the events surrounding the Pigford Consent Decree. According to the BFAA, “The USDA finally admitted to both Congress and the federal courts—what Black farmers had been asserting and otherwise stating through public outcries for decades—that the USDA was engaged in a systematic effort to expropriate the land that African Americans had acquired since slavery, back to the sons and daughters of the original plantation owners. The USDA had developed a sophisticated system of allowing its agents to discriminate against Black farmers by delaying, denying and otherwise frustrating the efforts of African American farmers and their heirs from obtaining loan assistance necessary to maintain their lawful and constitutional right to engage in the vocation of farming.”

The relatively ‘minor’ events at the South Central Farm here in Los Angeles remind us again that there still is a struggle for the land here in the United States of America, that there are people who are willing to work according the most ancient, authentically conservative world view: the people directly toward the land and the land directly toward the people. That the very idea of Black people actually wanting to farm for a living is almost laughable for most urbane North Americans is yet another towering example of the mind control powers of the centrally-controlled mass media. Africans were stolen away to this country to work the land. To match the cynicism and Dadaism of pop culture, we can call this horrible experience a job training program that should have made a majority of us the best farmers in the world. Gary Grant details some of the reasons why this is not the case.

::: David Mandessi Diop: Aux Mystificateurs

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/p_daviddiop3.html

Notre deuxième présentation de la poésie de David Mandessi Diop, suivant « Les Vautours, » est une collaboration avec Ousmane Sembène, le grand talent qui est souvent appelé « le père du film Africain. » La poésie de Diop est mélangée avec les images de Sembène. Cette ‘collaboration’ était dirigée par moi—et, dans ce contexte du rasx() ci le but est créer un « mash-up » aussi naturel que deux frères faisant ensemble les corvées du jour. Les deux hommes tracent leurs origines à Sénégal. Les deux hommes survivaient ce qu’est appelé « l’ère tutélaire ». C’est la période du colonialisme résidentiel des pouvoirs européens dans l’Afrique—la rénovation moderne du « God complex ».

Diop s’adresse aux ces divinités tutélaires directement dans « Aux Mystificateurs ». Il semble qu’une seule image, prise du film La Noire de… (The Black Girl from…) de Sembène, est la compagne idéale pour le sentiment de Diop. J’espère que les avocats de divertissement Américains sont d’accord avec moi. Utilisant quelques plus images de « La Noire de… », j’ai fait encore deux tentatives avec les œuvres « Temps de Martyr » et «Les Heures ».

C’est intéressant qu’Ousmane Sembène soit aussi écrivain professionnel. Je suis curieux de son opinion de la poésie de David Mandessi Diop. Devrait que ces deux frères travaillaient ensemble? Regardez et lirez pour vous-même.

rasx()