Letter for 2/25/2018


EPISTLE TO THE HUMANISTS

February 25, 2018

Dear____________:



                When that excuse we call a POTUS pandered to his tribe and hissed a less than original poem about a snake, the circus we call American politics in 2018 had a climax rather than an orgasm.  No doubt the POTUS thinks the poem is a fine example of American verse, equal in accomplishment to D. H. Lawrence's "Snake," a better than typical British lyric.  It is but wishful thinking that Fate would deliver a copy of Lawrence's poem to the WH, which of late has become the GOP  " s---house," and force the POTUS to recite these two lines from "Snake" each day:



"I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education."



(Stanza 17, lines 63-64)



But enough of fantasy bereft of jouissance as we return to a future.  The curse of human education is sufficient.



                For those of us who teach and/or write about African American literature and culture, greater pleasure can be  derived  from the promise of the 64th Annual Conference of the Japan Black Studies Association in Tokyo,  on June 23-24, 2018.  In its recent CFP, JBSA invited submissions  on such topics as "teaching in the age of Trumpism, race and criminal justice system, anti-immigrant/refugee policies, media and technology, resistance and activism in literature, art and sports, the 50th anniversary of MLK's assassination, the Black Lives Matter movement, gender and sexuality, health and body, language, identity, and politics."  You can visit the JBSA Website : http://home.att.ne.jp/zeta/yorozuya/jbsa

for more details.  Unlike the POTUS, our Japanese colleagues avoid being parodies of the real thing. They sight/site/cite a target and shoot for the center. ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU.



                I suspect only a small number of us will attend international conferences in 2018, because for  many of us conservation of budget is a priority.  Nevertheless, we can select crucial topics within the bricolage of intellectual histories and  subject them to scrutiny.  For the sake of our young, the leaders we want to empower for a future, let us be brave and fear no evil as we condemn and triumph over pit vipers, anacondas, and mambas, the serpents that crawl toward us from the left, the center, and the right.



Sincerely,



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

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