Week 11 (lol) / Spring 2024: Wynter, Black Study, and Qualifying Exams
Back in mid- to late-February, I sat down in my advisor’s office—feeling jazzed, productive, inspired. I had begun my Qualifying Exam process with her, loosely titled “The History of Atlantic Slavery,” and my quest to read 90-something books in a semester (lol). And, a month or so in, I was feeling good. I don’t know when the burnout is gonna hit, I said, perhaps naively hopeful that it wouldn’t this semester.
I think it hit within the following two weeks-or-so. The mountain of reading creeping up on me. The exhaustion of showing up to class every week. The applications for conferences and fellowships that were due. Not to mention, real life. Like, my relationship, family, my health.
So it has been two or so months since I have sat down to write. In that time, I have attended a conference in Montréal, and gotten sick promptly upon my return (which I am still working through, a month later); up until that point, I had gone to Yoga [class] multiple times a week, and was feeling physically well and integrated and connected; watched way too much Lakers basketball, and then March Madness; I also witnessed a solar eclipse in totality, for the second time in my life, at a very cute farmhouse, also in Quebec; returned to basketball, and mercifully, seem to finally be past my Concussion Era ™; but, mostly, I have been reading. And stalling. And panicking about reading. And highlighting. And bookmarking. And trying to make notes that will be useful to me down the road. I have been going to class, nearly every week. TA’ing for a Contemporary Caribbean course. Writing on discussion boards. And meeting with my advisors from the two Independent Studies that I have taken on this semester (a choice) to talk through our reading from one week to the next.
My parents, who joined me in Montréal. #blessings abound.
The other day, a friend asked something about trying to catch up on work this weekend. And I said, and maybe realized, that I don’t think that’s possible. That maybe graduate school is just perpetually feeling like you’re behind. Maybe academia is precisely that. Always being the knowledge or understanding that you are chasing. But then I am reminded of the word study. Of the act of studying. Of the different possibilities that are offered therein. That, like in meditation, it’s simply about being where you are. Attending to the text or the idea or the thinker before you. I’m trying to release some of the panic about where I am located (behind, ahead, et cetera), and learning to be present instead.
I don’t know if it’s working. Or if it will work.
Nevertheless, this week I am thinking about and with and around Sylvia Wynter. In my Independent Study, loosely a study of Black Criticism and Black Studies, my classmate and I have made our way through twenty-[plus] Introductions from the field (names, off the top of the dome piece, like Crawford and Scott and Nash). And, at present, we are turning to “Iconic Thinkers” in Black Studies. Namely, Hortense Spillers last week (who did not, perhaps cannot, receive enough time). And Sylvia Wynter this week. But I am thinking also about how ideas coalesce. And that on Friday, I attended a panel that my other classmate had been planning for months, and one of the main thinkers that was being engaged was also Wynter. So, I am trying to wrap my mind around Man-as-human and relationality and genre and sociogeny and sociogenic codes. A year ago, or even a semester ago, when I first encountered Wynter, this was all entirely over my head. Maybe planting seeds that I was unaware of. Because, this week, some ideas are sticking. Mulling about inside this little brain. Making connections that I might turn back to somewhere down the road.
