Against the grain of the state’s mono­po­li­za­tion of cere­mo­ny, cere­mo­nies are small and pro­fli­gate ; if they weren’t eve­ryw­here and all the time we’d be dead. The ruins, which are small rituals, aren’t absent but sur­rep­ti­tious, a range of song­ful scar­ring, when people give a sign, shake a hand. But what if toge­ther we can fall, because we’re fal­len, because we need to fall again, to conti­nue in our com­mon fal­len­ness, remem­be­ring that fal­ling is in appo­si­tion to rising, their com­bi­na­tion given in lin­ge­ring, as the giving of pause, recess, ves­ti­bu­lar remain, cus­to­dial remand, hold, hol­ding in the inter­est of rub, dap’s reflex and reflec­tion of mater­nal touch, a mater­nal eco­lo­gy of laid hands, of being hand­led, han­ded, han­ded down, nurture’s natu­ral dis­per­sion, its end­less refu­sal of stan­ding. Hemphill empha­ti­cal­ly announces the socia­li­ty that Luther shel­ters. Fallen, risen, mo(u)rnful sur­vi­val. When black men die, it’s usual­ly because we love each other, whe­ther we run, or fight, or sur­ren­der. Consider Michael Brown’s gene­ra­tive occur­rence and recur­rence as refu­sal of the case, as refu­sal of stan­ding. You can do this but only if you wish to insert your­self, and now I must abuse a phrase of Ah Kee’s, into black world­less­ness. Our home­less­ness. Our sel­fless­ness. None of which are or can be ours.

Fred Moten Stefano Harney
« Michael Brown »
Boundary 2 : An International Journal of Literature and Culture n° 42
Duke University Press 2015
p. 81–87
apposition black homelessness michael brown moten

Such opti­mism, black opti­mism, is bound up with what it is to claim bla­ck­ness and the appo­si­tio­nal, run­away, pho­nop­tic black ope­ra­tions-expres­sive of an auto­poe­tic orga­ni­za­tion in which flight and inha­bi­ta­tion modi­fy each other-that have been thrust upon it. The bur­den of this para­doxi­cal­ly alea­to­ry goal is our his­to­ri­ci­ty, ani­ma­ting the rea­li­ty of escape in and the pos­si­bi­li­ty of escape from.

Fred Moten
« Black Op »
[à par­tir d’une confé­rence de 2007]
PMLA n° 123
Modern Language Association 2008
p. 1743–1747
lien apposition black moten operation pesimism/optimism pessimisme

Refugees stu­dy change not only because they’ve been put through changes but also because changes are what they want and what they play and what they are. Refugees stu­dy a mode of study—the contra­pun­tal inter­sec­tion of a set of inter­sti­tial fields, dis­lo­ca­tion in a hole or a hold or a whole or a crawls­pace. Such stu­dy is inha­bi­ta­tion that moves : by way of—but also in appo­si­tion to—injury, which is irre­du­cible in the refu­gee though she is irre­du­cible to it. There is, in turn, pas­sage in ack­now­led­ging the theo­re­ti­cal prac­tice of the one who emerges as if from now­here, roo­ted in having been rou­ted, dig­ging, tilling, wor­king, soun­ding, the memo­rial future of a grave, under­com­mon cell. She is the com­mo­di­ty, the impos­sible domes­tic, the interdicted/contradictive mother. Dangerously embed­ded in the home from which she is exclu­ded, she is more and less than one. The ques­tion of where and when she enters—where entrance is redu­ced to some neces­sa­ri­ly tepid mix­ture of natu­ra­li­za­tion and coro­na­tion, which is an alrea­dy fai­led solu­tion that is ever more empha­ti­cal­ly dilu­ted in its abs­tract and infi­nite replication—is always sha­ded by the option to refuse what has been refu­sed, by the pre­fe­ren­tial option not for a place but rather for radi­cal dis­pla­ce­ment, not for the same but for its change. Blackness is given in the refu­sal of the refu­gee.

Fred Moten
« Notes on Passage (The New International of Sovereign Feelings) »
Palimpsest : A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International n° 3
2014
p. 51–74
apposition black mote réfugiés

I speak of her pla­ce­ment, her posi­tion (within a struc­ture), the­re­by rai­sing, by way of a kind of sub­mer­gence, the ques­tion of her agen­cy, her trans­verse, auto-exces­sive inter­ven­tion in the his­to­ry of agen­cy. To attempt to locate her agen­cy is pre­ci­se­ly to mark the fact that it lies, impos­si­bly, in her posi­tion, in an appo­si­tio­nal force deri­ved from being-posed, from being-sent, from being-loca­ted. Her agen­cy is in her loca­tion in the inter­val, in and as the break. This is what it is to take, while appo­sing, the object posi­tion with some­thing like that dual force of hol­ding and out­pou­ring that Heidegger attri­butes to the thing…

Fred Moten
« Taste Dissonance Flavor Escape (Preface to a Solo by Miles Davis) »
Women & Performance : a jour­nal of femi­nist theo­ry n° 17
2007
p. 217–246
agency apposition évasion moten

In The pain­ting of modern life T. J. Clark says Olympia has a choice, wor­king against the defi­ni­tion of the pros­ti­tute offe­red by Henri Turot, for whom pros­ti­tu­tion implies ‘first vena­li­ty and second absence of choice’ (Clark 1984, 79). For Turot, fur­ther, the prostitute’s very exis­tence depends upon the tem­po­ra­ry rela­tions she enter­tains with her cus­to­mers, the sub­jects, rela­tions that are public and without love. An absence of pri­va­cy, then, where pri­va­cy implies a self-pos­ses­sion ali­gned not only with rea­son, will, choice, but also with fee­ling or with the abi­li­ty to feel. An absence of sove­rei­gn­ty where sove­rei­gn­ty implies a kind of auto-posi­tio­ning, a posi­tio­ning of one­self in rela­tion to one­self, an auto­cri­ti­cal auto­po­si­tio­ning that moves against what it is to be posi­tio­ned, to be posed by ano­ther, to be ren­de­red and, as such, to be ren­de­red inhu­man, to be pla­ced in some kind of mutual appo­si­tion with the in/human and the ani­mal (the black female ser­vant ; the las­ci­vious lit­tle cat). The lit­tle girl’s image extends a line tra­ced by Clark from Olympia’s pose, to the pose of Titian’s The Venus of Urbino (see Figures 2 and 3). That line moves within the his­to­ry of the idea­li­za­tion and re-mate­ria­li­za­tion of the nude, the his­to­ry of the pros­ti­tute as artist’s model, the his­to­ry of the wres­ting of mode­ling from pros­ti­tu­tion and the yoking of it to peda­go­gy.

Fred Moten
« Taste Dissonance Flavor Escape (Preface to a Solo by Miles Davis) »
Women & Performance : a jour­nal of femi­nist theo­ry n° 17
2007
p. 217–246
apposition black moten peinture prostitution