Art Metropole

#13137

"On the Blackness of Blacknuss" Pamphlet set

Editor

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Writers

Arthur Jafa, W. E. B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, and Frantz Fanon

Date

2017

Publisher

Moor's Head Press / BLACKNUSS

Format

Artists' Books

Size

11 × 19 × 1.7 cm

Genre

Activism, Theory, Criticism

Description

Four pamphlets from a series titled On the Blackness of BLACKNUSS, initiated by the Moor’s Head Press of BLACKNUSS: books + other relics and published by Publication Studio Hudson. The series is edited by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts and was begun in the year of Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Cameron Tillman, VonDerrit Myers, Jr., Laquan McDonald, Carey Smith-Viramontes, Jeffrey Holden, Qusean Whitten, Miguel Benton, Dillon McGee, Levi Weaver, Karen Cifuentes, Sergio Ramos, Roshad McIntosh, Diana Showman, and Akai Gurley.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was among the most influential proponents of civil rights during a presence that covered five decades. A sociologist, historian, novelist and activist, Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. He went on to lead the Niagara Movement, a precursor of the N.A.A.C.P. For many years he edited that organization’s journal, The Crisis. Du Bois later trained his attention on Pan-Africanism, anticolonialsim, socialism and world peace. He moved to Ghana and rescinded his United States citizenship a few months before his death.

Frantz Fanon was perhaps the seminal theoretician of postcolonial politics, culture, and identity; his two major books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), have been widely read and have provided an important inspiration for liberation movements around the world. Born in Martinique, Fanon studied medicine in Paris and became a psychiatrist in Algeria during its wars of liberation from France. “The Fact of Blackness” is Fanon’s celebrated essay describing the consciousness of the “black” subject in a world of “white” power.

Arthur Jafa is a director, cinematographer, artist and critic who was born in Mississippi in 1960. He was the producer and cinematographer for Daughters of the Dust (1992), the cinematographer for Crooklyn (1994), and also worked on Eyes Wide Shut (1999). His 2014 film Dreams Are Colder Than Death premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and the New York Film Festival and won the award for Best Feature Documentary at the Black Star Film Festival. Along with Malik Sayeed and Elissa Blount-Moorehead, Jafa leads TNEG, a film studio based in Los Angeles.

Sylvia Wynter was born in Cuba in 1928 to Jamaican parents who soon repatriated to their home country. A novelist, playwright, and cultural theorist, Wynter’s work has focused on redefining what it means to be human in the face of Western thought. She is professor emerita at Stanford University.

Box-set of 4 softcover, staple-bound, b&w pamphlets

1.