"Whatcha Gonna Do?

": Revisiting "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book": A Conversation with Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Shelly Eversley, & Jennifer L. Morgan Author(s): Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Shelly Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1/2, The Sexual Body (Spring - Summer, 2007), pp. 299-309 Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27649677 . Accessed: 20/03/2011 05:32
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O "MAMA'S "WHATCHA D ?^?REVISITING GONNA BABY, AN MAYBE: AMERICAN GRAMMAR PAPA'S BOOK"
FARAH SAIDIYA WITH ACONVERSATION HORTENSE SPILLERS, HARTMAN, JASMINE GRIFFIN, L. SHELLY & JENNIFER MORGAN EVERSLEY, OCTOBER 2006 SATURDAY, 28,
SE Thank you, Hortense,
are really grateful that the

for making
three of you

time to talk with

came out on a

us. Jennifer
Saturday

and I

evening.

Can we begin with

Papa's Maybe" has

Farah and Saidiya

influenced your

talking about how

and then maybe

"Mama's Baby,
Hortense can

work,

begin with
FG There

discussing
are times

how you teach or talk about it.

when I've to the

specifically

gone

essay,

knowing

that there's helpful without enced

in "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" that will be something to me, and then there are times later on I realize and useful

even knowing it consciously, the article has informed and influ I have done. Iwrote this essay called "Textual Heal things that

ing" and I started out by using your sources, by asking, where did she get that information?! How did she even know to go these particular
sources? For so many of us, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" was the first

time we
wrote now,

even thought
that essay, to to, set up which think the for me

about
is about that

some of the things that you cited. When

about history Iwas what that we these call neoslave narratives writers that Iwas were histo the women

really

trying

responding ry was

frame by

beginning Baby, Papa's

to understand, Maybe."

"Mama's

writing

essay for Signs on black feminism in the academy, and as I began somany peo to talk about Hortense Spillers, I realized that the work of was ple of my generation has been formed in relationship to this essay. I on literary critics?Sharon Elizabeth Alexander, Holland, focusing review I thought how I literally all of us?and Lindon Barrett, Fred Moten, "The Souls of could not think of another essay, I don't know?maybe Black Folk?"?I really couldn't think of another essay that had that kind

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 35: 1& 2 (Spring/Summer 2007)] [ ? 2007 Farah Jasmine Griffin, by Hortense Spillars, Saidiya Hartman, & Jennifer L. Morgan. All rights reserved.

Shelly Eversley,

300

WHATCHA 00? GONNA

of impact on a generation. The essay has profoundly informed my work I consider myself and the work of the people with whom in dialogue. SH Indebtedness
my relation

is the word
to Hortense

that comes
'swork.

to mind
how

that I would
Iwould

use to

describe

That's

summarize

it. Imean Baby,

ense's rubric

I am still struggling with the problematic terms that "Mama's I am still thinking through Hort Papa's Maybe" has generated,
I do or have fails a question to explain about your how own feminism critical as a critique or a intervention. It's

prism. explains

interesting
names of

in that the first paragraph

the marked woman, but in the

of the essay opens with

second paragraph it's the

all the
prob

line that explains the territory in which that naming I'd like to think about your own project's relationship takes place. to I think it has a critical relationship feminism. to that project but I don't think that your work HS You know,
ple's response I wrote

lem of the color

can be encompassed

by the feminist project. interested

Maybe." ago was

I have always been very

to "Mama's that essay Baby, many Papa's years

and humbled
What to find Iwas a

by peo
trying to

do when

vocabulary

that would tion

women feminists. 1970s tion and that we

make

it possible,
so active my idea

to a larger project.
who were Because

and not all by myself, I was looking for my

in other about ways, we were to open found really where

to make generation

a contribu of black
with in the the conversa words, been in late

a conversation ourselves out of

the mid-1980s, had, in some

was ways, and

that we

historically the black movement

initiated. have

In other always

the women's

movement

tandem, but what I saw happening was black people being treated as a kind of raw material. That the history of black people was something
you could use as a note of inspiration but it was never anything that had

anything
in theoretical

to do with
terms.

you?you
There was

could never use it to explain

no discourse that it generated,

something
in terms

of the mainstream
my idea was to try

academy
to generate

that gave
a discourse,

it a kind o? recognition.
or a vocabulary

And

so

that would

not just make

the conversation.

it desirable,
And that

but would

necessitate

that black women

about any

be in
num

is a theoretical

conversation

ber of things but one of the things is certainly

to write a piece called "Interstices ..." for

the feminist
a feminist

project.
conference

I had
at

Barnard College

in 1982. Iwas

supposed

to talk about black women,

the

& MORGAN HARTMAN, GRIFFIN, EVERSLEY, SPILLERS,

301

sexuality of black women. And I thought, you know what, before I can I didn't see a vocabu get to the subject of the sexuality of black women to entertain it possible the sexuality of black lary that would make
women have in any way that about was other sexuality than of traumatic. black women Before you you had could to clear a conversation

the static, clear the field of static.

And so "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" was really somewhere in

there along with

one or two others.

"Neither Nor,"
They all belong

"Permanent
to that

Obliquity,"
decade when

and maybe
we were

searching
available.

for a vocabulary
The available

and didn't
all

find one
seemed

that was
to come out

immediately
of experi

discourses

ences that somehow, the language

There gender. To was around were And go

broke
always so my to war

they got tome, did a detour. [Laughter.] Or terms. down. Or it could not speak in theoretical when
reasons anxiety with why was a whole the academy a way couldn't to address be race and in battle. that sitting peo

finding

actually

actually always tables,

repertoire genteel cheese. way. They

of violent You know, are just

behavior people the nicest

performed sipping

in a very wine, eating

ple in the world, incredible hostility.

It always seems

[laughter] but they are carefully cloaking just an And so the idea was to break from that barrier.
that we are recreating the wheel in that way. You

know, there are all these earlier pioneers in the institutional works of Imean all ofthat work has been done, but then the black intellectual. what
black tion doing know, or

happens
people, now now people that is

is that the forces

are always strong, to have going to have the always They or forces operating. that

that are really hostile

So if we that we are not are careful at it, or are us, in a

to black
period of

life, to
reac are You again, and want so to we

is so going are

the work some

to be to

"rediscovered" keep of doing

point. it

rediscover so forceful always that

reassert

it because and they're

opposition against want to do

powerful enforce the African The lectual need

pushing always

they something

forgetfulness. presence to confront is

forgets way. intel was

reabsorbs

it,

reappropriates epistemic Baby,

it in another violence, Maybe"

psychological really powerful.

violence, "Mama's

violence

Papa's

about bolstering myself, a good at being marksman

I read "Mama's

living and ducking.

to fight

another

day?I

became

very

JM

Baby,

Papa's

Maybe"

as

a historian

of

slavery,

302

WHATCHA GONNA DO?

historian
back Papa's to

of early modern
the essay I am

slavery, and like Farah and Saidiya, when

stunned my to claim are want who so own to realize work. that people to put how Just much trying to who back for across are working "Mama's to write see what entire there. a

I go

Baby, history

Maybe" in

generated slavery,

of women when attempted people that's such across why a wide you

vocabulary, there them looking

happens field There has are and and the vio to

say?OK, to erase. the the I

there just

this out that so

academy speaks of those

are powerfully

vocabulary, fields

essay

many

variety

of us who

to confront

lence of the past and in our fields. FG In many I think that the project of "Mama's ways Baby, Papa's is successful because it did become work we didn't have to do
Baby, remember it Papa's what Maybe" was the gave us a vocabulary. of some Iwas of your won peers to

Maybe"
again. dering the essay

"Mama's if you when

response

appeared?

HS
venue

You

know

it was
it

kind of astonishing.
Imean it came

I think some o? it was

out in Diacritics.

the

in which

appeared,

All

[Laughter.]

We

remember

. . .

HS

You

know,
the people talking

I knew
who about

that something
were the telling essay, me were

weird
that white they men.

or odd had happened

had And read so the I essay, thought? or

because who were

don't know what uh, oh, is this good or bad?I white men. The first people who responded gay
this essay?outside African really the community of African gay that they American that was Americanists?were pretty remarkable white

this means! tome

And

it was to

in relationship
or African And I thought

Americanists, men. interested

were

in this.

SE That might
archal structure

be about the way

of family, an

that your essay intervenes

which queer studies,

in the patri
especially gay

arena

male
can

studies, has to find away

somehow have the authority

to critique
of

as well
who

if the gay male

does not produce

subject
this

a "man"

family
I'd tanism?a

in the way
like to raise sometimes

that a hetero man might.

the question of anti-race idea race men, or the cosmopoli intellectual to deracinate

well-meaning

& MORGAN SPILLERS, HARTMAN, GRIFFIN, EVERSLEY,

303

or the

critique discourse

the of the

discourses gender, of

of

race,

which

somehow, superiority.

though, Because

also you

reifies have of to the

a masculinist gender, of

recognize cosmopolitan.

role

masculinity, comes back

in the to the

construction idea of

Cosmopolitanism

a civilized

intellectual
legacy of the

that is, of course,

patriarch. How

founded
have you

on the patriarchal
engaged the

family and the

around

conversation

cosmopolitanism?

HS Well,
to wonder

I guess I have,
if I have ever

and I think another way

been attacked by scholars

to ask your question

committed to cos

is

mopolitanism?
versation of the and discussion

I have been
demolish and

trying to think of ways

the the conversation straw man

to get into that con

does is truncate against. But half it

it. What it chooses

to argue

seems to me
these mopolitan framing whiteness. of

that the worldling,

as male. to reclaim is a way the It's

the cosmopolitan,
It seems positions to me that that have the been race a very

is always
notion given as old

figured
of up; the that cos

in

conversations

the

conversation reclaiming

is a way certain

to reassert of

hegemonic argument.

male

features

SH What
purchase of

I understand
gender

your essay to be doing,

analytic category.

in part, is questioning
part of the power

the
of

as an

For me,

the essay is really about mobilizing black feminism and postcolonialism to do the work of interrogating of the human. I guess I am the writing
thinking Hortense ment aspect of about Spillers the project the two axes of what we're foremother the ground rubric of doing. and One also is the about and claiming the the contain second of as a feminist under larger

"feminism"; that is involved

concerns

clearing

in "Mama's

Baby,
not larger

Papa's Maybe,"
about the order of naming.

which
specific

iswhy
names,

it begins
which open

in early modernity?it's
the essay, but also the

only

HS

So, I think what

look beyond
SH that's

to you're suggesting is that the essay is attempting the feminist project to a larger human project; is that right?
how I understand the

Yes,

essay.

HS

I think that iswhat

ed to point out what

trying to do, at the same time that Iwant is problematic about black women stopping at the Iwas

304

DO? WHATCHA GONNA

gender black

question. women

Because historically

the was a

refusal part of

of the

certain problem.

gender At

privileges the same time,

to

that you have

else, wider. Maybe." mances because And That

to sort of see that and get beyond

you are trying that's to go why men trying of black through were to gender in suggest men, I think is what on

it and get to something

to "Mama's about get to Baby, certain Iwas something Papa's perfor hoping to

I was the part

of maleness

and what

suggest is that black men can't afford to appropriate the gender prerog atives of white men because they have a different kind of history; so you can't just simply be patriarchal. You have to really think about some
thing else as you come to that option. If there is any such thing as a kind

our human categories, in this of symbiotic blend or melding between case of the diasporic African, then this is the occasion for it.Men of the to understand black diaspora are the only men who had the opportunity
something nity about the female and also that vice no other community Woolf had the opportu about the to understand, versa. talked

Virginia

that Shakespeare intelligence" supposedly had that was neither male nor female. I think I am probably not talking about a thing that is somehow male and female; but I think it is a kind of humanity that we seem very far from, and that I used to think black culture was on the "incandescent
verge of creating. I think I am less sure now that we're on the verge of

Iwas growing up, I thought creating that than Iwas growing up. When I saw in black culture a kind of democratic form that I haven't seen
quite like that since. It just seemed that that community automatically

to being human that was really quite dif did something in relationship itwas ferent. That people did whatever work was to be done, whether
"men's work" or "women's work," if it needed to be done, people sim

communities. As ply did it; to raise children, to maintain success in black culture has brought us a lot closer to appropriating gen der dynamics that I do not necessarily like. That a black man can be an
entrepreneur sit at home?we're and a capitalist getting and much a black closer woman to those can be "feminine" and and I suppose

I see it now,

binaries,

any issue o? Ebony will

show you this. [Laughter.]

JM You used the phrase "African diasporic subject." One of the things in "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" is talk about the you do so powerfully
space lence o? the middle caused passage, gender and that what So happened then I think there, about was a vio that to evaporate. that model

? MORGAN EVERSLEY, SPILLERS, HARTMAN, GRIFFIN,

305

and all of the work

that has been done subsequently around the organiz frame of the Black Atlantic, the rubric of "the Diaspora," ing thinking and about how a kind of diasporic racialized about movement subject
gets put into place as a result of the violence o? the transatlantic slave

trade. Like Saidiya,

"Mama's Baby, Papa's

I don't
Maybe"

think this piece

actually makes

is contained
a very

by feminism.
claim that

strong

dislodges
rather, lantic done ship, says trade on

gender
as black to the

as the originary
defines difference,

space

defining
if you violence. start

difference?and,
with the transat that's scholar conversa

that what

inaugural, Atlantic,

is racialized the Diaspora, departments,

Is the work to to organize

the

as a

way

as a way

organize

as a way

organize

tions, does
said that you

that feel to you as a place

used to see black culture

that might
on the

us forward? You push

of creating some

verge

and then you see a retreat. Does thing different, or the Black Atlantic, help? Diaspora, HS No.

thinking

through

the

is [Laughter.] Actually what I think about the Black Atlantic that it really is a very close funky little room with all the men in it?and they're all speaking English. [Laughter.] that's really what that is; it really is a way to, I think, escape the female again. In fact I am thinking that maybe the introduction of And

the

global

model, the messiness

and of

the

transculture, Gender late

these as

are I was

all ways, trying 1990s.

perhaps, to mean it words, or black "Dias prior hege

to in

escape those gender women poric"?are

gender. in the

essays as and an

produced issue for men.

1980s/early and not just

In other women, Atlantic," some

everybody Maybe terms. They these

for

black

terms?"Black simply redescribe

covering

monic

sense of priority that I find troubling. Inmy new project, Iwould to think about current forms of cultural production in cities of the like in relation to theories about Atlantic with critical black populations black diasporic culture.
how those I suspect being

Iwould
theoretical that

like to take up the issue of the Black

interventions that is a way the are concept to operating of the in the Black gender

Atlantic actual Atlantic rather

to

see

Diaspora. is than currently

the way

configured it.

circumvent

to further

complicate

SE I'd like to ask you about how you see black feminism

today?

306

WHATCHA GONNA DO?

HS
1980s in

Iwonder
became

where
curricular to black

it is, actually.
objects; liberation

I think that the feminism

same way I am that very black

as of the
studies did with

in the movements.

relation

fascinated

that moment.
There curricular changes, individuals fourteen

Something
All of sudden

happens
normal sudden, it is You provost's a

on a dime,
day and

it happens
by the seem, traumatic, about the next one the

imperceptibly.
there conversation and day for some is a

is a movement object. and it demands

in the

afternoon

it would

it is so

institutionally are talking and

is traumatic. to the

presenting you are

office

morning

trying to identify
sties the are involved?that's conundrums feminists. of

the chairperson
a very so its past, words,

of the new department

moment. are And that there there

and the logic

I think and then it bears there today

interesting

feminists, in this

In other

are women

country

who
went tives, ment,

legitimately
to and from the

wonder,
To

what
the and that

happened
disciplines. that's a different out of jail

to their movement?
With fund-raising animal time and from

But
impera the move

it

university. practices; polemics

hiring the

come

confronting

the

police.
living source?a have

So what
memory

feminism
o? at least

has become
one of its And

is a curricular
generations, the that people they has

object
a very

that, in the
different academy they need

movement from

component. the movement

entering don't see

the that

so benefited

it, they don't feel that they need

way. politics, Indeed, they many are women actually are hostile.

to declare
actively And

a feminist
to the a

allegiance
idea of smart

in that

hostile this

a feminist position,

isn't

because
will carry quickly come

it will mean
back,

that we will
somehow with The cost

have
we feminists,

to fight
haven't

those battles
figured women, of out

again,
a who way

this
to very is to

because memory,

historical want to

or with

forget.

of Americanization,

equality,

forget.
memory.

In black
For

culture
the

a narrative
narrative

of antagonism
of Americanization

is inscribed
means that

in its
you

others,

have

to forget the old country, the old land, the old pain, that you must forget it, that is the price that you pay. I think that iswhere we are with
today. The mainstream success coming off the women's move

women

ment,
words,

is like what
if you want

Prof. Zillah
to advance

Eisenstein
the most

calls
retrogressive

the "decoy."
policies,

In other
you can

advance
we have

them, you can sell the poison

reached one of the most

by way

of the decoy.
in American

I feel that
histo

dangerous

periods

ry, and it is borne on the back of the civil rights and feminist movements

& MORGAN SPILLERS, HARTMAN, GRIFFIN, EVERSLEY,

307

that was
has now

spearheaded
been co-opted

by black people
by neofascist

and radical white

forces in this society.

people
You

and that
can now

sell it.

FG So that Condoleeza terrorists who

are fighting

killed
Only

Rice can say, and only she would say, that the the four little girls are "just like" the terrorists we
she can say that.

now.

HS

Everything
It's

has been pulled

that use

inside out.

SH

interesting

you

the

term

"neofascism,"

because

to return

to "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe," in thinking about the temporality of slavery, I tend to think of you alongside of George Jackson. Because the
essay what isn't only about to live the on historical from that experience experience. of slavery, context but about Iwon continues In that

der about
example,

the future of a black

has now gone into

radical feminism. Much

about the prison state.

attention,

for

thinking

HS moving for

I have was black

always towards feminism,

thought a society

that that

where did

the women's justice to towards morph into

movement everyone. a concern So

was that with

radical

feminism,

prison
issues rights. ticular finer of

reform
our

or health
time seem up,

care
to me

is appropriate.
to be those an stages, to

These

and the other

extension of out broader, we've stay are in here pain

big

appropriate I guess, something for a are

human of par and gone very long really

An

opening

along that had.

that bigger, little going people thinking in

come

local than

movements, we've

lead

what

Except imagine

that that we

while to

backwards, long. enough make But

though there's they wake

I can't forward up

momentum, they those are.

and when So I am

to where we read

that we

a mistake

when

movements

their

particularity

ultimately,
thrust

because

I think that the start is particular,

be outward, broader.

but

that their

is and must

always

FG I had a final question; did you have any sense that "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" would stand out in the ways that it did? HS No,
that essay.

no, I didn't. But I try to think of what

I know that I started to think about

particular
that essay

event generated
at the time that

308

WHATCHA DO? GONNA

Iwrote
that when feeling the verge

about
Iwrote of

Ishmael Reed
"Mama's Iwas about what

and Harriet
Baby, very Iwas Papa's

Beecher
Maybe" when about.

Stowe. And
that Iwrote it. Iwas

I know
it with Iwas trying on to a

hopelessness. of crying

emotional writing

Iwrote And

explain what seemed impossible to explain. Gloria T. Hull, Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith had come out with the collection All theBlacks Are Men, All theWomen Are White, but Some of Us Are Brave, and that was the situation that Iwas trying to describe. Conceptually and theoreti What was that like? I had an urge to find a category that respect cally. a sense of urgency, with a need to tell I wrote ed history. it with that had been told over and over again?I knew that none of something
it was guage new. of a But what was new was that Iwas old trying problem, to a bring problem the lan that to a very

to me

postmodern

academy

historians
Iwas writing

had been writing

this piece. And

about for at least fifty years at the time that

so Iwas trying to ask the question again,

ask it anew,

as if it had not been asked before, because the language o? the historian was not telling me what I needed to know. Which is,what spaces where
a sponsor, you don't an

is it like in the interstitial

has a name, out a for category, them?but

you fall between

agenda, anybody. have

everyone who
people your situa

spokespersons, That's

looking

tion. But talk about

black women.

I am like the white

elephant in the room. Though you can't the era of sound in the U.S. without talking about blues and
You can't talk about the eras of slavery in the Americas

without
women that to you talk

talking
and can about how speak

about
that about

black women,
changes the

or black men

without
is not a

black
subject have no

community?there world world where African you

in the modern and new

will

not But

African

women

women.

one wants
put

to address them. I felt that in 1986 and 1987 no one wanted

spin on this, Imean we really are invisible people. And

to

a theoretical

I just kind of went

it now, are and you am

nuts. And
are here not going

I am saying, I am here now,

to ignore me. gonna And do?" so all "Whatcha

and I am doing
of those essays

saying?I

now,

& MORGAN GRIFFIN, EVERSLEY, SPILLERS, HARTMAN,

309

is SAIDIYA HARTMAN the author of Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and in Press, 1997) Self-Making Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Straus and Giroux,
terly; Callaloo;

and Lose Your Mother: A fourney Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, 2007). Her work has appeared in South Atlantic Quar
Between Woman and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Femi

nisms and the State (Duke University Press, 1999); and Loma Simpson: For the Sake of theViewer (Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992). She teaches at Columbia University and lives inNew York City. FARAHJASMINEGRIFFIN is professor ture and African
author of a number

American
of books

Litera of English and Comparative Studies at Columbia University. She is the

and essays on American culture.

HORTENSEJ. SPILLERSis the Gertrude English at Vanderbilt

University. and editor of Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition essays and Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex andNationality in the Modern Text. She is author o? Black White and In Color: Essays in American Literature and Culture (University of Chicago, 2003).

Professor of Conway Vanderbilt She is the author of several influential

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