What’s left (in the wake) after violence?
Wake: the track left on the water’s surface by a ship; the disturbance caused by a body swimming or moved, in water; it is the air currents behind a body in flight; a region of disturbed flow
Christina Sharpe
Being called ‘resilient’ evokes a trio of feelings and emotions. Regardless of the context, firstly, I am frustrated. I am frustrated, because being a Black woman and being called resilient typically occurs when I’ve highlighted violence, negligence or disrespect I’ve experienced, usually to someone who has the power to intervene and make it stop, or offer emotional support. The next emotion I feel is sadness. I am sad, because being called resilient means, in my experience, that this person I am sharing to, doesn’t see my strife. They see a competent, independent woman who perhaps they’re accustomed to coming to solve their problems. I don’t mean to imply here that they don’t believe me, but rather to illustrate that in calling me ‘resilient’ they believe, somewhat, that I should be able to weather this pain. That I am probably used to it. And then the final emotion: anger. I am angry, because I have been vulnerable and told someone “I need help,” and in calling me ‘resilient,’ they have unwittingly responded with “but I think you’ll be fine without it.”
I do not often ask for help. So when sharing that I am struggling to escape the field of tangled bramble weeds that setbacks feel like, being described as resilient feels like the searing but quick prick from a thorn.
The black body and blackness are often read as sites of pain, violence, subjugation and ridicule. As Christina Sharpe notes, “the disaster of Black subjection was and is planned”2.
I am moved to write this to reflect both on the ways that I have been reeling with multiple wakes, aftermaths of violence, trauma and pain, and the ways that Black women in online spaces have comforted and held me.
Sharpe notes:
In the wake, the past that is not past reappears, always, to rupture the present.
Not only do historical racisms shape my reality, they continue to disrupt my present. I think of the ways I have been subjected to harm: at the hands of villainous white women academics in positions of power; the grief of losing my mother to cancer; living with a (previously) undiagnosed chronic illness. I mention ‘historical racisms’ in linking the latter, because racism is the spiders web that connects them. Being able to lie and mistreat the sole Black woman (nay, person!) PhD student in your department. Doctors refusing to take my mothers pain and concerns seriously. Doctors refusing to take my fatigue and ill health seriously.
Sharpe writes that to be a Black person requires work and vigilance:
It means work…Vigilance, too, because any- and everywhere we are, medical and other professionals treat Black patients differently: often they don’t listen to the concerns of patients and their families…experience and research tell us “ ‘people assume that, relative to whites, blacks feel less pain because they have face more hardship.’ …Because they are believed to be less sensitive to pain, black people are forced to endure more pain (Silverstein 2013) 3.
Which brings me back to resilience. And, in the wake of all this, after spending two months trying to tend to my health, I find myself thinking: how has this all changed me? Again, reading Sharpe, who asks: “What does it mean to…tend to the Black person, to Black people, always living in the push toward our death? 4
For people like me, who find themselves distant from their family, unattached and with friends far away, an answer to Sharpe’s question has meant finding and connecting with Black and other women of colour in surprising and often intimate ways online. It feels cringe to admit this, but Twitter has been a lifeline. I write about and research this in my PhD (lol); Black women and their friendship isn’t just about kiki-ing, it isn’t just about the ways we are magic, it is care, it is being seen. I spent an hour on the phone with one Black woman I was Twitter friends with, after the aforementioned academic violence. She took care of me then. I met one Nigerian babe on Instagram a few years ago and we recently caught up and she gave me some advice on my career. She cares about me. I posted a tweet looking for other Black women PhD students, and now we have been meeting weekly for over a year. Their support, in times when I have been isolated, alone and going through it, helped me feel seen and cared for.
Social media scholarship and debate considers platforms as both democratising public squares and also as destabilising the fabric of society. It is both. But it is not inconsequential that platforms like Twitter are under attack from right-wing ideologues because of the social capital, and resulting access they can afford marginalised people like Black women. Twitter is/was a way for Black women to talk back. Twitter is/was a place I have found solace in the wake.
Cover image: Calida Rawles, Infinite from Root to Tip, 2020 Acrylic on canvas, 48h x 72w in, 121.92h x 182.88w cm. From It’s Nice That.
1 In The Wake: On Blackness and Being. Christina Sharpe.
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