Romanticism

Becoming smitten with the ideas of revisiting romanticism in my lifetime.  We are so careless with ours and others' feelings and wellbeing. I find it is so refreshing to come across a movement of sorts that wants to place consideration and care for self and others on the top shelf.

I am excited to explore  and interrogate the movement. I look forward to write more on the romantic movement 2.0.

It makes me excited, you know, the idea of possibly imagining a future for my generation and possibly what we can offer the world towards possibly making it a better place and a better experience for all things that interact with it. I like the idea of fearlessly and instinctively choosing love, kindness, smile, happiness over and above all the other possible choices.

I'm excited.

To bastardise my name:

To bastardise my name is your way of reducing me from a higher to a lower state.

All us black children (and adults) have a story to tell of our experiences with white people and their issue with the  pronunciation  of our names.

How those white people take it upon themselves to " nickname", to shorten and to water down black children's names so it's more convenient for them to address us without them sounding like they have a speech impediment, every time they attempt to pronounce our names.

I have had degrading incidents where a white person would request my second name (my white apartheid name) because they just couldn't be bothered with trying to verbalise the syllables that make up my "ethnic" name.

For me it's small incidents like these where phrases like racism, white privilege and white (perceptual) supremacy come into play. When you take the initiative to push aside what someone is named, the meaning of that name and the entity and significance that that name represents for that person and the culture in which that name and person exists is in. In my view that is a way to make someone submissive...

I never gave it much thought until now but what you are called, your name, becomes so much of how you identify with yourself. It is the first information about yourself that you give away when you first introduce yourself to someone. In school it is the first thing you are taught to write when beginning your school career. In forms it is how you identify yourself to the person who is on the other side of the form. On our first official identification documents, our birth certificates our names our big and bold. 

To take it a step further I know that for many African children the meaning of our names is so valuable.  The become a way for our parents to bestow certain wishes on what they want us to bring to the world and how they want us to  be during our time in the world. In a sense our names become prophetic clues into our purpose here on earth. You encounter names like Lerato (love), Milisuthando (bring forth love), Njabulo (joy), Khethiwe (the chosen one)  which are beautiful names and their meanings even more so. So why bastardise all that beauty?

Next time someone white wants to shorten my name or asks me for white name... I will tell them that bastardising my name is their minds inferior attempt  at reducing me from a higher to a lower state. Like any good speech therapist will say most speech impediments are formed in the mind. Once white people get over their imagined sense of superiority their speech impediment is mostly likely to go away as well.

Don't let them steal you away from you.

Don't let them steal your dreams away from you
Don't let them steal you away from you

You are a singular entity of the universe born under a billion stars
Those stars have constillated to make up your eyes, your toes, your nose, and the deep trenches of your souls.

Religious Identity

SOOoo my recent obsessions have been religious identify and religious personas.

The current focus of the obsession has been with the obsessed Christian and the  performance of their Christian belief. I'm talking specifically about  the die-hard Christian being that will fight you tooth and nail over a bible verse or anything said that goes against or aims to question their belief system.

Through my interaction with such characters I have come to understand & respect that type of christian. I have come to understand that they are that way because they have invested a good portion of their lives and brain matter to taking on that Christian identity. They want to be the 'perfect' Christian   Christian, so much so that, their rational thinking goes out the window and religious dogma takes over.

For me It's always been sad yet I find it fascinating how people are willing to forego their own identity, their true sense if self,  for group identity. It becomes a scary thought when you consider how well organised & constructed religions are.

Churches like schools and any other societal institution gives people that idea of belonging and being like. The perception of being equal (regardless of social factors) to your fellow Christian is why I think people 'choose' to participate in religious culture.

This is the first of many observational blogs on the topic of religious identity. In my own way I am conducting research on the topic of religious identity, as a way of trying to better understand myself and the world and the people around me.

Stop rape manifesto

I authored the manifesto...which, is as it stands, points the problem at men and their access to the patriarchal dividend as being at the nucleus of why men rape females.

The manifesto aims to encourage women to look after each other. By encouraging a sisterhood and a female united front that recognises that our problems are ours and need to be solved by us. As females we need to start asserting to ourselves and each other, that we have the power within us as females to put an end to rape by bringing an end to the male perpetrator's imagined power which he uses to force females into being submissive.  

"Women relinquish all rights in the presence of a man who could apparently be considered a rapist especially if he has been considered a friend." Ntozakhe Shange

Old souls re-imagining the past for the present & the future

Some of us are born with this heavy feeling, an extended dejavu if you will, that our spirit has walked and worked this earth before.

Our souls for whatever reason have chosen to return in a new form and new time to continue the work and the walk that they started so many years ago.

The spirit's mission upon returning is to re-imagine & envision the past for the present and the future.The present & the future demands it of us old spirits and it's a mission that we have to fulfill in our lifetime. If not, the spirit will continue to return until its work and walk on earth is complete.

I call bullshit on the whole thing! Academics acting out academia

I was a member of an audience that attended a lecture and panel discussion around the term vernac in all its various linguistic forms. I was amped to hear what the academic fraternity had to say about the term vernac set in 2014's South Africa. I was looking forward to some highly inflamed linguistic debates and a few; " Im sorry but I have to disagree with you" rebuttals.

I pictured tweed jackets flying and wine bottles catching white meat. Just pure academic epic_ness served alongside a delicious cheese board with crackers.

But no such luck I'm afraid.

I guess the veteran academics with paid dues seem to still be playing with a boring deck of 90's black and white race cards. The whole thing was an exercise in regurgitation with a touch of political correctness: talking about vernacular as a black predisposition and a product of colonial othering. The veterans were basically touching base with a conversation they had about 20 years ago when I was 3 years old.

And the only thing I could think of to explain this replay session lies within this academic tradition that relies on old white male theorist for definitions and models that have no bearing in contemporary culture. Its like 'trynna' squeeze garish,  victorian antique furniture inside the gautrain.

Why are we still indebted to dead white male intellectuals for legitimacy though?; its so frustrating. Instead of the veterans navigating the term vernacular on their own terms we were told what so and so and such and such proclaimed with his quill pen,  and I think the Oxford dictionery also scored a mention somewhere in there.

But anyway as I was playing diligent audience member: notebook and pen in hand. I came to a unsettling realization that kind of threw me off my note taking game. I was like uh you know what, actually academia is a big performance art piece. Academics are just, perfomace artists reciting from theoretical script. And the name of the play is called NAME DROPPING:  i.e. how many european theorist + steve biko can an academic drop in conversation to sound like they know shit about shit.

So I called bullshit on the whole thing!  Because it dawned on me that like all human beings academics are just figuring it out as they go. The only way to gain or claim legitimacy within the academic fraternity is to learn the name dropping script. The snobbery of those dead white males has some how reproduced itself among the academic elite in my time and to gain entry into this clique outliers have to read this white script and name drop it like its hot!   But I have to say I appreciate the audacity of academics to claim knowledge on something...to research and claim articulation rights on a given subject in histories timeline takes nerve and should be recognised as noble and courageous act much like a teenage girl who decides to keep it . I reckon that therein lies the glory of being an academic.

Im not deterred by my revelation instead I'm more interested in academia and more hopeful as I lie in wait for flying tweed jackets and skull breaking wine bottles.