The Counterpublic Papers, vol. 1, no. 20

There’s a significant possibility that even though I’m typing this on Sunday May 29, that you won’t actually get this until Monday May 30. (And of course, this is assuming you’ll actually read it…if you’ll recall my polite second name for this newsletter is “people actually read this?”—my impolite second name I can’t write in mixed company.)

This is because Don Palmer and Beth Frederick are hosting their sixth annual BBQ. Technically their sixth annual Baltimore BBQ….from what I understand they’ve been holding some version of this for the past thirty plus years, first in Madison, Wisconsin, then in Brooklyn NYC, and now in Baltimore. Ever since I first started coming four years ago I pretty much decided that as long as I’m alive and they’ll have me I’ll be there. 

(You know how people sometimes say “alive and kicking?” i don’t even need to be kicking.)

The only reason I’m typing this now instead of making my way there is because I’m making homemade Cinnabons—one of my three contributions to the BBQ, the other two being the kitchen soul train line (once the music starts playing you can’t move from the patio to the other side of the house without going through the kitchen and you can’t go through the kitchen without going through the soul train line) and my five kids (at least one of whom provides child labor)—and because I was hanging out in NYC the last couple of days I am running a bit behind. (Yes, I can cook…pretty much anything I desire though my desires tend towards the philistine.)

….

(given that you’re getting this on a tuesday rather than a monday means that the event i write about above was even more epic than i thought it would be. at about 2am after i’d dropped the kids off and come back for round two, one of the neighbors comes up to me….”i’m watching Under the Cherry Moon”…come! and there you have it. so as a result i’m going to cut this real short. a bit about making Knocking the Hustle free, then i’m out….)

….

I went with Punctum as the publisher for Knocking the Hustle for a few reasons. I wanted to support independent presses. By not going with an academic press for my second book I wanted to see if I could create more space for scholars after me—promotion from associate to full doesn’t matter that much to me but if I can get it with a book published by an academic press and a book published by a non-academic press it increases the possibility that someone after me can do the same. And I wanted to give the book away. Not the hard copy mind you, but the PDF/MOBI/EPUB version.

I wrote about Black Studies 3.0 a while back, and turned it into a blog post. But the gist of it is that even though Black Studies has in some ways transformed the university, it has also been transformed by the university. Just as the university is increasingly forcing departments to measure productivity in discrete ways, to compete against one another for scarce resources, and to build (or poach) academic “superstars”. Departments with the resources end up being successful, often by creating unique “brands” or approaches to intellectual work that cause them to stand out among their peers. 

At the level of the individual scholar we see the same dynamics at work. Even after tenure we have to maintain the productivity required to recruit graduate students and find them employment after they’re done. Further we have to maintain the productivity required to either make the approach we have to intellectual phenomenon prominent (if not dominant) or sustain it’s prominence.

And while I write “have to” above, it’s not like there’s a Man standing above us. In many if not most cases this “have to” is internal. I write because I have to, but I write because I have to not because someone is telling me to do it. And in my case I believe that my approach to black politics—one that takes class and political economy seriously—is an approach that we need to recover if we are to not only properly explain a range of political phenomenon in black communities but to change the material circumstances of those communities.

To do this requires folk not only read my work but cite it, as citations represent one component of the currency academics trade in (the other being grant money). The more people cite a given work the more valuable that work (and that scholar) is. 

As of two weeks ago Knocking the Hustle became free. You can go to Punctum’s website and download it. I do want to see if I can make an ideational intervention through a project like this, but I want to see if I can do it another way.

….

Like I said. I’ll be back next week. Will probably talk about Roots and my summer plans. A LOT of work ahead. 

Be good.

(Or if you can’t be good, be really really really bad.)