With that, let us “walk” with Ahmed. For those familiar with Ahmed, she too has lengthy discussions on the creation of paths and beautifully deploys the imagery of a “well trodden path” to reify the process of (hetero-institutional) normalization. “The more a path is used, the more a path is used” (“Institutional as Usual,” Ahmed). “In putting certain things in reach, a world acquires its shape; “the white world” is a world orientated “around” whiteness. This world, too, is “inherited” as a dwelling: it is a world shaped by colonial histories, which affect not simply how maps are drawn, but the kinds of orientations we have toward objects and others. Race becomes, in this model, a question of what is within reach, what is available to perceive and to do “things” with” (Ahmed 126, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others).
"Stop!"
Whose bodies get to walk the path; to walk over the path; to add to the “path-ness” of the path? What happens if the path- the world- is not made to receive your body? Do we want to reproduce the path? By bringing in Franz Fanon, Ahmed outlines the phenomenological affect of speech acts that “stop” certain bodies because their bodies are not the bodies the world is set up to receive. “We could even say Fanon’s example shows the body before it is racialized or made black by becoming the object of the hostile white gaze. It is this kind of orientation that racism makes impossible. For Fanon, racism “stops” black bodies inhabiting space by extending through objects and others; the familiarity of “the white world,” as a world we know implicitly, “disorients” black bodies such that they cease to know where to find things- reduced as they are to things among things” (Ahmed 111). We can see from this mediation upon Fanon’s writings as a body, as a body that is aware of the movements his body can make; and is also aware of the movements his body cannot- is “stopped” from making- make when he becomes a black body. There is a process of becoming that is integral to order(ing).
Yet, an interesting contradiction arises from the meditations upon this process of racial-negation: The black body is stopped by being negated as a body the world is ready to receive; Whereas the white body- the body in the “right/white” world is ready to receive- can utilize negation to extend its reach. In other words, the processing of becoming a black body in a white world stops the movement potentiality of the black body, whereas the process of becoming a white body extends the movement potentiality of the white body. “What is other than me is also what allows me to extend the reach of my body. Rather than othering being simply a form of negation, it can also be described as a form of extension. The body extends its reach by taking in that which is “not” it, where the “not” involves the acquisition of new capacities and directions- becoming, in other words, “not” simply what I am “not” but what I can “”have” and “do.” The “not me” is incorporated into the body, extending its reach” (Ahmed 115). And earlier on we know that this extension is attributed to “This fantasy of lack, of what is “not here,” shaped the desire for what is “there,” such that “there” becomes visible on the horizon as a “supplying” what is lacking. The Orient becomes what we could call a “supply point.” (Ahmed 114).
The Orient; The Occident; them and us; “theirs” and “ours”; We want what they have; we get what they have. The geo-political divisions of the globe assist in the process of extending bodies by creating a starting point- a rooting point- for which “white” bodies can consolidate the spoils of their colonial endeavors. “Colonialism makes the world “white,” which is of course a world “ready” for certain kinds of bodies, as a world that puts certain objects within their reach. Bodies remember such histories, even when we forget them” (111, emphasis mine). “Bodies” and “we” can be examined in two different ways. On the one hand, a universal deployment would be satisfied with the idea that every-body is affected by the history that makes worlds “right” for some (and “wrong” for others). On the other hand, a more nuanced understanding can be approached if we refer back to Fanon and the negation of the body through the speech acts (“Look, a Negro”) of racism. From this vantage point, “we” is delineated through the processes of an internalized gaze, where the black body returns the white gaze towards themselves- their own body- to stop the body's potentiality for action (Ahmed 111). This “stoppage” is thus not forgotten by those who are subjected to the pressures of racism; Those who are subjected to racism (racist speech acts) are constantly situated into history and thus cannot forget- the negation of their own action-potentiality attests to this remembrance; history is not in the past; the past is that which comes up in the present; History-now.
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