Personhood, Selfcraft and Kinaesthetic Regimes: Colonial Witchcraft and The Timeworn Death Wish

Abstract

Cosmologies form the palimpsestic bedrock of embodied Africana lifeworlds and
have continued to flourish within their own modernities despite the ongoing,
echoing impacts of (neo-)colonialism and global anti-blackness. As such, one
might understand “being African” to necessarily consist—at least in part—of
ongoing acts of resistance. Acts of continual, fluid, and intentional processes of
self-restoration, re-membering, and speculative refiguration that advances black
Afrikan personhood and lifeworlds, values, and aspirations. Colonialism and
slavery were, at the level of implementation, kinaesthetic regimes. Sociopolitical
choreographies achieved through violence, manipulation, coercion, exploitation,
and destruction of bodies—an aesthetics of violence, if you will. Various
ideological and physical apparatuses, aided by a cornucopia of maleficent
infrastructure, and technologies ensured that an internally consistent terror
formation was upheld.