Notes from the Diaspora (Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality, 535)

What are the ways in which the study of Black life becomes a field of knowledge, institutionalized and at the same time forming epistemological modes of inclusion and exclusion within academe? Notes from the Diaspora tends to these distinctive forms of Black life as they become situated within particular sociocultural networks, institutions, organizations, and community establishments, conveying bearings generative of synergies in the quest of solidarity through Diasporic memory. The essays query the circumstances through which Black life comes together, remains whole, although sometimes fragile under historical pressures, to produce public forces constitutive of knowledge, subjectivities, and multiple modes of identification which come to be organized through a digitized politics of relations in sociomaterial forms. As Black life traverses through different Diasporic pathways, the author responds to how connections with place come to be, and what social networks are formed, dissolved, or made sustainable. At the same time troubling what these relationships mean for decolonial enactments, how Black people assemble and make wholesome the chunks and remnants of the Diaspora, which constitute their becoming. How at times within their relational experiences, Black life tacitly marks moments as being codified through race, to in turn open an assemblage with linkage to self-determination as ensconced within Black living. This is the potential of Notes from the Diaspora, having the capacity to attend to contingent collations as sequenced through Diasporic difference, whilst insisting on civic responsiveness to the experiences immanent to Black life.

Marlon Simmons is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. His scholarly work is grounded within the Diaspora, decolonial thought, qualitative research, and sociology of education. Related to Marlon’s teaching and research interests are network learning, governance of the self, and the role of sociomaterial relations with enhancing educational delivery.