the disassociated-self

The disassociated-self is a theory that I have structured around the multi-identities of W. E. B. Du Bois’ double-consciousness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines double-consciousness as “… a concept in social philosophy referring, originally, to a source of inward ‘twoness’ putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and devaluation in a white-dominated society.” The dissociated-self is a detached and extremely observant voyeur from the true-self and societal-self; the true-self being how colonized folk function within their At-home communities, and the societal-self being how colonized folk alter themselves when maneuvering through the socio-cultural/political veil of the unmarked.

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“Black men being coded (by the unmarked ) as violent and malicious has been utilized to justify forms of lynchings. I use ‘lynching’ in a loose and abstract sense; its connotation has evolved from public kidnappings/hangings (the 1955 execution of Emmett Louis Till) to state-sanctioned shootings (the 1999 execution of Amadou Diallo by the NYPD). The mechanisms of lynchings have been somewhat defamiliarized and rebranded, but its ultimatum of instilling the terror of white supremacy and pulverizing Black bodies remains the same . . . I am reminded of my own experiences regarding my Blackness being coded as violent or threatening: I can still recall my mother warning me (as a teenager) of how police officers and white folk would view me as a grown man in my mid-20s (a fatal fate for 12-year-old Tamir Rice being falsely perceived as an adult with a real gun). Black folk, especially Black men, are robbed of their childhood innocence in place of being constantly aware of how their actions are being interpreted by the unmarked. These tactics of survival construct a process more precise and intricate than the ‘twoness’ of double-consciousness; the dissociated-self deconstructs and hypothesizes actual or potential scenarios within the matrices of domination.”

This theory was first introduced during my graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh surrounding the semiotics of Candyman (“Applying Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Toward a Global Idea of Race and ‘Hacking the Subject’ to Bernard Rose’s Weaponization of Blackness in Candyman”).