Space for Listening (The Likeness)
away, completely: denigrate, group exhibition curated by Languid Hands
Narrative Projects, London (2019)
”In popular lexicon, the English word to denigrate is used to describe the act of defaming, belittling, maligning, disparaging or slandering someone or something; specifically affecting the reputation or social standing of it. However, the etymological root of the word illuminates the anti-blackness that is inherent in the English language and it is as follows. -Niger- is Latin for ''black''; denigrationem is Late Latin for ''a blackening.'' The Late Latin de- does not mean ''the opposite or reverse of,'' as de- so often does; in this case, as in denude and declaim, it means ''away, completely''; and so, the etymological root of the word denigrate is ''to blacken completely.''
Afro-pessimist theorist Frank B Wilderson III employs a linguistic analogy to describe that which is unspoken as it relates to suffering and anti-blackness, referring to these fundamental yet un(der)articulated concepts upon which the world as we know it is built as “ontological grammars”. Grammar is that which goes unspoken when we speak, underwriting and structuring speech itself. Poet Harryette Mullen’s poem Denigration attempts to speak the ontological grammar which structures language. She takes this linguistic exploration further than the simple and limited black/white good/bad dichotomy to analyse a number of commonly used English words which have this, seemingly hidden, anti-black sentiment whilst also interrogating the complex corporeal effects of this psycholinguistic association. Her work explores how language reinscribes blackness with inferiority, not as a negative stereotype but as an ongoing act of psychological anti-black violence which has placed the black in a “zone of nonbeing”, or as Wilderson calls it, social death.
Exhibition supported using public funding by Arts Council England and in kind support from narrative projects and Raven Row. Install and technical support from Joseph Bond Studio.”
Photos and videos by Judita Kuniskyte
