EP 3 Sylvia Wynter - No Humans Involved I Women And Resistance 🌍

In this conversation, Aya Fubara Eneli and Adesoji Iginla delve into the life and work of Sylvia Wynter, a transformative thinker whose contributions to Black Studies and humanism continue to resonate today. The hosts explore her early life, educational experiences, and literary contributions, emphasising the importance of cultural identity and the critique of Western ideologies. Wynter's theories on race, class, and gender are discussed, highlighting her ongoing relevance in contemporary discussions about identity and humanity.

Takeaways

*Sylvia Wynter is a transformative thinker of the 20th and 21st centuries.
*Her work connects deeply with the struggles faced by marginalised communities today.
*Wynter's early life experiences shaped her understanding of humanism and identity.
*Education plays a crucial role in shaping one's worldview and opportunities.
*Wynter critiques the Western notion of humanism and calls for a re-enchantment of it.
*Her literary contributions challenge existing narratives around race and identity.
*Wynter emphasises the importance of cultural identity in understanding humanity.
*She argues against the commodification of human experiences in a capitalist society.
*Wynter's theories remain relevant in discussions about race, class, and gender today.
*Her legacy continues to inspire new generations of thinkers and activists

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sylvia Wynter
02:30 Exploring Wynter's Influence and Context
04:52 Wynter's Early Life and Education
07:39 The Impact of Class and Opportunity
10:24 Cultural Identity and Migration
12:57 The Role of Education in Shaping Thought
15:41 Wynter's Literary Contributions
18:22 The Intersection of Art and Politics
21:07 Wynter's Legacy and Ongoing Relevance
30:42 The Journey of Sylvia Wynter
37:05 Cultural Critique and Literary Contributions
43:58 Reimagining Humanism and Identity
49:45 The Role of Academia in Social Justice
54:09 Spiritual Redemption vs. Materialism
01:01:16 The Future of Humanity and Collective Responsibility

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

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Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:10.062)
Okay.

Adesoji Iginla (00:13.944)
Greetings, greetings, and welcome to Women and Resistance. I am your host, Adesogyi Ginla. And with me, as usual, is my sister from another mother, Ayafubera Nely Esquire. Good evening. Good evening. How are you?

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:31.955)
Good evening, it's a pleasure to be in conversation with you again.

Adesoji Iginla (00:36.872)
Okay, okay, thank you. And that said, we continue our conversations and this time we're looking at one of the most transformative thinkers of the 20th and 21st century, Sylvia Wynter.

Could you give us a quick rundown of who she was? Who she is, sorry.

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:59.817)
who she is, because she's still very much alive. And that presented a little bit of a dilemma as I sat with her work and thought about how she may want to be presented. so we'll see how the spirit leads and how it flows. I feel like she is.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01.676)
very much really, yes.

Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13.634)
Yeah

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:27.338)
Such an extraordinary mind.

that without studying her for years and really sitting with every single one of her writings and interviews,

I would definitely be doing her some kind of a disservice. And so for all of our listeners, those watching who've never heard of Sylvia Winter and her name is spelled S-Y-L-V-I-A, the last name is W-Y-N-T-E-R, I would really encourage us, I think that like there needs to be a book club centered just around

Adesoji Iginla (01:46.798)
service here.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:12.723)
Her work and how it ties into the struggles that we see ourselves in today. It's impossible to study her words, take a trip into her mind without also pulling at threads of Frantz Fanon or Amy Césaire or C.L.R. James or Drake.

or Ayikwa Amah who we speak to quite often as well. And certainly the idea of Black Studies, Afro-American Studies, Third World Studies, the Global South Studies, even this notion which I have always hated this term from the first day I heard it, BIPOC.

which to me sounds like a damn disease, but the ways in which Western ideology and language others us and the ways in which we absorb that othering and then it defines how we show up.

Adesoji Iginla (03:34.926)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:37.443)
So having said that as an entry point, and definitely would love to hear from those who are watching, are listening, what your first introduction to Sylvia Winter has been and.

will be interested to hear at the end of this what your sense is of her. So before I get into some of the specifics about her life, let me ask you, what was your introduction to Sylvia Winter?

Adesoji Iginla (04:09.056)
Okay, so going down the rabbit hole, I noticed that it was a sieve. I mean, she wrote most of these works back in the day. And I'm talking 1970s, 90s, 2000s. And it's almost a sieve. She's just written them today. There is one particular one that

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:11.847)
Hahaha

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:32.243)
That is correct.

Adesoji Iginla (04:36.2)
jumped out at me when I saw it I just started laughing and it was titled Samples and Minstrels.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:44.403)
Samples and minstrels, maybe she was talking about Tim Scott and Byron and Candace Owens and yeah, okay. I'm sorry. I digress

Adesoji Iginla (04:48.801)
You

Adesoji Iginla (04:52.418)
then

Adesoji Iginla (04:57.608)
Yes, and then don't call us Negroes. That was even the introduction alone is powerful because that speaks to what you were alluding to earlier, which is this notion that the more you imbibe what it is you are described as, the more you start acting out, which is kind of difficult in light of

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:22.345)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (05:27.774)
social media now the constant drum beat of the sameness you know

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:34.345)
and the algorithms that are curated to lead us down certain paths and to keep us in echo chambers basically. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (05:39.117)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (05:43.394)
Correct. Correct. And so then there is the interview she did where she was breaking down how she came to be who she is in terms of her, that again is a window. I join people to actually go and look at that. The title of that is The Re-enchantment of Humanism.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:54.321)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:07.377)
And you know what strikes me and I know where I'll come back to, know, when she was born and all of that stuff, those kinds of details. But what is so instructive for me reading that interview, reading some of her other works?

Adesoji Iginla (06:13.506)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:28.645)
is as brilliant as Sylvia Winter is. It was perchance.

that she started down some of these roads. If there were certain doors at certain junctures in her life that were closed up there, were certain opportunities that she didn't get in those opportunities that she got were few, very few. So only a very small percentage of people would ever have access to those opportunities. And so it makes me think.

Adesoji Iginla (07:01.175)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:04.293)
of a world that is structured and ordered in such a way that we limit opportunities for people, that we thrive on this notion of exclusivity. You know, I've done a lot of traveling in the last three weeks. And every time I'm getting on a plane, of course, I'm buying coach, I'm buying the basic economy, I'm buying like the cheapest way I can get from point A to point B, right?

Adesoji Iginla (07:12.119)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:31.739)
And so, know, and what they do is they now have, you know, it would make sense to board the plane, I would think, from back to front. You understand what I'm saying? And just, yeah, okay. It just says you would deplane from front to back. But no, they have this hierarchy of zones based on.

Adesoji Iginla (07:45.463)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (07:49.451)
Yeah, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:56.969)
how, when you bought your ticket, whether you're an elite Sky member and so on and so forth. So in the last few trips I've made, I've been in zone eight. That's the last zone to board, right? And it's always so intriguing to me to watch the expressions on people's faces. When you're walking past the people in first class, there's a...

Adesoji Iginla (07:59.447)
Mm.

club member.

Adesoji Iginla (08:18.05)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:26.061)
smugness to it, you know, it's like, and the rest of the minions are coming on now, you know, and it's like, they might already be sipping champagne or tea or coffee or whatever. And it's just hilarious to me because my humanity is not based on this hierarchy. And if this plane goes down, guess what? We all going down. We are all going down. As a matter of fact, like with with

Adesoji Iginla (08:27.634)
Yes

Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (08:37.486)
you

Adesoji Iginla (08:47.818)
It goes down, go down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:55.443)
with hotels, sometimes I'm like, yeah, keep me on a lower floor where I can jump out the window if I need to.

because penthouse, you got issues if there's a fire. But okay, I digress. But my point is she had certain opportunities that yes, you can say there was work that she did as well. But let's say there were five kids who were deserving. And this gets back to her notion of.

Adesoji Iginla (09:07.362)
Really?

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:29.679)
Humanity and humanism and who is deserving and who isn't so but let's just say in the structure that we live in now this western ideology that there were five people deserving but only one position then It stands, you know You figure that 80 % four out of the five will be closed out of that and then the question is who could they have been?

Adesoji Iginla (09:30.542)
community.

Adesoji Iginla (09:52.705)
of, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:57.287)
And so when you look at her life and her opportunities, and I'll go into it at this time, she certainly had Providence shining on her. And then she took great advantage of it as well. her full honorific would be the Honorable Sylvia Winter, because she has been granted many honors from Jamaica.

Adesoji Iginla (10:12.194)
very much.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:24.745)
She was born on May 11th, 1928 in Houguin, Cuba. She talks about how her parents happened to be in Cuba when she was born. And that was because with the big sugar boom, there were many people who left from Jamaica to Cuba in search of jobs.

Adesoji Iginla (10:31.79)
Bye.

Adesoji Iginla (10:42.168)
Sugar, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:50.505)
It made me think of some of the other ways that we have migrated as people of African descent. My parents came to the UK, the United Kingdom, as part of what we would have called a brain drain from Africa in the 60s. So there'd been these waves for different reasons. You talk about the wind rush generation in the UK and so on and so forth. But things happen that impact people wherever they are.

Adesoji Iginla (11:05.076)
And drain, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:20.015)
even today in the United States as we quote unquote grapple with this notion of immigrants and who is legal and who isn't. When you get down to the reason why people would leave their homes, their communities, places where people know their names and it matters.

to in some cases put life and limb at peril just to come to a different country. There's usually an impetus. There is a reason. Okay, let's carry on. So her parents were Lola Maud. Her mother's maiden name was Reed and her mother was actually an actress.

Adesoji Iginla (12:09.57)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:10.473)
and her father Percival Winter, who was a tailor. She had, I believe, three siblings altogether, but the best known of them is Hector, who was also an editor and a diplomat. So she was born in Cuba, but there her family returned to Jamaica when she was about two years old.

Adesoji Iginla (12:20.344)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (12:32.462)
to Jamaica.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:36.473)
And she talks about living in a very poor area of Jamaica, but also the impact that her grandparents had on her upbringing because her grandparents didn't live in the city or township, so to speak. They lived further rural, if you will.

Adesoji Iginla (12:53.166)
That's it. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:58.673)
And she speaks to this notion of the sufficiency of the poor, you will. So sufficiency of the land. know, where you're able to grow your own food, maybe you have your chicken, you have a goat, whatever. And so you don't have a lot of material riches, but you have enough to eat. And she talked about spending summers with her.

Adesoji Iginla (13:03.987)
Yeah, learned. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (13:17.59)
or you worked with what you had.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:26.523)
grandparents and an example she gave was I might go to visit my grandparents with eight dresses and and come back with only two because my grandmother has decided that there are others who have none and it makes no sense for me to have eight when they have none and so she leaves me with two but she

Adesoji Iginla (13:32.17)
six versus.

Adesoji Iginla (13:42.754)
Mmm. Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:53.913)
Divvies up the other six amongst those who don't have anything and it comes back again to this notion of humanism in a culture now where Everybody I shouldn't say everybody but you know the prevailing Ideologies figure out how to make your millions figure out how to become a Millionaire and once you figure that out how to become a billionaire now There's a race to who's gonna be the first person to become a trillion year

Adesoji Iginla (14:02.859)
and

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:21.863)
when at the same time, the vast majority of people on earth are struggling to eat. And we have areas being decimated by famine, by starving that are manmade.

Adesoji Iginla (14:24.206)
There are people.

Adesoji Iginla (14:39.182)
Mmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:42.459)
So you can see how her upbringing really affected her sensibilities, yes. And so they returned to Jamaica and she attended St. Andrew High School for Girls in Kingston, which...

Adesoji Iginla (14:46.904)
shape.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:01.681)
Was a game changer for her just in terms of what she was exposed to the headmaster And she said something that well, well first of all, I could definitely relate to just getting hit So one of the stories she tells is how the headmaster would just Come around with a cane and just hit each of the kids You haven't done anything yet, but it's to get your attention and to say, okay now we're ready to learn Yeah, wake up your minds

Adesoji Iginla (15:06.112)
headmaster.

Adesoji Iginla (15:13.944)
Did you? Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (15:28.344)
Wake up your mind. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:31.595)
Today many of us would balk at that happening to our children, but she also said something about the headmaster She said in a different time He would have been a politician or a lawyer but given the restrictions on people of African descent in that area in Those times those doors were not open to him

Adesoji Iginla (15:38.988)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:59.547)
And so he taught instead. And it made me think about being here in the United States of America and how when we talk about pre-desegregation schools that educated black students, how there was a certain quality and a certain excellence and a certain culture.

where these teachers were so well versed and well educated that yes, had it not been for segregation, they could have been doing other things. But because those doors were closed to them, they were in the schools teaching. And so the quality of education that the children received was much higher than what we now got when we so-called desegregated.

Adesoji Iginla (16:38.764)
The things, yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (16:54.606)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:55.409)
It wasn't wanting to sit next to white people. It was wanting to have resources, right? And the idea that this headmaster took pride in their accomplishments, their accomplishments were his accomplishments, which means that you have a teacher who is so invested in your success.

Adesoji Iginla (17:11.916)
was his triumph, yes, yes, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:22.249)
as opposed to what we see now where, and she discusses this in terms of the curriculum, where so many young people of African descent may be unmotivated to succeed by the very curriculum, and then of course the purveyors of this curriculum, who do not see them as human beings in the first place. Your favorite quote from her is,

Adesoji Iginla (17:43.66)
Yeah, the teachers.

Adesoji Iginla (17:48.652)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (17:53.486)
No humans involved.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:53.721)
No, no, no humans at all. That's right. and nothing to smile about, by the way. and so.

Adesoji Iginla (18:02.062)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:07.913)
this headmaster imploring them, almost imposing his will on them to learn, read, yes, to succeed, yes. And so she goes on to speak about another teacher who was actually a teacher of her brother.

Adesoji Iginla (18:17.218)
Yeah, willing them to succeed. Yeah, willing them to succeed, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:31.059)
who used to be a World War II pilot and did not like, you you see enough of the world and you realize, hey, we are problematic here. You are no longer just buying into the propaganda of your time. And this is why people should read widely. And if you have any resources, you should travel because it allows you.

Adesoji Iginla (18:31.266)
Yes. Yes. Was a.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:52.103)
to see the world in a different way if you choose to open your eyes. But how he took her under his wing, invited her to join a particular class where she was able to study, really get at books. And she said one of her advantages, she said she wasn't the brightest and she wasn't the best at taking tests. But one of her advantages, and if there are any young people listening today or any time down the line, was reading, that she read so much.

And I would think that that really sharpened her mind and her critical thinking abilities. And that then led to her getting a scholarship to go to King's College in London. Because again, from where she came from, those kind of resources weren't available to people like her.

Adesoji Iginla (19:22.062)
read in the streets.

Adesoji Iginla (19:37.442)
landed.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:46.681)
Something else she talked about which you know, I I had to really sit and ponder for a second and she talked about how Yes, you know exactly where I'm going And so she said, know back then that the thing was and we still see that amongst Yes, your doctor

Adesoji Iginla (19:52.776)
the choice of occupation.

Adesoji Iginla (20:05.496)
There's only two. There's only two.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:10.799)
or your lawyer, you know, now we've expanded a little bit, engineers, architects, maybe accountant. But if your parents or grandparents are from the Caribbean or from an African country, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, like any major outside of these top four.

Adesoji Iginla (20:11.576)
Enjoy.

Adesoji Iginla (20:24.717)
Yep.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:30.257)
What are you doing? What whose money are you going to waste? Who's who's up? What what up? What what is the point of going to college to study English? Like what is what is that gonna do with you? What is the point of your existence? But she's but she said she didn't really have a mind for science. So she knew being a doctor was out of the equation And so she was thinking maybe law But again the importance of wise counsel

Adesoji Iginla (20:30.36)
Uh-uh.

Adesoji Iginla (20:39.488)
If I was the point of your existence.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:58.405)
She said, her teacher basically said, studying law is going to stallify you. And I sat down with it. said, my God. Because for those of you who don't know, I do have a law degree. But I understand what they're saying in terms of the fact that you want to talk about a very structured area.

Adesoji Iginla (21:05.422)
If I you that is power

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:25.819)
where there are already rules in place and your success for the most part is determined by your ability to play within those rules. Now, yeah, you can be a renegade and there a renegades that

Adesoji Iginla (21:36.95)
Navigate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:45.827)
are celebrated but not usually in their lifetime usually later in in your lifetime while you are bucking against the system you usually get punished their repercussions for that so i could see that argument and she said she also consulted with manly who also said yeah don't don't do the law thing

which is really interesting. And of course today was doubly interesting because during one of my breaks in court, I was listening to Malema from the EFF. Yes, in South Africa, give a speech to the Nigerian Bar Association in Nigeria. Yes. And he talks about how

Adesoji Iginla (22:21.55)
South Africa.

Adesoji Iginla (22:30.542)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:35.825)
The law as Africans have now inherited it from their colonial, from their colonizers, their oppressors, was very much about maintaining the status quo for the colonizers. And to have embraced it hook, line and sinker is a problem.

Adesoji Iginla (22:51.65)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:53.351)
because those laws were never about humanity, they were about subjugation. And so one of the roles of modern day lawyers of African descent is to rewrite, reimagine.

And that's exactly what Sylvia Winter, I think, would argue as well. Okay, so we know she went on to King's College and she studied, she got a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Languages and Spanish in 1951, and she got her Master of Arts degree in 1953. We know that she was...

doing the, well, we know that while she was in London, this was, and we've heard this story with some other people that you've covered, this was a really pivotal time in the sense that you had people from different Caribbean nations, you had students from different African nations, and they were now in a place where they were redefining who they were. And she talks about how within the Caribbean,

Adesoji Iginla (23:51.254)
Africa.

Adesoji Iginla (23:58.253)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:02.084)
separated they had been, how they never studied Caribbean geography.

Adesoji Iginla (24:04.999)
Geography was not.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:08.583)
They just studied English history and geography. So you had a cousin, a neighbor, a brother or sister, someone who looked like you, experiences were almost exactly, you know, they were identical to yours, but they made sure that there were such boundaries. Because if you ever realized that you were one and you unified, you could overthrow them. And so this whole notion of divide and conquer, but they came to the UK and began to see themselves.

Adesoji Iginla (24:08.654)
That was wild.

Adesoji Iginla (24:20.75)
but you never crossed park.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:38.537)
began to explore and to reclaim their African-ness, their blackness if you will, outside of an idea of white is good and superior and black is bad and inferior. Yes, please go ahead.

Adesoji Iginla (24:51.789)
and everything.

Adesoji Iginla (24:55.988)
And every other thing is ordered, you know, because she did say about the literature that they engaged with was shaped. I mean, you were talking about it earlier that it was geared in such a way to keep them in a place. And so the teacher who took her to Hector College, to the same college as her older brother, emphasized how to read, how to read.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:11.303)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:16.167)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:22.887)
Yes, how to dissect the text so that you don't just take things at face value. For instance, I was having a conversation with another person who happens to be black today and they were like, I was the black sheep of my family. And it's just the terminology that people sometimes use. And I'm like,

Adesoji Iginla (25:26.384)
my.

Adesoji Iginla (25:32.184)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:46.375)
pause what did you say and they said it again and I said think say say it again and they're like what are you trying to put and I said what are you trying to convey when you say you are the black sheep of your family and then they went on to say well you know I was the one who you know was problematic and then I said why associate that with black and where has that come from they're like so there are ways that we read

text, there are ways that we absorb what is in our environment and we conform to it. It defines us and we're not even aware of this plane in the background, in our psyche and basically impacting our behavior. One of the things that she said, a direct quote that I want to use is she systems of classification.

Adesoji Iginla (26:27.927)
Hmm

Adesoji Iginla (26:33.038)
Mm-mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:42.243)
direct our thinking and order our behaviors. Systems of classification direct our thinking and order our behaviors. So when you think about that, when you allow people to classify you or when you don't challenge those classifications, it acts, yes, yes, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (27:05.654)
You become those classifications.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:10.727)
without even being consciously aware of it. So when we talk about no humans involved, and she lived in California, she still lives in California to the best of my knowledge, she talks about the Rodney King verdict and the subsequent riot, which I remember clearly because we were on the campus of Ohio State University and...

Adesoji Iginla (27:26.574)
1992 bit, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:38.791)
we were incensed and that became the catalyst for a movement on our campus for our generation where we ended up coming up with a list of demands and holding the president of the university hostage and

Demanding change and marching and some people got arrested and you know, some people got What is it the pepper spray and then maced and all of those kind of things? and so she speaks to that she also speaks to a coming of age Where there were riots taking place in Jamaica?

And the notion of going from just being a subject of the colonizers who just did what you were told to do when you stayed in your place and you figured that structure that's in place is how it's supposed to be. If you went to church, they probably told you God ordained it.

and you didn't balk against it to seeing quote unquote peasants, working class people, all, even the educated pushing back and saying no. And how exhilarating that was. And so during her time in UK, she studied dance, but it wasn't European dance. It was going back to her roots and she thought she was going to become an actress.

Adesoji Iginla (28:51.598)
pushing back against it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:11.701)
but and But obviously often couldn't find any parts that she was suitable for if you go and google her she's a rather lighter skinned black woman and Yes, and and this afro is just one phase of her life. She has the phrases with the perm and so on and so forth and so then getting into the writing

Adesoji Iginla (29:25.74)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:40.975)
of parts that she could play, but then realizing that she actually preferred the writing to the... Yes. So we know that she wrote quite a few plays. I'm going to talk about a few of them. We know that she played a role in what we would now term propaganda for the government.

Adesoji Iginla (29:47.038)
in as opposed to the parts.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:05.545)
And so that's really instructive as well because when we look at Hollywood, for instance, there is this idea of, just liberal artists making art. But if you go and pay attention to the credits at the end of a movie.

You will see the hand of the US government very much intertwined in a lot of these movies and the permits that you have to get and what they can access and so on and so forth. it is, Hollywood is an arm of the government in terms of propaganda. Think of Birth of a Nation, which of course we know Woodrow Wilson showed in the White House.

and the notions, the ideas that it promulgated, if you will, amongst the masses of white people in particular, but also black people who are imbibing this continued sense of inferiority. So she authored a play called Under the Sun in 1958, which was eventually commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre.

It also became the basis for her novel, The Hills of Hebron. She wrote a teleplay and stage play called Masquerade in 1973 that was rooted in John Canoe traditions. And she was called back by Jamaica to basically write that because it was a form of propaganda and engendering a certain kind of nationalism.

Adesoji Iginla (31:38.402)
But yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:45.897)
She was commissioned to write 1865, a Ballad for a Rebellion, and a biography of Sar Alexander Bostamante in the 1960s. So this is the government commissioning her. Just as we go to museums or you go to certain open spaces and you see artwork that has been commissioned.

Adesoji Iginla (32:09.347)
Yeah, this is ArtiNuus.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:10.407)
And you better believe that there are certain parameters. You're not just gonna come and say whatever you want to say, right? Of course, we know she helped establish the Jamaica Journal. in the 60, well, let me backtrack. She got married in the late 50s to a Norwegian.

Adesoji Iginla (32:14.466)
value.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:38.749)
And that marriage did last long, although they did have a child together called, her daughter's name I believe is Anne Marie. And she lived in Sweden for a while with her husband. And she said she liked Sweden just okay. Switzerland has built a whole economy on quote unquote being neutral. And I would say to them what,

Adesoji Iginla (33:03.054)
Mmm.

Neutral in inverted commas.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:07.845)
Yes, what Martin Luther King would say is if you're neutral in times of torment and people suffering and all of that, that's no neutrality at all. You are complicit. I'm paraphrasing what he said. And so she said, but in Sweden, she had no fight. I interpret that as she had no purpose.

Adesoji Iginla (33:15.33)
then you are complicit.

Adesoji Iginla (33:31.598)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:32.179)
Here you are with, I'm gonna assume her husband was able to provide for their daily needs and I guess she could have lived the idyllic life of a middle class housewife or something. We're not going to say that. But she said, know.

Adesoji Iginla (33:45.742)
Have we kept, have we kept, have we kept lady?

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:55.057)
It was like, what am I doing here? There was no fight. And particularly if you come out of a sensibility of understanding that there are places in the world where there people are fighting and those people look like you, how long can you stay in this place of just ease?

Adesoji Iginla (34:08.066)
You.

Adesoji Iginla (34:12.962)
But then if you already had the zeal, it's difficult to take yourself away from it. So I think that's what pulled her back in when she said, I had no fight. It's effectively saying, how could I have gone through what I've been through only to just be? Nah, it's, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:26.887)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:32.389)
Only to just... Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:39.365)
And so I also interpret that I had no fight as wanting to live a life of purpose, a life that had meaning. And anytime you're going to live a life, a meaningful life, you have to struggle through some things.

Adesoji Iginla (34:46.69)
Thank you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:54.823)
you have to, because if it's just there, it has no real meaning or value to you. And so you've got to be willing to sacrifice something for it. And so she said they got divorced, it was amiable, and she moved back to, I guess, the UK initially. And then she met...

Adesoji Iginla (35:15.694)
Yeah, London.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:20.957)
Jan Carew who became her next husband and he was from Guyana and he was a writer and eventually they did go back to Jamaica. She also at one point went to Guyana. He was supposed to come as well.

She had a friend who was the leader at that point and she was invited to come to help with the propaganda of the time. And again, hopefully as people are listening, linking it to the lives we're living today. So they were Hungarian diplomats or whatever who were economists who made a living going to

these inferior people to tell them how their budget should be set up. Not knowing anything about them really. Think the IMF today, think about the austerity measures that are imposed on African nations. And so apparently they had come in and given him a template of a budget that he should implement. And in this area, you had the Indians.

Adesoji Iginla (36:10.702)
to all countries.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:38.629)
and you had the people who were Afro descendants, right? And somehow with the way this budget was structured,

Adesoji Iginla (36:40.174)
They are for car events,

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:51.739)
A lot of the items that the Afro-Caribbeans, the Afro-Gayanese used that were imported were now going to be taxed, but the items that the Indians used weren't being taxed. And so...

People took to the streets and there was uproar and of course Indians are fighting to maintain their status quo and the Afro Afro-Gaynees are fighting for yeah we're not going to be downtrodden in this way and she described herself as being in this red house that had been set aside for those of them that were working and there were other people who were there and children and all that and there's this mob building up and Yes, please go ahead

Adesoji Iginla (37:33.154)
Walter Rodney spoke to VAT in his essay, which people can see on YouTube, titled, Crisis at the Periphery, Race and Class in Guyanese Politics. that's the context you're talking about.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:40.765)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:52.605)
Yes. And so what that leader ended up doing was inviting the British troops to come and maintain order.

Adesoji Iginla (38:02.475)
Order.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:03.045)
And again, it just reminds me of all the times that we end up reaching out to our oppressors who mean us no good. Now, I understand you have to be pragmatic at some times, but it seems to be like a pattern that we keep repeating that we reach out to the very people who created the issues to ask them to come and save us.

And so just that this her life is so rich from from dance to acting to writing to being in the center of so many of these movements and not at the periphery but actually engaging the these movements well she became a lecturer at UWI from 1963 to 1974

And then she moved to UC San, University of California San Diego in 1974, where she taught until 1977. And then she became a professor at Stanford University.

in 1977. know there's so much that I I'm trying to to quickly go through this stuff because I'm looking at the time but so um when she was at the University of the West Indies um and and then was recruited to San Diego she was in what was called a third world literature program. Again the terminology and how it's

impacts our thought process. So who is first world? Who is second world? Who's third world? And the implicit hierarchy within that. And so I suppose if you're third world, your job is to keep trying to fight and emulate to be accepted by first world. But then again, does that mean first world will ever absorb you or you're forever relegated to third world? And when she moved to Stanford,

Adesoji Iginla (40:06.392)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:12.091)
She was the chair of the African and Afro-American Studies Department and a professor of Spanish and Portuguese. We know that she eventually retired from Stanford and she is a professor emerita.

at Stanford. Her retirement was in the mid 1990s, mid to late 1990s. So her first marriage was to Hans Ragnar Ischaken, I'm not going to pronounce his name right and that's fine because they don't pronounce my name right, who was a Norwegian pilot. And like I said, she later married Jan Kuru, who was a Guyanese writer and actor.

They had a son, David Carew, and he, if you go online, you can see him accepting her 2018 King's honorary degree.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:05.297)
Let me see, what else do I want to quickly cover before we go a little bit more into what she wrote about? Yes, we definitely want to get into that. So I talked about her landmark novel, The Heels of Hebron, published in 1962, which is now in print again. So it was out of print for a while. It's in print again. But it depicts a revivalist community grappling with Afro-Caribbean faith, nationalism, and post-colonial desire.

Adesoji Iginla (41:10.062)
All right. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (41:34.357)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:35.241)
Put a pin in that we're gonna get back to this She I told you she helped found the Jamaica Journal Which published early cultural criticism? Again getting people to rethink all of the ways that they had been programmed against themselves if you will

Alongside her scholarship, like I said, she wrote for stage and screen. And her play, her teleplay, which was turned into a stage play, Masquerade, is now read as a key text in post-independence Jamaican theater and in state cultural formation. We know that...

She has a number of scholarly essays. We must learn to sit down together and talk about a little culture. And it is not a little book. This is it. And it is huge and it goes all the way to page 648.

Adesoji Iginla (42:31.99)
talking new culture.

Adesoji Iginla (42:38.286)
Yeah, it huge.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:46.281)
But really great reading people don't need to be intimidated by a book like this If you just say hey, I'm gonna pick it up every day and read 20 minutes You might be very surprised Well, well, you know, I'm trying not to overwhelm people you can see my stuff is fairly marked up here But you know just set a timer 10 20 minutes and and just see how

Adesoji Iginla (42:56.438)
or read one essay, just read one essay a day.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:13.929)
you think through what she is sharing. She also has, um, John Kono in Jamaica written in 1970, novel and history plot and plantation in 1971, published in 1971, samples and minstrels in 1979. In the 1980s, the ceremony must be found after humanism on disenchanting discourse.

Adesoji Iginla (43:36.654)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:41.785)
In the 1990s, she wrote Beyond Miranda's Meanings, Columbus and the Poetics of the Procter Nos. No Humans Involved in Open Letter. I read that book, that open letter.

Adesoji Iginla (43:50.947)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:56.893)
Page one to the end and then I listened to a narration of it as well. It is so dense and so rich and so thoughtful and so relevant to our times. She wrote 1492, A New World View in Race Discourse and the Origin of the Americas. This was in 1995.

Adesoji Iginla (44:07.48)
Power.

Adesoji Iginla (44:11.566)
today.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:22.313)
and a very provocative essay, Genital Mutilation or Symbolic Birth. And in this, she goes a little bit into feminism on what I would call white women's issues, but the othering of black people, the othering of women, of black women, of women of color, as we would call them in the white.

have color, but the sense that there is a double silencing of women who are not white women, because first you're silenced by race, and then you're also silenced by gender, even by white women. And then of course, we could go on to talk about class and she makes the argument that you really cannot separate race, gender, class, all of those things intersect.

Um, she also wrote the re-enchantment of hum- of, well, not wrote, was a, it was an interview which you referenced. The re-enchantment of humanism. And then towards the sociogenic principle in 2001. So, mind you, I told you she was born in 1928. So, 2001, she's still writing at a really high level.

Adesoji Iginla (45:24.15)
interview.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:43.497)
2003, she published on settling the coloniality of being, power, truth, freedom. In 2006, she published on how we mistook the map for the territory. And this was published in a book called, Only the Master's Tools.

which I think would probably have referenced, I haven't read it, but I think it would probably have referenced Audre Lorde, who wrote that the master's tools would never dismantle the master's house. And then she has what is called the lost manuscript, but it's really not lost at all. Black Metamorphosis, New Natives in a New World. It's an unpublished 900 page manuscript.

Adesoji Iginla (46:15.022)
Lord, yeah. Break the hostess' house,

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:38.273)
that is now widely studied via archives and scholarly introductions as a prelude to winter's theory of the human.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:50.889)
And she worked with so many different people. She worked within cultural circles in Jamaica and the Caribbean that included Rex Nettlford and Vera Lawrence Hyatt, editors of the Smithsonian volume featuring her essay 1492, A New World View. She also worked with the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation.

Adesoji Iginla (47:15.406)
for the end of life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:16.489)
Yes, they were also transatlantic and US networks including early BBC collaborations with Jam Peril. So even when you think about like Voice of America and we think of the documentary we covered here, soundtrack of a coup d'etat and you see the role of artists.

Adesoji Iginla (47:36.021)
Good job. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (47:40.616)
those yeah used as vehicle of imperialism.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:45.453)
Yes. And so she had early BBC collaborations with John Carillo, later dialogues with scholars of decolonality, black studies and theory, conversations in a publication called Small Acts and the edited collection on being human as praxis. Some of her core ideas. Let me talk a little bit about that.

have to do with the over-representation of man. Man, through Western ideology, being white men, right? So she maps out how Western man, in quotes, in different historical variants has been universalized. So when you talk about, a man, you are supposed to picture, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (48:22.67)
Amen, yep.

Adesoji Iginla (48:39.416)
think.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:42.063)
white men and you're looking through their blends and how they view the world even as Within the christian faith you definitely see that you say god and people Yes, and all the angels, of course are white cherubs. So she talks about how The western man in in different historical variants has been universalized as the human

Adesoji Iginla (48:51.854)
The depiction.

Adesoji Iginla (49:09.038)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:09.552)
And this has produced racialized and classed exclusions. And so she, in her writings, repeatedly calls for the human after man. So let's get past this Western notion of man and let's really reengage who and what it is to be human. Right? And I think something that she says that many would find provocative,

Adesoji Iginla (49:31.606)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:39.333)
is that she says that to

re-enchant humanism requires us to go back to our pre-colonial religions or our pre-colonial forms of spirituality. I think Mali Domasome will absolutely agree with her. So she actually evokes voodoo, or voodoo as they would call it.

Adesoji Iginla (50:05.654)
and that the European man has in trying to become human, because he clearly is not, has used violence as a way of enshrining what they consider to be human, and that we should reject that in its entirety.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:23.847)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:29.671)
That is what she argues. so she talks about the sociogenic principle via Fanon, looking at human beings as bios plus myth that we are storytelling creatures and that we are shaped by cultural language and power. And when I was reading that part, was thinking about this notion right now of music, hip hop.

Adesoji Iginla (50:38.52)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (50:45.55)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (50:59.022)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:59.705)
And this, you know, N word, and in this, for me, madness that we are reclaiming a word. Meanwhile, now it's proliferated everywhere, or women calling themselves, or allowing men to call them female dogs. And what happens when a storytelling creatures shaped by culture, language, and power,

Adesoji Iginla (51:08.558)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (51:18.157)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:26.899)
how we begin to disempower ourselves by embracing language and using language that was always meant to dehumanize us, but deluding ourselves that we're somehow being powerful because we have the right to dehumanize ourselves. Can you imagine that? And so she talks about decolonizing knowledge.

And in that open letter, what she was challenging her fellow academicians, if you will, is that there's an academic language and then there's a street language. And that it's important for academicians to get off their high horses in academia because the language and the structures that they have there are so welded and designed that they will never

Adesoji Iginla (52:08.439)
language.

Adesoji Iginla (52:16.406)
I'm getting to this trick.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:25.199)
open up to the whole notion of our humanity and that even this concept of multicultural studies is a way for us to continue this othering of ourselves. So still centering white men as the model of humanity.

Adesoji Iginla (52:29.262)
Humanity, yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (52:41.205)
and she

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:48.091)
While we choose all of these non-people of color, BIPOC, this, that, that, third world, so on, so on, so on, on, but they are still the center. Yes. Yes. So, yeah, there's so much to unpack, but basically that we must reframe this concept of Renaissance enlightenment, colonial complex.

Adesoji Iginla (52:58.068)
illegals.

Adesoji Iginla (53:17.614)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:17.681)
And we have to invite in, embrace new genres of what it means to be human, which absolutely requires humanity to embrace who we are as indigenous people, as native people. There's so much to unpack with the work that she has done.

Adesoji Iginla (53:46.83)
No, I mean, when I was reading some of her works, there was something that also stood out to me. was like she was constantly trying to reaffirm the fact that stop looking to these people for validation. Because as she sees it, even they don't even know who they are.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:04.933)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:14.025)
And their sense of self only comes from other in us Yeah, yeah Who okay so haven't said that I would definitely recommend For someone who's saying well, where do I start? I mean, I always believe you should start with the words of the author I love her novel the hills of Hebron. This has been a good nightly read for me

Adesoji Iginla (54:17.827)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:40.605)
But there's also a book, a collection called Sylvia Winter on Being Human as Praxis that was edited by Katherine McKittrick. It is Duke University Press, but then again, she worked at Stanford for most of her life.

And so I would definitely encourage.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:06.537)
that you check that book out because that is going to be very insightful.

She's gone on to get quite a few honorary degrees. She has an honorary doctorate from UWI. She has the Order of Jamaica, which is why we now call her the Honorable Sylvia Winter. She also got an honorary doctorate from King's College in 2018. She is just simply a woman that...

we need to put back. For those of us who have never centered her, who are about liberation, I absolutely encourage us to get this woman's work out and put it on your calendar, you know, to sit with her and to think about how

what she's talking about can be applied to our liberation work today. You know, she said something that reminded me about, reminded me of Derrick Bell. So Derrick Bell was the first African American professor hired at Harvard Law School.

Adesoji Iginla (56:12.91)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (56:30.862)
before you work them.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:31.057)
And what Derrick Bell said was, he was not the first one, the first African-American hired because he was the most brilliant African-American lawyer who had ever come into existence. He said, I got that job on the shoulders, riding on the shoulders of those poor, jobless, faceless,

discarded black youth in the ghetto who could never aspire to this position but because they put their bodies on the line institutions like Harvard said gosh we should open the doors we should have a third world we should have a black studies or we should have a whatever and then they'll bring in one or two Negroes

Adesoji Iginla (57:12.438)
I was able to get here.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:27.343)
And one of the things that Sylvia Winter, I take from her work is you get into these positions, you have an absolute responsibility to rewrite how those most marginalized people are viewed. Those to whom they say no humans involved. And for those who are saying, where did that phrase come from? She talks about the Rodney King beating

Adesoji Iginla (57:38.016)
responsibility.

Adesoji Iginla (57:56.908)
Yeah, and how.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:58.051)
and the trial and the verdict and how the police chief in Los Angeles, the police officers that controlled

these areas where black, poor, jobless people resided, where they were hemmed in, right? That they would often write on their reports, NHI, no humans involved. And again, if we are influenced by...

Adesoji Iginla (58:26.624)
NHI.

was involved.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:37.821)
the language that is being used. And if that language, remember, if systems of classification direct our thinking and order our behaviors, once you have classified a group of people as non-human, so the children of Gaza can be starving and dying on our screens. The children of the Congo, of Sudan and...

Adesoji Iginla (58:52.322)
You can do anything to them.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:04.781)
We carry on with our lives because NHI, no humans are involved because there's already been a propaganda war to dehumanize those people. well. And so she talks about even the black bourgeoisie, the black elite getting into positions and then saying, well, you know, well, they didn't study, you know, if they hadn't taken advantage of opportunities like I did, you know, and refusing to understand that

Adesoji Iginla (59:08.782)
human civil.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:34.635)
There is a system that is designed to ensure that some people don't get opportunities and that very few can ever escape out of these open air prisons that have been created.

Adesoji Iginla (59:35.352)
system.

Adesoji Iginla (59:50.486)
mental mental presence.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:54.001)
She talks about, and I'm gonna wrap up soon here, she talks about how we must begin to pursue a spiritual redemption as opposed to a material redemption.

Material redemption this whole notion of if I get a bigger house and I get my rings and my diamonds and you know I'm blinged out and I can fly first class and you know, whatever and I can wear Louis Vuitton and all these people who can't stand you and don't like you then that's

redeems me as a human because now I can be accepted into certain classes because I look the part and I dress the part and maybe I talk the part and she's saying that that materialism cannot be a form of redemption and so you see that even in quote-unquote the hood even in the poor parts of the world people aspiring to well let me just have a Nike swoosh

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:41.602)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:01.449)
or let me just have, you know, whatever that will tie me into a notion of being more civilized so that maybe I can escape this group of people who have no humanity. She says rather we should be seeking a spiritual redemption and that that spiritual redemption will naturally require us to

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:31.909)
reconceive, reimagine our relationship with nature. Because how do you destroy the very environment that nurtures you in your quest for capitalism and material resources and so on and so forth? But that spiritual redemption causes you to interact differently with all human beings. You understand the interconnectivity.

But you also understand our oneness with nature, our reliance on nature.

And I would say that then it would debunk this whole notion of when we think of civilization and who has progressed, we tie it to material wealth. And then she talks about the ownership and enslavement of Black Americans and how it was interpreted into the epistemology.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:26.466)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:40.032)
of the place.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:40.601)
of the curriculum, of the history of this place. And so you automatically have a group of people who, as they come here from different parts of Europe, buy into this notion of whiteness, because that is what is going to save them, while at the same time immediately having a sense of superiority over

the non-white people who are at the same time simultaneously being taught about their inferiority and it is baked into the epistemology of the curriculum.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:14.177)
Yep.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:17.853)
Ha, she also talks about, and this again, there's so much that just had me. I mean, so, you know, first and foremost, when I look at the number of essays this woman wrote over decades, as a wife, as a mother, as a woman,

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:30.51)
You

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:40.535)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:42.185)
Let's say this to young women. You gotta choose your lane. Oprah Winfrey said it at one point and we quoted her at different times, not on here, but other people have, that you can have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time. But she also talks about how if she had had children, she would not have been able to build what she has built.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:57.538)
Same time,

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:06.545)
And when I was younger, I used to push back on it. No, we can do all things. And now as a mother of five children, the amount of solitude, reading and thinking, this woman read broadly and widely and deeply. She taught at a different, whole different level. You can't do this kind of work while you're also.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:18.101)
that you need.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:32.157)
carrying three kids on your hips and making lunches and cooking dinners and doing homework. I'm not saying that there's no redemption in having children. I don't want to give up any one of my five children. But as I look at this work that this woman did, I'm like, there's a sacrifice required. But she talks. When I read this part of what she was writing, I had to sit with it. Her work for me isn't work that you just kind of like.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:50.712)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:01.204)
No, no, no, you can't feel...

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:01.257)
and keep going and, and, and, and yeah, and I'm a speed reader, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:04.728)
You can pitch true, you can pitch true.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:29.289)
And in so doing, it has become a game changer because whereas people used to have some leverage because their labor was required, when capital has figured out how to grow itself without labor, then it's even easier to dehumanize people because you don't need them. So think artificial intelligence.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:41.358)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:00.251)
If I used to need five people with certain skill sets to create my website, and now I can push three or four buttons and my website is created in 30 minutes or less, why do I have to even engage people and worry about whether they are making a living wage or not? So she says,

Adesoji Iginla (01:06:25.61)
or not.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:30.355)
Consumption and she said this before AI as we know it today, right? Although the military and other people, they've been working on this AI for a while. We just getting tipped to it. She said consumption has displaced production as primary medium of capital accumulation.

Adesoji Iginla (01:06:35.022)
Before the Internet of Things.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:57.713)
and has thereby caused job erosion. So when people are expendable, when we don't value them for anything, yeah, kill off the Palestinians because we have some condos to build by the seaside.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:19.451)
It's not so far fetched because this here land in Texas that I'm sitting in was once owned and occupied, if you will, they wouldn't have used the word owned, but was once inhabited by people who are largely not on the face of this earth in that way anymore. Think of Australia. How many people have been erased?

from land and memory.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:53.068)
Yeah. Think of the Caribbean as well.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:57.211)
She talked about, hmm, welfare.

being a form of pacification. Just enough. You know, think about it.

You're driving in a car and the baby is crying. They want food, but you're not at your destination yet. So you put a pacifier in their mouth. Hopefully they suck on it and go to sleep. They got no nourishment.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:34.146)
but the delusion of.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:08:36.965)
And so talking about how even the notion of welfare checks, as opposed to really providing, re-imagining, recreating a society where everybody can thrive, what we do is we keep you in that no humans involved category and we throw you a couple of checks, not enough to live with dignity.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:59.508)
enough to keep you away.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:00.313)
Just enough to maybe prevent you from coming out on the streets and attacking everything that we have. Just enough to keep you dreaming that one day you too could be a millionaire.

Adesoji Iginla (01:09:12.014)
you also can buy into.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:19.625)
Poor, low-skilled people are discardable throwaways. Members of the captive poor are dispensable, and they look like you and I, Adesuji. This epistemological order, she argues, reinforces itself, and it is up to those in the academy and those in the streets. It's up to all of us collectively not to put ourselves in silos.

but to come together to reimagine humanism out there. Of course we know the great, the indomitable Sylvia Winter is still very much walking the face of the earth, probably writing. And if she ever watches this, ma'am, if I did not do you service, my apologies because I have the utmost respect for you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:00.664)
she still works the ads.

Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:16.539)
I just need to sharpen my brain a little bit more to be able to truly grasp the concepts that you shared. But if I did write by you, then I am very honored, very grateful.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:29.888)
sure she would, she probably alluded to the fact that you're trying to become truly human because I mean that's the theme that runs through all the essays is this notion that people cannot tell you who you are and for you to live with it you must come away from it. It gives me an idea, it gives me an idea that she is doing what

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:32.009)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:47.379)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:58.174)
great Mugugu at the end was doing on but on the other side of the continent where he was talking about decolonizing the mind and she is also talking about decolonizing but it's like both with empowerment you can't just

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:11:02.397)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:11:11.293)
Yeah, yeah, so it's not just, this is not right, so let's carve out a small space for us. It's no, we need to, yes, and reconceptualize the whole thing. I think Ayikwad Ma would be, would be right in sync with her on this too, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:21.294)
to chair you to a lot.

Mm. Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:33.032)
Yes. So that said, we've come to the end of this week's episode. As usual, next week we'll be looking at again another person who still works there, Ellen Johnson-Salev. And just the heads up, she is the first president in Liberia, which also happens to be people might not like us saying this, but

an American colony in Africa. But hey.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:06.003)
American colony whose capital is still called Monrovia After James Monroe, I mean and so again Okay, we'll get into it next week

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:11.496)
Monrovia. Monro.

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:18.808)
There you go. So yeah, that said, we're looking at the lives and times of Ellen Johnson Seleff, former president of Liberia. And so I hope everyone found value in the writings of Sylvia Winter and enjoying people to actually grab her book. I mean, yes, it might look sizable, but...

the woman, mean, listen, you would find, you will be empowered just reading her books. You'll be empowered.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:57.425)
Yeah, absolutely. And actually not just empowered, it's imperative as we figure out how to push back against this imperial order that is in place and really the attempted recolonization of Africa.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:03.416)
that we.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:14.952)
And in one of our essays, which you alluded to earlier, she also warned about the samples and the minstrels amongst us. So you could go read that for starters. Just read that for starters. You'd be surprised.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:30.025)
Black faces and high places who are not doing what they need to do for us. I would like to say this for all the viewers. Please leave a comment. It helps with the algorithms. Please like, please share, please subscribe, but please leave a comment, even if it's just, hey, I was here, because that really helps to get this great work, I believe it is great work out to others.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:40.929)
Algorithm, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:54.592)
Yeah. Yes, yes. So with that said, thoughts?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:02.843)
Just, wish I had studied her when I was in college. I didn't. But when you wake up is your morning. And so now that I have discovered her, she is going to definitely have an honored place by my bedside because whenever I need to reach for something to stimulate my mind, it would be her work and definitely thinking about how to apply.

her analysis to the work that we're doing in our community.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:37.366)
And especially today in the United States, you need a bit of severe winter in your lives.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:44.777)
And make sure that you are not centering whatever privilege you have and treating people like no humans are involved.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:55.308)
involved here. Yes, on that note, it's good night and God bless.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:02.375)
Nice.