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Essais Series #3
Blank: Essays and Interviews
Blank is a collection of previously out-of-print essays and new works by one of Canada's most important writers and thinkers.
Through an engagement with her earlier work, M. NourbeSe Philip comes to realize the existence of a repetition in the world: the return of something that, while still present, has become unembedded from the world, disappeared. Her imperative becomes to make us see what has gone unseen by writing memory upon the margin of history, in the shadow of empire and at the frontier of silence.
In heretical writings that work to make the disappeared perceptible, Blank explores questions of timeliness, recurrence, ongoingness, art, race, the body politic, and the so-called multicultural nation. Through these considerations, Philip creates a linguistic form that registers the presence of what has seemingly dissolved, a form that also imprints the loss and the silence surrounding those disappearances in its very presence.
Praise for M. NourbeSe Philip
"Philip's questions are difficult, and of an intensity of insistence rarely achieved." --Erin Mour&eaccute;
"Those still confused about why poetry might fracture and splinter and stutter can find an answer in the work of M. NourbeSe Philip." —Juliana Spahr
Through an engagement with her earlier work, M. NourbeSe Philip comes to realize the existence of a repetition in the world: the return of something that, while still present, has become unembedded from the world, disappeared. Her imperative becomes to make us see what has gone unseen by writing memory upon the margin of history, in the shadow of empire and at the frontier of silence.
In heretical writings that work to make the disappeared perceptible, Blank explores questions of timeliness, recurrence, ongoingness, art, race, the body politic, and the so-called multicultural nation. Through these considerations, Philip creates a linguistic form that registers the presence of what has seemingly dissolved, a form that also imprints the loss and the silence surrounding those disappearances in its very presence.
Praise for M. NourbeSe Philip
"Philip's questions are difficult, and of an intensity of insistence rarely achieved." --Erin Mour&eaccute;
"Those still confused about why poetry might fracture and splinter and stutter can find an answer in the work of M. NourbeSe Philip." —Juliana Spahr
348 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2017
9 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
Marlene NourbeSe Philip
20 books99 followersM. NOURBESE PHILIP is a poet and writer and lawyer who lives in the City of Toronto. She was born in Tobago and now lives in Canada. In l965, when graduating from Bishop Anstey High School, M. NOURBESE PHILIP was awarded the Cipriani Memorial Scholarship for standing first in a Caribbean wide examination at the high school level. This award entitled her to carry out her undergraduate studies at the University of the West Indies. In l968 Ms NOURBESE PHILIP received her B.Sc.(Econ.) degree from the University of the West Indies.
M. NOURBESE PHILIP completed a Masters degree in Political Science (1970) as well as a degree in law at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada(1973). She practised law for seven years in Toronto, first at Parkdale Community Services and then in the partnership, Jemmott and Philip. During this time she completed two books of poetry. In l983 she gave up the practice of law to devote more time to writing.
Although primarily a poet, NourbeSe Philip also writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has published three books of poetry, Thorns - l980, Salmon Courage - 1983 and She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks - 1988 and has been the recipient of Canada Council awards, numerous Ontario Arts Council grants and was the recipient of a Toronto Arts Council award in l989.
In l988 M. NOURBESE PHILIP won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of her book, She Tries Her Tongue... She is also the l988 first prize winner of the Tradewinds Collective prize (Trinidad & Tobago) in both the poetry and the short story categories.
Ms NOURBESE PHILIP's first novel, Harriet's Daughter, was published in l988 by Heinemann (England) and The Women's Press (Canada). This book was one of two runners up in the l989 Canadian Library Association Prize for children's literature. Harriet's Daughter was also first runner up in the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature. Her second novel, Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, was published in l991. In l994, NOURBESE PHILIP's short story, "Stop Frame" was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Award by the journal, Prairie Schooner.
In 1990, M. NOURBESE PHILIP was made a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and in 1991 became a McDowell Fellow.
M. NOURBESE PHILIP'S short stories, essays, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in North America and England, and her poetry has been extensively anthologized. Her work - poetry, fiction and non-fiction is taught widely at the university level and is the subject of much academic writing and critique. She has taught creative fiction at the third year level at York University.
Two collections of Ms PHILIP's essays, Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture and Showing Grit: Showboating North of the 44th Parallel, were published in November l992 and June l993. CARIBANA: African roots and continuities -Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving was published as a chap book in 1996 and a third essay collection, Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays-followed in 1997.
In 1995 M. NOURBESE PHILIP was awarded the Toronto Arts Award in writing and publishing.
M. NOURBESE PHILIP's first play, Coups and Calypsos, was produced in both London, England and in Toronto during 1999. A stage adaptation of Harriet's Daughter, her popular novel for young adults was successfully work-shopped in both 2000 and 2001 using a script written by the author.
In 2001 NourbeSe Philip was recognized for her work as "a revolutionary poet, writer and thinker" by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto which presented her their 2001 Rebels for a Cause award .
That year M. NOURBESE PHILIP was also the recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction award in the Arts.
Her nominees stated:
"The experiences of Black women and girls are foremost in NourbeSe's works, as are issues of belonging, language, place and location."
In 2001 Nourbese Philip was
M. NOURBESE PHILIP completed a Masters degree in Political Science (1970) as well as a degree in law at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada(1973). She practised law for seven years in Toronto, first at Parkdale Community Services and then in the partnership, Jemmott and Philip. During this time she completed two books of poetry. In l983 she gave up the practice of law to devote more time to writing.
Although primarily a poet, NourbeSe Philip also writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has published three books of poetry, Thorns - l980, Salmon Courage - 1983 and She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks - 1988 and has been the recipient of Canada Council awards, numerous Ontario Arts Council grants and was the recipient of a Toronto Arts Council award in l989.
In l988 M. NOURBESE PHILIP won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of her book, She Tries Her Tongue... She is also the l988 first prize winner of the Tradewinds Collective prize (Trinidad & Tobago) in both the poetry and the short story categories.
Ms NOURBESE PHILIP's first novel, Harriet's Daughter, was published in l988 by Heinemann (England) and The Women's Press (Canada). This book was one of two runners up in the l989 Canadian Library Association Prize for children's literature. Harriet's Daughter was also first runner up in the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature. Her second novel, Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, was published in l991. In l994, NOURBESE PHILIP's short story, "Stop Frame" was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Award by the journal, Prairie Schooner.
In 1990, M. NOURBESE PHILIP was made a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and in 1991 became a McDowell Fellow.
M. NOURBESE PHILIP'S short stories, essays, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in North America and England, and her poetry has been extensively anthologized. Her work - poetry, fiction and non-fiction is taught widely at the university level and is the subject of much academic writing and critique. She has taught creative fiction at the third year level at York University.
Two collections of Ms PHILIP's essays, Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture and Showing Grit: Showboating North of the 44th Parallel, were published in November l992 and June l993. CARIBANA: African roots and continuities -Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving was published as a chap book in 1996 and a third essay collection, Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays-followed in 1997.
In 1995 M. NOURBESE PHILIP was awarded the Toronto Arts Award in writing and publishing.
M. NOURBESE PHILIP's first play, Coups and Calypsos, was produced in both London, England and in Toronto during 1999. A stage adaptation of Harriet's Daughter, her popular novel for young adults was successfully work-shopped in both 2000 and 2001 using a script written by the author.
In 2001 NourbeSe Philip was recognized for her work as "a revolutionary poet, writer and thinker" by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto which presented her their 2001 Rebels for a Cause award .
That year M. NOURBESE PHILIP was also the recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction award in the Arts.
Her nominees stated:
"The experiences of Black women and girls are foremost in NourbeSe's works, as are issues of belonging, language, place and location."
In 2001 Nourbese Philip was
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 31, 2020
From Jammin’ Still:
“We’ve been told, as I was in high school in Trinidad, that we, Africans and African-descended people, unlike everyone else, had no culture or history, even as Europe, after having stolen the continent’s peoples, not to mention its land and mineral deposits, appropriated and stole both its cultural artefacts and approaches to visual art that would lend new life to Western art.”
From Social Barbarism and the Spoils of Modernism:
“[A]rt exists here in the West over and above the social order – often ‘apart from’ the social order. The commodity value assigned to art – and to the artist – makes it a part of the economy, but essentially it is a thing apart – alien, alienated and, at times, alienating.
It is, however, integral to the concept and understanding of art here in the West, that its connection to the social matrix – to labour, history and the politics – not be seen, acknowledged or articulated. Which is where the African and Oceanic – the primitive – has served such a useful purpose, for with the primitive, the cultural connections between art and the social fabric – although irrevocably torn – could be clearly seen and help up as a significant difference from the Western tradition.
On the one hand, the cultural object forcibly torn out of its context, assigned artistic value and meaning, and reinterpreted as functional – an integral part of the social order; in the other, the cultural object still within its context, but with its connections to the social fabric hidden or obliterated. What are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin are presented as radical differences.”
From Museum Could Have Avoided Culture Clash:
“The museum has been pivotal in the expansion of the West’s knowledge base about the world; it has been seminal in the founding of its disciplines – ethnography, archaeology and anthropology; and it has been indispensable in Europe’s attempt to measure, categorize and hierarchize the world with the white male at the top. And all at the expense of the African, Asian and the Indigenous peoples, raw material for these processes.”
From Six Million Dollars and Still Counting:
“With all the catch-all epithet and slur, ‘politically correct’, the media – no doubt speaking for their readers – is able to effectively discredit and dismiss every progressive idea and ideal. And they do. Could it be because those so-called politically correct ideals can only be realized with real and fundamental change – the yielding of power to the powerless; the democratic control of the powerful, and a more equitable distribution of power. Is it that these ideas truly challenge the powerful, while the ideas of the Reform Party, all talk of populism and the deficit to the contrary, appeal to those who see the powerful as victims of the ‘politically correct’ and the powerless as deserving of, and at fault for, their position in life.”
And that is just from four out of over eighteen essays, while I would have bought this book for two of the more creative (but no less confrontational and insightful) texts alone. ‘Caribana: African Roots and Continuities’, about black bodies, public space and movement, and ‘Dis Place – The Space Between’, about the female body, and the relation of its most intimate place in relation to public space, are amongst the most impressive texts I have ever read.
“We’ve been told, as I was in high school in Trinidad, that we, Africans and African-descended people, unlike everyone else, had no culture or history, even as Europe, after having stolen the continent’s peoples, not to mention its land and mineral deposits, appropriated and stole both its cultural artefacts and approaches to visual art that would lend new life to Western art.”
From Social Barbarism and the Spoils of Modernism:
“[A]rt exists here in the West over and above the social order – often ‘apart from’ the social order. The commodity value assigned to art – and to the artist – makes it a part of the economy, but essentially it is a thing apart – alien, alienated and, at times, alienating.
It is, however, integral to the concept and understanding of art here in the West, that its connection to the social matrix – to labour, history and the politics – not be seen, acknowledged or articulated. Which is where the African and Oceanic – the primitive – has served such a useful purpose, for with the primitive, the cultural connections between art and the social fabric – although irrevocably torn – could be clearly seen and help up as a significant difference from the Western tradition.
On the one hand, the cultural object forcibly torn out of its context, assigned artistic value and meaning, and reinterpreted as functional – an integral part of the social order; in the other, the cultural object still within its context, but with its connections to the social fabric hidden or obliterated. What are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin are presented as radical differences.”
From Museum Could Have Avoided Culture Clash:
“The museum has been pivotal in the expansion of the West’s knowledge base about the world; it has been seminal in the founding of its disciplines – ethnography, archaeology and anthropology; and it has been indispensable in Europe’s attempt to measure, categorize and hierarchize the world with the white male at the top. And all at the expense of the African, Asian and the Indigenous peoples, raw material for these processes.”
From Six Million Dollars and Still Counting:
“With all the catch-all epithet and slur, ‘politically correct’, the media – no doubt speaking for their readers – is able to effectively discredit and dismiss every progressive idea and ideal. And they do. Could it be because those so-called politically correct ideals can only be realized with real and fundamental change – the yielding of power to the powerless; the democratic control of the powerful, and a more equitable distribution of power. Is it that these ideas truly challenge the powerful, while the ideas of the Reform Party, all talk of populism and the deficit to the contrary, appeal to those who see the powerful as victims of the ‘politically correct’ and the powerless as deserving of, and at fault for, their position in life.”
And that is just from four out of over eighteen essays, while I would have bought this book for two of the more creative (but no less confrontational and insightful) texts alone. ‘Caribana: African Roots and Continuities’, about black bodies, public space and movement, and ‘Dis Place – The Space Between’, about the female body, and the relation of its most intimate place in relation to public space, are amongst the most impressive texts I have ever read.
August 30, 2018
M. NourbeSe Philip writes:
It was during those lectures I heard one of the truisms that form part of the canon on African art, and one which helps foster another type of erasure - this time about Western art. It also reveals how useful African art and primitivism have become as countercultural alternatives to Western art practices.
African art is functional, inseparable from the social order, the argument goes, vis-à-vis the Western art tradition where art by designation is what we have come to understand art to mean. Integral to this approach is the belief that art exists here in the West over and above the social order - often apart from the social order. The commodity value assigned to art - and to the artist - makes it a part of the economy, but essentially it is a thing apart - alien, alienated and, at times, alienating.
It is, however, integral to the concept and understanding of art here in the West, that its connection to the social matrix - to labour, history and politics - not be seen, acknowledged or articulated. Which is where the African and Oceanic - the primitive - has served such a useful purpose, for with the primitive, the cultural connections between art and the social fabric - although irrevocably torn - could be clearly seen and held up as a significant difference from the Western tradition.
On the one hand, the cultural object forcibly torn out of its context, assigned artistic value and meaning, and reinterpreted as functional - an integral part of the social order; on the other, the cultural object still within its context, but with its connections to the social fabric hidden or obliterated. What are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin are presented as radical differences.
It was during those lectures I heard one of the truisms that form part of the canon on African art, and one which helps foster another type of erasure - this time about Western art. It also reveals how useful African art and primitivism have become as countercultural alternatives to Western art practices.
African art is functional, inseparable from the social order, the argument goes, vis-à-vis the Western art tradition where art by designation is what we have come to understand art to mean. Integral to this approach is the belief that art exists here in the West over and above the social order - often apart from the social order. The commodity value assigned to art - and to the artist - makes it a part of the economy, but essentially it is a thing apart - alien, alienated and, at times, alienating.
It is, however, integral to the concept and understanding of art here in the West, that its connection to the social matrix - to labour, history and politics - not be seen, acknowledged or articulated. Which is where the African and Oceanic - the primitive - has served such a useful purpose, for with the primitive, the cultural connections between art and the social fabric - although irrevocably torn - could be clearly seen and held up as a significant difference from the Western tradition.
On the one hand, the cultural object forcibly torn out of its context, assigned artistic value and meaning, and reinterpreted as functional - an integral part of the social order; on the other, the cultural object still within its context, but with its connections to the social fabric hidden or obliterated. What are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin are presented as radical differences.
June 17, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews