Kinship and Theory [1999]

“I had heard it all before,” notes the character Dr. Kelley as he observes a graduate seminar in progress at the Program in Anti-Essentialist Black World Studies at City Community University. Dr. Kelley hears a series of contentions concerning the motive for slavery, arguments ranging from a “crass economism” that explains slavery solely in terms of labor to an emphasis on the master's homoerotic desire for the Black male body. Also advanced, as part of a purely academic exercise, is the notion that slaves could not really be considered a community because of differences of age, gender, sexual orientation, complexion, and work function. This fictional scene, which occurs in 2097, causes Dr. Kelley, who has awakened from a hundred-year slumber, to yearn for the identity discussions of 1997, when such discussions marked discursive space for critiques of domination and provided hope for a renewal of activism to challenge exploitation. Character Kelley's adventures are revealed in “Looking B(l)ackward,” the concluding chapter of author Robin Kelley's Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! (1997), a chapter that is both a parody of Edward Bellamy's 1887 novel Looking Backward and a satirical tale worthy of Ishmael Reed. Unfortunately, and author Kelley knows this, his story is not as futuristic as it may appear because both rigidity and perverse elasticity often paralyze, or at least render useless, much discourse on cultural politics today, particularly when the topic is the African American community.