Dark Matter and Diaspora

Abstract

Opening with a thick descriptive story of an ethnographic experience of the invisible force or spirit of cyphering titled “Dark Matter,” chapter 1 goes on to center a comparative look at multiple African diasporic circle practices, drawing attention to their extraphenomenal, spiritual, and liberatory feelings and experiences, articulated differently by each practitioner. In this chapter, the main interlocutors—including Float, Silky Jones, Poe One, Triple7, Miss Little, Aby, Pia, and Jaekwon —discuss this little-recognized dimension of the cypher. By amplifying Africanist aesthetics, we can better understand breakers’ broad articulations of overlapping experiences of spirit and liberation. The chapter further explores the epistemic violence involved in invisibilizing Africanist aesthetics.