Finding a livable feminist academic life through Rasanblaj

Abstract

In this article, I poetically gather the conceptual and methodological approaches of Black and Indigenous women scholars that have kept me, as an anthropologist scholar-teacher from elsewhere, alive and interdisciplined in the US academy, ethico-erotically oriented in my research-creation. The women scholars to whose work I turn breathe life into my feminist intellectual woodlandthe anthropological cannon-the scholarly commons. In the bounty of their generous sharing of methodological remix and political commitments, these mentors point to the need for subverting the pain of dismemberment and fragmentation effected by different forms of domination at different scales (Alexander 2005). Drawing on the legacy of these elders and colleagues, I mix genres, languages, and sounds as I evocatively gesture to the ways these women scholars have sustained and mentored me through their collective scholarly care. Keywords Black and Indigenous women scholars, livable academic life, mentoring, rasanblaj, remixing genres So, I ask you, what have you been gathering? Under what terms and conditions have you been gathering? . . . Which peoples? Which histories? Which practices have you decided to claim or reclaim? What do you use to orient yourself when you do the work? What are your four cardinal points? -Gina Athena Ulysse "Why Rasanblaj, Why Now?: New Salutations to the Four Cardinal Points in Haitian Studies" Սարերի քամի, որտեղի՞ց ես գալիս և ու՞ր ես շտապում,/Mountain wind, where are you coming from and where are you rushing? Անհանգիստ ու հախուռն իմ սարերի քամի:/Restless and gusty, my mountain wind.