Acts of Reading: Diasporas, Loneliness, and Demons

By Dana Francisco Miranda

For one whose life is dedicated to reading, writing, and learning, the actual prospect of launching or initiating this new endeavor fills me with apprehension. What will this new digital project offer? What gifts can I offer? Indeed, who am I to spill the first libations? Fortunately, I am not the first to worry about the nature or quality of their contributions nor will I be the last. In some sense, we are all tied up in this accursed share of questioning. But if this is to be an offering of “Caliban’s Readings,” we must uncover what and who Caliban reads. We must outline the dimensions of a space that is meant for us.

In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it is Caliban who examines the conundrum of unwanted gifts, while also providing a reading of resistance that is still resonant today. Within this play, Caliban confronts the “gift” of language insofar as it is meant to substitute learning for submission and avert liberation for dispossession. The shipwrecked Prospero finds a willful being that refuses to be enslaved to his purposes: “I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn” (19).

For those of us who did not learn and continue to refuse the gifts of oppression, this blog will be a meeting ground. Thus, this introduction is not meant to be edifying, rather it is meant to commence a dialogue whose shape and meaning are determined by our interactions together. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Paget Henry in Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, this digital space marks how our “consciousness of existence” is expressed throughout the Global South. Moreover, it will directly confront the “Calibanization” of groups that are denied their humanity and capacity for reasoning. As Henry argues: “This ‘Calibanization’ of Africans could not but devour their rationality and hence their capacity for philosophical thinking. As a biological being, Caliban is not a philosopher. He or she does not think and in particular does not think rationally” (12). This tradition is denied by our existence and works. Caliban not only thinks but he also offers readings of the world: X marks the spot, as it were.

My offering, then, is not a map or territory. It is not the treasure of my research. I, instead, want to offer the brilliance of others that have sustained me during this present moment as the pandemic has allowed me to think about diasporas, loneliness, demons, and the act of reading.

As I transitioned to my new scholarly home (UMass-Boston), I found myself in familiar environments. On the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Pawtucket and Massachusett First Nations, I found myself at a much more comfortable distance from family. Now back home, I could be closer to my family and the Cabo Verdean diaspora that built homes out of sodadi and morabeza. Here, I could think of the social psychologist Iolanda Évora and interrogate what it meant to return to a diaspora. She writes that, “The term diaspora has become…synonymous with Cape Verdean emigration, with the emigrants, and with the scattered communities of descendants of emigrants” (1). The archipelagoes of Cabo Verde extend across the world, with my routes tied to that of Dorchester and Brockton. Yet, after eight years away from “home,” I questioned the type of belonging I was meant to enact after being alone for so long.

[Abdul Abdullah, “Caliban,” 2015]

Here, I found reading the cultural critic Stuart Hall to be particularly helpful. In “Caribbean Culture: Future Trends” he wrote that diasporas are not merely reproductions or repetitions, but rather are people that construct a culture to fit a new ecology: “I want to urge on you a notion of the diasporic which lives with the notion of dissemination, of the scattering. The seed has gone out. It is not going to come back to its original ecology. It now has to learn to live in new climates in other soils. It has to learn to resist pests that it never resisted before” (33). Rather than subsisting as a clone of my past self, I had to come to live and relive in a climate that although familiar was still oddly strange. Perhaps this is what the Cabo Verdean poet, Eugénio Tavares, meant when he wrote: “Si ka badu, ka ta biradu – if you don’t leave, you won’t return.”

However, this strangeness and loneliness is one that I am still navigating. My return home did not cause the alienation I accumulated to collapse or dissolve. The familiarity of distance became a self-imposed habit. The midnight hour was one in which I relished my solitude, the silence of it all. Of course, there were works that philosophized and anguished over similar situations. Both Sharon Butala in “On Aging Alone” and Michel de Montaigne in “On Solitude” spoke about non-belonging as a condition that precipitated loneliness or freedom. Butala spoke of aging, overstaying one’s life, and the management of a “community of loneliness,” whereas Montaigne wrote passionately about solitude being a precondition for freedom, as opposed to fellowship: “Let us free ourselves from all the ties that bind us to others, let us make ourselves able to live truly alone, and live there comfortably” (103). However, this desire to be without company is one I do not share. My connections—tenuous as they may be—are the relations that sustain me. Thus, although our retreats are less assured and each connection has the possibility of unravelling us, by remaining in company we can also receive others. Much like reading, living demands an audience.

With this in mind, I found that my “readings” did not have to be isolated activities. The world did not have to be a book that I cracked open and devoured in silence. Rather, reading could be a point of engagement. I could read with friends and be read in turn. Amid the pandemic, I was able to peruse One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry. This was done not for research, but because the work itself allowed me to be read in ways I deeply desired. This fanciful autobiography also allowed me to read my friend, Andrea, as the book was selected due to being particularly meaningful in her own life. Through the words of another, I was able to share in a process of mutual apprehension.

The painting exercise that inspired Barry allowed her to uncover past traumas and emotional fractures—or demons—through illustration. I have yet to draw my own demons, but I was still able to share them with Andrea—I could give them shape and color. The act of reading my own life and suspending moments that I’d much rather not remember in sundry jars became an act of vulnerability and mutual disclosure. It became a challenge: “How many of us can honestly see our own reflection?” (94). Could I honestly say that I recognized myself in these unwanted images? Could I examine myself and see past the alienation, stereotypes, and insecurities? I think reading our own reflections requires not simply accepting the sincerity of our self-assessments but recognizing the distance in our familiarity. Thus, this desire to be read—to be legible—cannot simply be relegated to the intrapersonal. In illustrating my shame, I was not only seeing myself doubly. I was allowing my presence to be affirmed among others. Through this reading exercise, I could be seen. In a similar manner, I want our reasons to be known and valued.

This is what I what this space to become—a site to be seen, a sight to behold. This then is the question: If Prospero could not witness Caliban without abhorrence, could we? Could we—as a collective and blog—dedicate ourselves to the experiences and reasons of those foolish enough to rebel? This possibility is still before us. “Caliban’s Readings” can be multifarious and nefarious. It can be an offering and a meeting ground for those across and within the Global South. If you all are willing to take a chance, then this space could be revolting.

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References

• Barry, Lynda. One! Hundred! Demons! Montreal, CA: Drawn and Quarterly, 2017.

• Butala, Sharon. “On Aging Alone.” The Walrus. June 14, 2021.

• Évora, Iolanda. “Discourses on Cape Verdean diaspora. Views from home,” Revista Direito e Cidadania 11.30 (2010): 1-23.

• Hall, Stuart. “Caribbean Culture: Future Trends.” Caribbean Quarterly 43.1-2 (1997): 25-33.

• Henry, Paget. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000.

• Montaigne, Michel de. “On Solitude.” Montaigne: Selected Essays. Trans. James B. Atkinson and David Sices. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2012.

• Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Dana Francisco Miranda [Sula Gordon, 2015]

Dr. Dana Francisco Miranda is a Senior Editor for Caliban’s Readings. He currently serves as the Secretary of Digital Outreach & Chair of Architectonics for the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Fellow for the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, as well as a Research Associate for the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut. His research is in political philosophy, Africana philosophy, phenomenology, and psychosocial studies. His current book manuscript, “The Coloniality of Happiness,” investigates the philosophical significance of suicide, depression, and wellbeing for members of the African Diaspora. Follow him on Twitter @DanaFMiranda.