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The Quilt Towards a twenty-first-century black feminist ethnography renée alexander craft, meida mcneal, mshaï s. mwangola, and queen meccasia e. zabriskie meida: intellectual tradition celebrating the diversity and unity of a community of scholars.2 ‘The word macomère is widely used in the Caribbean to mean “my child’s god mother”, “my best friend and close woman confidante”, “my meida: bridesmaid or another female member of a Part of a larger project created by a four-person wedding party of which I was a bridesmaid”, collective called ‘The Quilt’, this article reflects, “godmother of the child to whom I am also on a different scale, a similar vision. It is a godmother”, “the woman, by virtue of the depth conversation between scholar/artists, exploring of her friendship, who has rights and privileges what it means to be African/black, over my child and whom I see as surrogate mother.”’ female/feminist cultural workers at this (Helen Pyne Timothy) moment in time. Over the course of our 1 See Helen Pyne fieldwork and homework, we each experienced Timothy, ‘About the mshaï: moments where our ‘profane’, leaky, curvy, Name’ (1998), tracing the socio-cultural, linguistic In 1998, the Association of Caribbean Women mother/sister/daughter/macomère bodies, and intellectual Writers and Scholars (ACWWS) launched the bound up in the polities of our national and genealogies of MaComère (macumé, makumeh, inaugural issue of the journal MaComère, ethnoracial identities, unsettled the ‘sacred’ macoomé, macomeh) and devoted to scholarly studies and creative works spaces of our field sites and academies, often in other linguistic/ by and about Caribbean women. Each of the first unintentional and unexpected ways. Across our geographical variants. four issues began with a reminder of the experiences in the field as African/black women 2 For other seminal examples of written and importance of self-naming and self- immersed in ethnographic communities that we embodied black feminist articulation.1 MaComère then presented an are either original members of or provisional collaborative models such as that of the eclectic, stimulating quilt of creative fiction, inductees, we find we are dealing with similar Combahee River academic papers and book reviews; struggles and concerns. We compare our Collective, see edited volumes produced by conversations with and tributes to significant collected stories of variegated blackness noting Barbara Smith (1983); literary and scholarly figures; and information their differences and continuities. We process Stanlie James and Abena Busia (1993); Carole on new publications from the Caribbean. the value of blackness in cultural practice Boyce-Davies and ‘Molara Women and their lives, experiences and ways of examining the labour these stories perform on Ogundipe-Leslie (1995); Carole Boyce-Davies being were centred in the process of knowledge- the ground embedded within the cultural (1994); Beverly Guy- production, dissemination, and consumption. contexts in which they live. Using the tools of Sheftall (1995); Irma McLaurin (2001) and the Reading the journal, one had the sense of respect, laughter, play, reflexivity, and flexibility performance work of participating in a rich conversation that we interpret and make meaning of stories. We Urban Bush Women <http://www.urbanbush explores, models, manifests and analyses what are code-switchers, navigating between our women.org/>. it means to belong to a particular gendered official training in academia and the 54 Performance Research 12(3), pp.54–83 © Taylor & Francis Ltd 2007 DOI: 10.1080/13528160701771311 T h e Q u i l t • When Africa Met Asia by Tammy H. Hampton; a quilt inspired by the artistry of Phyllis Stevens. home-knowledges we have learned by growing matrix of race, gender, nationality, location and up and living African/black and female.3 class affect understandings and expectations of 3 Caribbean novelist and what it means to be ethnographers in the field cultural critic George Lamming (2004) mecca: and how this is manifest in our experiences and conceives Caribbean Serendipity brought us together, but we have work. We explore our epistemological language ‘as a field of power relations’, noting since developed a commitment to articulating a frameworks, acknowledging the legacy we have distinctions between the common space from which to follow our inherited, while claiming the right and ways in which ‘official King’s English’ and separate research interests. Blending responsibility to articulate who we are and what ‘vernacular’ or ‘home’ performance theories, black feminist theories, we are committed to in the journey towards a languages are used to assert different kinds of cultural theories and performance-centred collective vision. agency dependent on methodologies with critical ethnography, we set social context. out in this essay to begin to imagine the mshaï: contours of what we are naming a twenty-first- Like ACWWS, our intellectual work has been century African/black (black/African) feminist closely tied in with our living. As Patricia Hill ethnographic theory and praxis. We use our Collins argues, everyday actions, experiences, field sites in Panamá, Trinidad, Kenya and the lives and ideas are critical to the process of United States of America to analyse how the theorizing for black feminist scholars (2000: 55 methods exercise (Conquergood 1991: 179, Reed- C r a f t e t a l . Danahay 1997: 9). We locate our subjective positions as critical ethnographers in relation to our field and academic communities to build an intellectual scaffolding for the work we do. The differences distinguishing our individual research interests, projects, sites and selves do not erase the consonances that convince us of the possibility and profitability of finding common ground with which to begin to explore Frantz Fanon’s call to identify a [collective] generational mission (Fanon 1963: 166).4 We embark on this process engaging the technologies of our present moment, which facilitate more collaborative and performative processes (despite static, glitches, program incompatibilities and time differences) to extend the patterns our mentors so carefully have sewn while preparing our own legacy for those who will come after us. These digital technologies extend our abilities of reach across space to recover, create and maintain productive kin, kith, collegial and coalition relationships. 4 We draw here from viii). We can, literally, find ourselves in We intend this ‘Quilt’ as a means to begin Houston Baker’s macomère relationships that are ‘so firmly addressing the theoretical and practical definition of a generational shift as ‘an gendered and honou[r] the importance of commitments of a twenty-first-century black ideologically motivated friendship in relation to the important rituals of feminist ethnography. Divided into four movement overseen by young or newly emergent marriage, birth and (implied) death’ (Timothy ‘frames’, the first lays out the genesis of our intellectuals who are 1998: i). collaborative relationship. The second uses dedicated to refuting the examples from our individual research to work of their intellectual In the midst of labouring together through predecessors and to classes, exams, discussions and multiple analyse theories and major terms/concepts that establishing a new presentations of our work – all the joys and underpin our collective project. Cognisant that framework of intellectual inquiry’. However, we travail of graduate school and beyond – we also definitions can be used to exclude, marginalize, question if a generational share bride/smaid, co/mother, confidant, authenticate and disempower, we offer these shift must ‘refute’ the work of predecessors and sistah/friend, colleague relationships which terms/concepts not as absolutes but as suggest rather that a have become central to our theorizing. reference points on a broader map. Self-naming shift could be a re- positioning reflecting a is critical to our project. African/black women particular context (2000: renée: have all too often been imagined, defined, 179). Fanon’s position on generational mission Stitching Dwight Conquergood’s definition of labelled and packaged in ways that are at odds seems more applicable – critical ethnography as ‘committed to unveiling with who we are and understand ourselves to be. respecting the work done by previous generations, the political stakes that anchor cultural While the second frame approaches our we seek to build on it by practices – research and scholarly practices no gendered experiences through race, ethnicity understanding and meeting the historical less than the everyday’ – with Deborah Reed- and national linkages, the third reverses the challenges of our own Danahay’s definition of autoethnography as flow by analysing our relationship to with the possibilities that this moment offers us ‘self-narrative that places the self within a social feminism/ist and marking some of the mundane (1963: 166). context,’ this performative quilt is a critical ways our gender impacts our experiences in the 56 field as well as the academy. We conclude by witnessing England beat Trinidad and Ghana rehearsing some of the key tenants we deem beat the Czech Republic in World Cup soccer on critical for a twenty-first-century black feminist the television screens of local pubs, re-crafting ethnography. conference papers, shopping, sight-seeing, negotiating the transport system, eating at geneses Indian, Caribbean, Lebanese and Afghani meida: restaurants, dancing