Reading & Discussion Series -- In Her Own Words: 8 Seminars Resonating with Speaking, Power, Resistance Culture and Consciousness
Given that academic studies become less and less linked to struggles for change even as economically these environments become prohibitively expensive, thereby excluding those who might wish to seek knowledge within the walls of the ivory tower...
Given that literary elitism and cliquishness often function as deterrents, intimidating those who could most benefit from being able to access words of consciousness and resistance...
Given that wisdom and resistance knowing should be rendered accessible to all and should be pursued for their own sake not for the sake of societal validation, access to power [over] or professional accreditation...
Given that the passing on of wisdom and resistance knowing has never been/was never meant to be exclusively the domain of the middle/upper classes or those with access to various kinds of privilege who often disdain knowledge gained from hands-on living...
How does this sharing, this passing on of understanding bypass or defy dominant educational/social structures and become transparent, open to all/any/as many who desire it?
R/EVOLUTION WORKSHOPS FOR CHANGE PRESENTS...
In Her Own Words:
8 Seminars Resonating with Speaking, Power, Resistance Culture and Consciousness
This 8 segment, 8 month series draws from the works of writer/rogue scholar/workshop facilitator and multi-media creatrix T.J. Bryan aka Tenacious.
Dates: Second Thursday of every month
Begins June 2004 [break during December], running through to February 2005
Time: 7pm-10pm
Location: Toronto
Accessible Venue TBA
This is a critical reading and facilitated discussion series that will be useful for young[er] queers [especially for younger queers of colour], queer artists/activists, feminist workers, university students, career academics, paid community organizers/agency workers and grassroots activists but with wider applications for anyone wanting to make more political links in their own lives as they seek to develop a more layered and complex understanding of:
1. Social Justice
2. Black Consciousness
3. Racism
4. Critical Black Feminism
5. White supremacy culture
6. Queer Culture
7. Diasporas on First Nations’ Land
8. Black Consciousness and S/M
9. Empowered Consciousness and The Colonized/Oppressed
10. Immigrant Children
11. The 2nd and 3rd Wave Feminist Political Divide
12. Perspectives on Black Queer Youth in the Mid & Late 90’s
13. Poverty, Poor Bashing and Classism
14. Caribbean immigrant experience in Canada
15. Caribbean queer/wimmin living in Canada
16. Radical Femme[ininity] and Gender
17. Bi Sexualities
18. People of colour and [sexual] decolonization
19. Black wimmin and mothering
20. Radical mothering
21. Racialized Desire
22. Queer mothering
23. Languages of Resistance
24. Erotophobia
25. Homophobia and Heterocentrism
26. Memory
27. Hybrid culture
1. Once Upon a Time... My Herstorical Black Lesbian Feminist Identity
Reading and Discussion Material: "Pure" © 1994 [Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly of Writing, Politics, Art & Culture, Da Juice!, Issue# 49 & Anthologized in Does Your Mama Know?, Redbone Black Lesbian Press]
This 3 hour seminar includes a reading of the writer’s exploration of what it meant for her to define as a Black lesbian. This reading charts the space between first wave Black lesbian feminists and the presence/rise of 2nd wave feminism.
2. Re-visioning interracial Lesbian of Colour Relationship Dynamics
Reading and Discussion Material: "Walking the Razor’s Edge: An Open Letter To My Honey/Of Chocolate Queens and Rice Queens" © 1995 [Fuse, DIY Issue & Queering Absinthe, Vol. 9, Issue 1]
This 3 hour seminar incorporates the writer’s experience with doing relationship across two very different people of colour cultures, ways of speaking, sharing and across historical, social divides.
3. Compartmentalization, Childhood Resistance Tactics and the Development of A Defiant Psyche
Reading and Discussion Material: "Mighty Morphin Woman: A Self-Portrait In Perpetual Progress" © 1996 [Matriart – Building Facades Vol. 6:4]
How does the identity rely on division, denial and forgetfulness to survive the pain of oppression and attempted subjugation? This 3 hr seminar explores the writer’s deconstruction of her own boxed and divided childhood/adult identities.
4. The Claiming of A Black Conscious, Pro S/M, Queer Identity
Reading and Discussion Material: "Melting My Iron Maiden" © 1996 [Anthologized in Maka – Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writings by Queers of African Descent & Tessera, Contemporary Feminist Baroque, Vol. 24]
How do African descended queer wimmin/people continue to grow and become more of our sexual selves in the face of intense racial, homophobic, misogynist oppression? This 3 hour seminar poses a pivotal question: How do we reckon with the psychological residue of colonization even as this by-product of the Middle Passage is the very thing limiting our abilities to make conscious choices for pleasure and exploration grounded in a liberational politic?
5. Lipsticked Defiance: Black Conscious Femme[ininities]
Reading and Discussion Material: "It Takes Ballz: Reflections of An Attitudinal, Black Atlantic, Femme Vixen In Tha Makin’" © 1999 [Anthologized in Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, Arsenal Pulp Press] Femme[ininity] as defined [un]consciously by white, European culture dominated queer community leaves little space for expressions that foreground an experience of Black beauty and Diasporic Africanness. This 3 hour seminar charts this territory, offering up insights into one Black femme’s resistance to artificially imposed norms that effect everything from clothing to expressions of desire.
6. Body Issues, PhatPhobia and Politicized, Historicized Resistance
Reading and Discussion Material: "The Perfect Fit?" © 1999 [Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly of Writing, Politics, Art & Culture -- The Fat Issue]
Reflecting fat and body through a glass darkly, This 3 hour seminar poses some integral questions about a fat grrrl revolution which has been defined by whiteness. How does a Black conscious good-sized gyal spread the movement at its seams, stretching consciousness of fat until she fits?
7. Pushing Tha Envelope...Darkly: Desiring Sex Positive Change Beyond Repression and Thought Control Reading and Discussion Material: "Un/CUT: One Diasporic Pervert Challenges Erotophobia and Censorship" © 2002 [Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly of Writing, Politics, Art & Culture, In Visible, Issue # & Tessera -- Baroque Feminisms, Vol. 24]
Nudging the boundaries of what it means to decolonize oneself fully, this 3 hour seminar explores possible modes of defiance as a means to transcend oppressive social/sexual taboos internalized in African Diaspora.
8. In Her Own Words: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Radically Black Conscious, Queer, Feminist Practice Reading and Discussion Material: "MamaWORK: Transgressing Toward The Future" © 2002 [Keynote address from MamaWORK: A One Day Symposium on Mothering Against the Grain]
The words and mamawork of mothers who are systemically oppressed often end up being absorbed into the academic writings and studies of middle-class, white feminist theoreticians who gain privilege, status and wisdom through the experiences of others. This 3 hour seminar repositions mamawork as a sphere of expertise defined by race, sexuality, gender and political radicality, through conscious interrogation of traditional mothering practices.
Cost $40 per seminar or $280 [a saving of $40] for the whole series. Please note that sliding scale right down to $0 is available for those who are systemically oppressed/dominated by class stratification and economic hierarchies. This means that if you want to attend but you don’t have the money because of poverty, please still email. We can find a way to make it work. For example, attempts will be made to establish community-based partnerships between funded organizations and cash poor community members interested in attending this series. This also means that if you cannot [verrrry different than choose NOT to] afford to pay fully or at all, you will still be admitted without shame, guilt, or the usual trappings of class [un]consciousness. Most importantly this means that if you know you can afford to pay the higher scale, please do so as this will consciously support the attendance of those who may not have otherwise been able to afford this type of learning situation.
About the speaker and discussion facilitator:
T.J. Bryan aka Tenacious is 36 year old, deviant, Bajan-born, working class, dark daughta, out queer femme and militant mama who lives, loves, works and struggles here on first nations’ land. A radical third wave feminist and ethnical slut, T.J. is a non-unionized, freelance, grassroots community worker who has been sharing her ideas and wisdom since she came out as a Black queer youth 14 years ago. A rogue scholar/theoretician and political mercenary T.J.’s wordskillz are her weapons of choice. She is an outspoken, uncontrollable lyric-smith whose work has been published in Canada, the US and in Europe, including Canadian Woman Studies, Fireweed, Fuse, Now Magazine, This Magazine, Tessera, Thamyris, Mix Magazine and On Our Backs, to name a few. Her writings have been in twelve (and counting) black/young women's/lesbian/queer/feminist/erotic book length anthologies including Does Your Mama Know? (Redbone Press), Maka – Diasporic Juks: Writings by Queers of African Descent (Sister Vision Press), Queer View Mirror I&II (Arsenal Pulp Press), Hot & Bothered I,II&III, Eye Wuz Here (Douglas & McIntyre), Turbo Chicks (Sumach Press), Brazen Femme (Arsenal Pulp Press) and The Best of On Our Backs (HAF Publishing). She is a former Fireweed collective member and one of the co-founders of the now defunct Black lesbian production house -- De Poonani Posse who co-created Da Juice!. T.J. has been reading and performing her work over the past 14 years at events and Festivals such as Pussy Pen [PolyVISIONS], Frenzied, Clit Lit, Power Femme, When Sistas Speak, Sugar & Spice, Aat In Revolution, Strange Sisters, Mayworks, Groundswell, Cheap Queers, Desh Pardesh, Photo Fetish, Pussy Palace and the UofT Bookstore Reading Series.
For more information on the seminar series or to register for In Her Own Words email r_evolutionworkshops@yahoo.ca.
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About R/evolution Workshops for Change
R/evolution Workshops is the brainchild of T.J. Bryan aka Tenacious, a working class resistah bent making her way through this life by doing what bell hooks refers to as ‘right work’.
T.J.'s definition of RIGHT WORK:
A chosen activity or task that feeds the spirit, heart, mind and body while contributing something to the collective well-being as it allows room for growth on all fronts.
T.J. does right work when she puts her intelligence, her education, her creativity and her power at the service of her political consciousness and her life ethic. For T.J. right work is about exerting copious amounts of will and energy to directly challenge dominant power structures in and outside communities of resistance. This work makes life worth living.
R/evolution Workshops, her proposed site of relentlessly and politically conscious resistance and transformation through accessible grassroots education, purposefully positions itself outside the constrictions and limitations of funded, community organization focused activism. Working from without instead of within, R/evolution Workshops offers empathic, thought provoking, critical, non-judgmental workshops grounded in everyday analysis and the collective knowing as opposed to being rooted in academic and elitist notions of intelligence which prop up outmoded ideas about wisdom being the domain of those with power.
T.J.'s vision for R/evolution Workshops privileges a peer interaction model where all are welcome and where those who come empower themselves by molding the learning environment to suit the needs of their consciousness raising goals. R/evolution Workshops discourages the artificial, power-based client/professional, consumer/service provider dynamics that have so become the hallmark of funded/paid social service, community organizing work and activism at this moment in time.
Workshops can be tailored to women of all gendered identities, intersexed people and men of all gendered identities who are of of First Nations and/or of (Diasporic) / (Continental) African, (South)/(East) Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, Latino, Hispanic, Chicano, Jewish, Pacific Islander, Metis, Mestiza, Mixed Race, Biracial, Mixed Heritage or of European descent and of all/any sexualities and/or sexual persuasions.
These workshops, presentations and facilitated discussions aim to convey a greater grasp of the sexism and patriarchy, racism and white supremacy, heterosexism and homophobia, gender and trans oppressions, erotophobia and conservatism, linguistic and elitist oppression, imperialism, colonialism, globalization, capitalism, consumerism, classism, ableism, fatphobia and lookism in the surrounding society while urging participants to focus on developing critiques of oppression, privilege, power and dominance at personal, community, organizational and societal levels.
R/evolution Workshops also offers consultations to community groups, organizations and agencies seeking greater accountability in communities of resistance increasingly defined by market concerns and corporate-style agency structurings. Independent group discussion-based workshops challenge paid activist professionals to link their political beliefs to their lived realities in ways that re-affirm a revolutionary politic grounded in social change. Speaks and gatherings offer freelance and paid workers opportunities to re-commit to the ethics of doing right community work from a place of alliance instead of competition and through realigning organizational mandates and day-to-day workings in such a way as to remain reflective of liberation politics for social justice and change.
As a grassroots consultation and education organization with a mandate grounded not just in the political and the social, but also in a powerful ethic, R/evolution Workshops stridently resists state and dominant power co-optation. As a result, financially speaking, R/evolution Workshops for Change functions on the outskirts of the Matrix.
It is not a registered charity with the Canada Customs & Revenue Agency.
It does not receive funding from any capitalist corporation or from any foundation set up by those who have benefited from exploitative, capitalist pursuits in the corporate world.
It is not supported by the United Way or by any of the larger [not] at arms length public sector granting or funding bodies whose support comes at so high a price to the mandates and agendas of the organizations they oversee from a distance.
Funds to maintain the autonomy of R/evolution Workshops come from sliding scale fees-for-service at a rate of pay that falls significantly far beneath the living wage of most unionized, paid community workers/activists/organizers.
T.J. wishes she didn't have to charge at all. However, R/evolution Workshops is currently supported in this capitalist environment %100 through sliding scale fee-for-service work. R/evolution Workshops for Change strives to make all workshops, speaking engagements and gatherings as economically accessible as possible. Barter for services is always an option to be explored. Scholarships in the form of subsidization via full payment by economically privileged attendees is an ongoing struggle. If you need a portion of the course covered in scholarship via sliding scale please ask. R/evolution Workshops is committed to establishing partnerships between economically challenged participants who will be supported to seek assistance from their workplaces, community agencies or from institutions where they volunteer. If you and/or your institution can afford the higher rate, it will help T.J. through R/evolution Workshops to continue this valuable, frontline, consciousness-raising work.
For more information about R/evolution Workshops for Change, to find out more about speaking engagements, organization trainings or group workshops or to find out how you can support this grassroots endeavour email r_evolutionworkshops@yahoo.ca.