A necropastoral. This term is not in the dictionary. Where did I first hear it? [cf. Joyelle McSweeney’s ‘What Is the Necropastoral?‘] It does not exist and yet it was said and is now being repeated. I was born. In a slave narrative that means nothing. Meaningless. I was born and in the midst of this photograph I am now being repeated so that the photographer can see what whiteness has erased and is erasing and will erase because white life enacts the problem of erasure. There are other words too: hoses, dogs, genocide, incarceration, assassination, wall, immigration. Can I help you? Why are you here? Do you live here? Can I see your ID? Is this your house? Is she your wife? Inside the shape of the woman is there a woman? As I am being human am I a human being? Arms outstretched? My ass. My stance as life stretches out into seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Once it was 1619. The month was August. I sat staring at an image unfolding. Life. A film of whiteness. That’s when the alarm in my house went off. I followed the sound to the Atlantic.
– from Claudia Rankine ‘outstretched’, from ‘Just Us: An American Conversation’ (Graywolf Press, 2020) 86-89.
[This post was written for Alice Cheng – in support and solidarity, in the classroom and in life]