Dagmawi Woubshet

The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table

WOUBSHET: Welcome to the last session of this conference and celebration of Callaloo’s 40th anniversary. The panel is called “The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table.” If you are looking at the program, I am not Fred D’Aguiar. Fred D’Aguiar couldn’t be here today, unfortunately. My name is Dagmawi Woubshet, and I will be your moderator. Also, Stephen Tuck asked me to apologize on his behalf. He had to administer an exam this morning, so he couldn’t join us. But what a privilege to moderate this last session with such distinguished panelists. I’m almost tempted to break into song to say happy birthday to Callaloo. [Laughter] But my pitch is so bad. I don’t want to damage your ears. [Laughter] But Robert Reid-Pharr has an exquisite voice.

Callaloo: A Forum for Academics and Creative Writers

CRAWFORD: I am Margo Crawford and I am at Cornell University. I’m going to start today with a real focus on Charles Rowell’s interviews. When I think about the tremendous work that you have done, Charles Rowell, with Callaloo, I think we need an entire book or more than one book that puts together the interviews. The interviews set me in motion. The interviews made me understand the connection between the academic and the creative. Charles Rowell’s interviews break the boundaries between the creative and the critical. I want to start today with two moments (in two of his interviews) when the practice of a black feminist archive emerges in the interviews. For example, when he is interviewing Octavia Butler, and he asks, “Will you talk about what it was like for you in the early days as opposed to present times? You, a Black woman, writing science fiction?” Another example (in another interview of Butler) is the moment when he takes us to an interiority of black feminist praxis, and asks, “Will you allow me to enter the privacy of your writing space and stand over your shoulder while you’re working and observe the process while you work?” Think about such humility. We hear, “Will you allow me?” I think of those tremendously interesting moments when Charles Rowell’s interviews become so much more than just the standard interviews. We see all of the creative and critical energy coming together. His editing of Callaloo as this thriving and prominent journal continues to gather the most innovative, diasporic literature is indeed that zone that Fred Moten describes as “frames cutting frames” without any settlement. As Fred Moten teaches us, they keep cutting. Rowell’s 1974 interview of Larry Neal was the gem that sparked my first engagements with Neal’s dual position as theorist and poet. And today, I want to use—in these fifteen minutes I have—Larry Neal’s Hoodoo Hollerin’ Beebop Ghosts of 1974 as a means of opening up the Callaloo hoodoo hollerin’ beebop practice of creating liminal spaces, where the creative and the critical become what Larry Neal in his afterword to Black Fire considers the post-double consciousness state of decolonizing the mind. Larry Neal’s worrying of the lines—thank you, Cheryl Wall—takes the form in his visually experimental essay “Some Reflections on the Black Aesthetic” of intersecting rows and columns, instead of

An Interview with Andreas Eshete

WOUBSHET: Andreas, thank you for this opportunity to dialogue with you; it’s a pleasure and a privilege. Perhaps we could start discussing your writing as a philosopher; then, transition to talk about your work as a public intellectual, the ways in which you have connected philosophy to political practice; and end with your thoughts on Ethiopian culture. You have written that the general perception of philosophy as “an incubation inquiry” is misguided. What do you mean by that and also what kind of metaphor do you think aptly characterizes philosophical inquiry?

Dilemmas of the Black Intellectual: A Round Table of the 2009 C ALLALOO C ONFERENCE

DAGMAWI WOUBSHET: Dr. Rowell pointed out at the Callaloo RetReats—in New Orleans in 2008 and in St. Louis in 2009—that their purpose was to create a forum for creative writers and scholars to engage one another meaningfully, bridge the gap between the creative and critical side of our labors. Perhaps we can begin our conversation by reflecting on our retreat experiences, if indeed the retreat has created a new platform for us.