D.O.T.S. is a digital archive created to disturb widely accepted assumptions of the Southern region of the United States to challenge, educate, and curate the vibrant lives of Black Southerners.
Additionally, D.O.T.S. is dedicated to exploring how Black Southerners have taken tainted land and energy, and converted it to renewable energy, to sustain themselves and future generations through the ritualistic process of art making.
D.O.T.S. is not a space to debate historical facts about the Southern region of the United States. Recently, there has been an effort by many local governments to rewrite a false narrative of chattel slavery and limit access to knowledge. Most notably, Ron DeSantis vehemently argues that enslaved people benefited from the capitalistic and exploitative inherent nature of slavery. More specifically, DeSantis supports the belief that enslaved people gained valuable skills that could be parlayed into what they did after emancipation. This is not true and this project, D.O.T.S., is not built upon this delusionary re-modelization project of United States history.
DeSantis’backed curriculum change in the Sunshine State of Florida is delusional because it is founded upon a project Martinican theorist, Éduard Glisont describes in Caribbean Discourse. Glisoant writes, “We demand the right to obscurity. Through which our anxiety to have a full existence becomes part of the universal drama of cultural transformation: the creativity of marginalized peoples who today confront the ideal of transparent universality, imposed by the West, with secretive and multiple manifestations of Diversity.” Moreover, he makes it clear in his footnote that “the West is not in the West. It is a project, not a place.”
The belief that Africans were empty vessels until touched by the blinding light of enlightenment beliefs is false. Africans came as weavers, potters, tailors, and herbalists and already possessed knowledge. DeSantis’ attempted revision is yet another effort to contribute to the universal drama of remaking a house and world that has always been on fire. The project of the West is to make one believe the house is fireproof, climate-proof, weather resistant, and built to stand harmoniously with the very nature of the community it pillages and destroys. D.O.T.S. will not be used to aid in the project of the West. D.O.T.S. has been founded to point to the ways in which Black people have assembled full lives using generational skills, knowledge, and other ways of knowing to provide hope for Black people to continue persisting in the creation of their own bountiful lives. D.O.T.S. also strives to increase access to literacy at a time when a record number of libraries are closing. In the case of the largest school district in Texas, some libraries are even turning into disciplinary spaces, ultimately harming Black students more. Therefore, while D.O.T.S. is a curated archive illustrating the attempt to quilt a beautiful bountiful life, it is always based on the factual foundation of history.
Before we start to share our archival materials, we want to be clear about the foundation of D.O.T.S. This post represents the North Star that guides D.O.T.S. It is imperative, if you desire to engage with this archive, that these sentiments also be the beliefs that guide you. If you do not also share the same foundation of history, then D.O.T.S. is not the discourse/space for you. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here 🤷🏾♀️. As the prolific writer James Baldwin said, “the party is over.”