The fugitive is not an escape artist

The fugitive is not an escape artist

By Bayo Akomolafe

The fugitive is not an escape artist. Fugitivity is not escape, not abandonment, and not a convenient transference of an isolated body from one place to another. When I speak and write about fugitivity, I mean to mark the 'internal' playfulness of presumptuously resolute structures; the ontological apostasy that teases bodies into new shapes. I mean to name the spillage that devours all claims to fixed names and territories. What I mean is this: everything is in such a state of ecstasy that nothing is fundamentally still and resolved - not even the seemingly cold and snarky sting of the slaver's whip; not even the angry and weaponized borders of the cotton plantation; not even the pressing burden and crushing weight of a cop's knee on our necks; not even the precise and geometrically sovereign outlines of a deadening paradigm. The fugitive's work is not to get from point A to point B: it is to get from point A to point A.

From Bayo Akomolafe's Facebook.

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