EVANS ’20

Niggas been givin’ the world this werq. The werq of this thesis is just one drop in an ocean of countless ‘nigga tries.’ I am not alone in my criticism that I offer that gives this werq to the field of rhetoric for how it positions and assumes it’s the civil for niggas. I take the patterns of movements of rhetorical scholars and civil institutions to task because they liquate niggas in order to recognize Black rhetoric as a thing that informs future moments of antiblackness. I therefore, argue throughout this thesis that the Black death that happens to Black flesh is the result of antiblack patterns of movements and the worlds those patterns create. I have defended that antiblackness is what forecloses the possibility of niggas communicating, which exists in the ways that niggas move, reason, and make the space that makes the difference in just how proximate the touch of antiblackness is. Hence, I discuss the communicative sites of academia, interracial race relations of politics, intra-racial race relations of gender, and Nigga care and love. I lay out some humanist starter kits for my niggas to peep the foot work of liquidation and offer some suggestions on how to move around despite it. For what is at stake in the “communicative force” (Spillers, 1987, p. 69) of all niggas, whether niggas are amongst the civilized or whether they are amongst the most antiblack ass niggas, is that Black flesh can have only voice in certain places and times. ‘Nigga voices’ are without the possibility of speech or communication because just like niggas, the voice is always already captured and returned to antiblackness. ReidBrinkley reminds us that, “[v]oice is not a noun, nor a possession; instead it operates as a verb, as a process, created in and through “relational” negotiations within rhetorical moments” (Reid-Brinkley, Voice Dipped in Black: The Louisville Project and the Birth of Black Radical Argument in College Policy Debate, 2019, p. 218). This is an important rendering of voice, because while voice is often assumed as the same as communication, Black flesh can never be recognized in front of the human ‘as is’ and will instead always appear as made. It is in the communicative site of “Niggatry” that I discussed liquidation in the context of humanist rhetoric and Reason, and then again in the context of cis niggas to non cis niggas in the gender communicative site. This thesis is a journey whose footwork peeps the transforming/terraforming process of making niggas and they things fungible, while exploring Reasoning within and beyond civilizing humans. Within the criticism of liquidation, I launch specific shots at the field of rhetoric for its liquidation of Black scholarship and scholars in the training of the Black voice of Black scholars when I make clear that the terms and conditions afforded to niggas no matter how hard they work is closed legs don’t get fed and Robbing Peter to pay Paul for the publish or perish system niggas produce in. ‘To be recognized by civilized audiences’ range of acceptable possibilities’ for niggas is the ‘right type of black.’ Rhetoric for Black (rather than nigga) scholars is about how best to create Black agents and nigga superheroes for the human. That is to say, rhetoric for Black scholars is a premium training grounds for Black people and perpetratin’ ass niggas to field the D.E.A. job call that reads, “The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for fluent Ebonics speakers to fill nine drug enforcement jobs, and to assist with wiretaps and linguistic profiling.” For Black rhetoric scholars are placed as the lead investigators of Blackness because “there's the perception in many minds that you don't need a translator, people believe they've understood something when they haven't.” (Netter, 2010) If ‘comm that is so white was to learn anything from reading this werq is that I’ll just like other relative niggas will put in that werq for niggas nowhere and everywhere This thesis is also implicated given that my work in many ways functions as a catalog of ‘nigga translations.’ Nonetheless, I write with an orientation of Niggatry (meaning, I move like I know what time it is) in order to forward that peeping foot werq of care that subtends my “aint shittiness” to alter my investigation from ‘business as usual’ to ‘for niggas and niggas only.’ This werq must continue to move amongst niggas until, and thus this werq’s limits are given by the times and places of niggas that I could think of or with. There is limit to my werq here, given that the horizon of niggas is already always moves beyond, but my werk is also limited to niggas somewhere. That is to say, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Here I consider that niggas are amongst each realm and that niggas can use niggatry to move around in those realms by studying the patterns of movements of niggas and power.