‘Speaking in a Certain Manner’ and ‘Imagining Otherwise’: Marlene NourbeSe Philip and Lola Olufemi’s Essayistic Imagination as a Spark for Critical Thinking

Abstract

Black women writers belonging to two different generations, Marlene NourbeSe Philip and Lola Olufemi experiment with language calling forth affective paths for critical thought. Philip’s essay “A Genealogy of Resistance” (1997) and Olufemi’s Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (2020) are two formally different essays that express and perform the political potential of literary manipulation of personal and collective memory. By selecting key passages from each and analysing their complex structures, this article investigates how Philip and Olufemi’s essayisms take the idea of the essay being a thing of the imagination (Ozick) to new and interesting levels. The article aims to show how “speaking in a certain manner” (Philip, p. 11) in order to recall a line of descent to locate oneself, and invoking the concept of the otherwise through formal and conceptual fragmentation (Olufemi) are practices of resisting and acting upon “remain[ing] steadfast in the belief that this cannot be all there is” (Olufemi, p. 12). Philip and Olufemi’s essayistic, literary thinking aims to deconstruct colonial and capitalist pasts (and presents) of ‘systemic violence’. Thus, these essays practice decolonial and activist thought by discussing the relations in cultural production, social and political issues, and by crafting oblique, affective epistemologies.