The Worlds Within Black Art

“Reading, specifically close reading, which is one of the literary critic’s primary modes of analysis, can feel strange,” says Provost and Dean of the Faculty Daphne Lamothe. “It’s very different from reading a book just for fun because it requires you to slow down and think about the significance of a writer’s word choices, metaphors—even their syntax and grammar.” She says that experience of engaging with art in deep ways is the theme at the heart of her new book, Black Time and the Aesthetic Possibility of Objects. “I believe the insights we gain from this practice can transcend the words on the page.”

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, the book invites readers to explore the aesthetic realm and connect meaningfully with Black art. In a recent conversation, Lamothe shared how the book came together, what she hopes readers will take from it, and her vision for her new role in the Smith community.

Your book explores how literature, art, and music reveal the dimensions of being Black and human. Why is this focus important, especially now?
The story of Black life in the Western Hemisphere originates with the transatlantic slave trade: a system that led to the dehumanization and objectification of African people and their descendants, who were cut off from their homes and cultures of origin, held in captivity and bondage, and subjugated to racial oppression for almost 400 years. That history has had a long tail—a long legacy. Not only does systemic racism continue to affect the well-being and life chances of Black people, it shapes the way society talks about, understands, reacts to, and enacts policies that affect us.

There are many ways in which racism has shaped Black life. At the same time, Black people have always recognized our own humanity, so there’s this duality between how we are perceived in public spaces and the private, familial, internal relationships and understandings developed within our communities. The aesthetic realm—literature, art, and music—is one of the few places where we can grapple with what happens when public and private notions of Blackness come into contact.

So, they intersect?
Yes. Artists create for public consumption, but the content is a place where the Black interior world—the space where your humanity is recognized—can have a life. There’s something sacred and tender that needs to be protected in the aesthetic realm because of the function it plays. If you look at politics, history, public discourse, or news articles, so much of the emphasis is on stories of racism and racial conflict. They’re stories about the real and symbolic violence that Black folks must endure or resist. These perspectives are important, but we need to remind ourselves that these narratives don’t give us a full and complete story of Black life because they’re more concerned with the spectacular violence of racism and interracial conflict. The aesthetic realm is where the subject’s full humanity gets to live.

We live in a multiracial society that’s becoming more and more integrated. There’s a lot of movement across racial boundaries in the 21st century. For years, in my course on the Harlem Renaissance, I taught W.E.B. Du Bois, who writes about the concept of the color line in The Souls of Black Folk. He was writing from the standpoint of a Black man in segregated America. For Du Bois, the “color line” was both symbolic and real: There were literally places where Black people couldn’t go. Some of those divisions persist to the present day, and I’m not trying to ignore them. But there’s also this other reality where people are moving back and forth across the color line more frequently and more easily. I was interested in contemporary works that explored all the dimensions of the human experience from a Black perspective, where that color line was less fixed, where people were moving back and forth between public and private selves and between Black and white “worlds.”

How did you choose artists to highlight in the book?
I picked people I found myself absorbed with. For example, I love the writing of Zadie Smith—a biracial Black British writer who grew up in London with an immigrant mother from Jamaica. She was born in the 1970s, when a lot of social barriers were starting to break down and reform. Much of her fiction explores what it means to be Black and female in this time and context. She’s living and writing about the premise of my book.

I also picked a visual artist, Toyin Ojih Odutola, whose work I saw in an exhibit when visiting my daughter at Barnard College. Her work is a study of Blackness. The more I looked at it, the more I realized she was playing with perception. Many of the works I chose challenge the viewer to be self-aware about their perceptions and to return to the pieces with fresh eyes, engaging with them actively from different perspectives.

A musician I wrote about is Stromae, which is “maestro” with inverted syllables; it’s a type of French slang called verlan. We had a family Apple Music account, and my other daughter was studying abroad in France when “Formidable”—one of his songs that she had added to our playlist—came on. In the music video, he portrays himself as being an object of fascination to people on a busy street in Brussels. As we watch him, he’s being looked at by a bunch of strangers, and he’s challenging us to ask ourselves what they’re projecting onto this Black male body. What are their assumptions about this person they think they know but don’t really know? And what are ours?

What do you hope readers take away from the book?
I argue that the history of dehumanization and objectification is so powerful and ongoing that literature is often read for the history, the lesson, the moral. If we take seriously the idea that Black art—like all art—is world-building, then we have an ethical obligation to let that world be as full and deep and varied as it really is. If we can grapple with Black aesthetic texts in this way, then we’re exercising the capacity to engage with Black people in all of their humanity.

You became provost and dean of the faculty in July. What has it been like going from being an academic to an administrator?
It’s very different. What I miss most is interacting with students in the classroom. At the same time, what I like about working in the provost’s office is the opportunity to make a real, meaningful contribution to the broader academic life of the community. I’m engaged with more aspects of the academic offerings than I would’ve been just through my department and classes.

I’m also learning new skills, and I’m learning more about Smith. Even though I’m not reading, writing, and teaching in the same way I was before, I’m still learning a lot, which makes it really interesting.

What do you hope to achieve as provost?
I think it’s important to be responsive to the needs of the community. When I first started, I decided I would meet with the heads of all of the departments to learn more about their needs and how I could best respond to them.

Even before I started, the office was deeply involved in expanding the curriculum—increasing the diversity of courses that engage in ideas around race, culture, social inequality, and social justice. I’m very invested in furthering this work. Students are asking for this kind of diversity in course offerings, and we’re always working to keep our teaching alive and responsive to the world.

I also want to work on advancing the work of equity and inclusion so that we can increase the sense of belonging for faculty and staff. I think that’s very important for achieving our retention goals. Smith’s faculty work very hard on behalf of our students, and I want to make sure their work is recognized and appreciated.