Edited by Duriel E. Harris with Guest Editor Tracie Morris

Obsidian’s Black Listening special issue, edited by Duriel E. Harris with Guest Editor Tracie Morris, provides an environment for thought about, and engagement with, Black aesthetic practices that attend to active aural witnessing/discovery. This type of listening spans concepts of time, environment, space, ability, embodiment, genre, and historical markers. We ask: “What does it mean to ‘listen —Black’”?

Black Listening affirms embodied awarenesses of Black folx holding space for our diversity, our struggles, our desires, our joy, our suffering, as well as multiple layers of context—of BEING—grounded in the fact /materiality /actuality of each of us BEING both a person and an essential element of a collective creativity. (Interbeing), We mean something beyond simple acknowledgement when we say: “I hear ya.” What more is to this?

Obsidian’s vol 49.2, audio + print Black Listening special issue, considers concepts of listening and improvisation within composition, writing, other forms of inscription and presentation/performance. There are two aspects of the issue: 1. essays and poetics of Black Listening, and 2. an audio/digital component that exhibits and foregrounds aural/oral works. This multimedia issue will feature contemporary poetry, fiction, drama, performance, visual, and hybrid art by Black writers, performers, and multi-genre artists who explore the following:

• “Listening” as an experience and form of engagement
• Kinds of listening(s) and how different people experience them differently
• “Listening” as a vehicle for a) improvisation, b) embodiment, c) composition, d) presentation/performance
• The relationship between listening and language
• The role of Black spirituality/orality/being and its relationship to “Black listening”
• What Collective listening looks like and yields
• Black Listening related to Black Resistance and Black Liberation
• Black listening considered expansively irrespective of, not limited to, perceptions by the ear
• Reconfiguring Black listening practices beyond conventional senses, perceptions, abilities, and sensibilities
• How Black listening occurs across difference, time, geographies, histories, etc.
• A Black Listening Legacy, and what that means for individuals, lineages, and futures
• How these phrases resonate in Black listening work: attunement, performative vs. transformative listening, openness vs. resistance, anticipation vs surprise, translation/interpretation, listening as action v. listening as catalyst for action.

Submission Deadline: January 1, 2023

See full guidelines and submit work to: https://obsidian.submittable.com/submit/235637/outta-sight-black-listening-special-issue-2023

Direct inquiries to: BlackListening@obsidianlit.org (email link opens in new window)