Boondocks TV

Well, The Boondocks has aired and already the old, tired debate has begun to be rehashed, over the shows' use of "the n-word."

The thing about the n-word is that you can't win: if you don't use it, like I don't, then you sound prissie and boogie and out of touch. And if you do you use it, then you are doing something indefensible. What did Marx say in "On the Jewish Question"? That one cannot expect political emancipation under conditions of structural inequality and oppression? The same thing applies to the n-word. We cannot resolve this political question without transforming the social context -- a context of structural and routinized anti-black racism. The n-word is a sign taken for a wonder.

Too bad this context is ignored in the debate, since this is the context which, by the way, The Boondocks is genius at diagnosing. I have not always been a huge fan of the strip -- a lot of times I felt McGruder was 'mau mauing' white liberals -- exploiting white guilt to rehearse endlessly a literally childish and impotent black anger in his Huey character. His strip, like many of Spike Lee's films, felt like a kitsch of politics, a melancholic and insufficient substitute for the real thing, a disabling and nostalgic backword look to the aesthetics and militancy of the 1970s.

But the first episode of the series changed my mind. Here, McGruder displays a complete awareness of how Huey's anger gets commodified and consumed by rich liberals, and achieves something I have never seen in an adult, ironic, hipster cartoon: an awareness and self-critique of its own mode of satire.

Event week

Back in NYC from DC, and gearing up for ...

Hanifah Walidah Q&A tonight at NYU,

NYU Grad Student strike on Wednesday barring last-minute change of heart on Administration (hope springs eternal)

Queer Studies Symposium at Rutgers Thursday to celebrate new Social Text issue, "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?"

Marina Abramovic at the Guggenheim all-night, every night this week, except for

Judith Butler on Friday night at NYU, with Sparkle Shortz and maybe long-lost college buddy. This event is in doubt now with strike. If it falls through can always go see Abramovic reenact another classic Performance Art piece from the 1970s.

Saturday afternoon panel at the "Old Bottom Line" on trends in Performance and New Media. Talk about the ironies -- resuscitating the downtown scene in the morgue NYU has built for it.

Next week, Performa continues with appearances by Eileen Myles, Ron Athey, and Vaginal Creme Davis.