getting into a UCSC class gets even more tough. Theories of Slavery by Angela Davis. maximum 15 students, of course there’s a waiting list and many people just show up in the desperate hope that there still might be a way to get in. i contacted Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness while i was back in europe, but the same story: since i’m not a student i can’t enroll nor even get on the waiting list. my emails were rather, well, insisting, and i had been telling myself, and friends, that i would take that class. (yesterday evening leta made me do the will-power thing: i will get into angela davis’ class…). but today’s situation was so awkward that i let go.
first an elaborate introduction to the structure and content of class, with all the tangible tension and eagerness of everyone wanting to be participating in what was presented to us. then the moment in which everyone introduced themselves… explaining why and how they really really really needed to be in this class. ay, i can’t do this… finally the moment of truth. angela carefully checked the list with 15 enrolled students. one free space and she got another student, who also wasn’t present, out (she should be writing up her phd these days, not taking classes.) two people from the waitinglist get in. two students from the Humboldt university in Berlin, who stressed that they had been unable to enroll through the normal procedure, got an impossible offer. this is what i propose, we make one extra space in the class, and the two of you decide among yourselves which one takes up the space. they looked at each other in terror… a number of people announced that they would be auditing the class, but angela responded that she had agreed to that before knowing that the class was so full, and that she would have to reconsider.
and that was that, the class was finished and full, as everybody knew all too well it would be. immediately a whole bunch of students queued up to speak with angela. i had put myself in the queue but with every second passing by i thought no, no, no, i can’t do this. i hear the german girls insisting that they can’t make that choice. angela responds that she has to submit the final list with names after this class, and if they can’t give her a name she’ll have to give the open space to someone else. almost angry, the woman just before me tells angela that the old agreement that she could audit the class was the only reason that she stayed in santa cruz after her graduation just before the summer. okay, so you can audit. note that we’re already at 17, with a long line still waiting. hardly disguised desperation on angela’s face. then there’s another thing i can’t help noticing. most of the students who got themselves enrolled, in the days following the announcement of the class in june, are white, and many of those in line are students of color. there clearly is an issue with who is fully and early enrolled (one needs a valid student number in order to officially enrol or even get on the waitinglist) and whose trajectory through these institutions is less evident and more fragile. in the end there’s a small group, all students of color, who insist that they really need the class and who will meet during the official class (but in another room) and do the same readings, and every other week angela will do a tutor session with them after class.
when it’s my turn to sit down with her, i just say “i’m sorry. this is awkward.” i look at her and smile. she nods, “yes, this is awkward.” “i would have wanted to audit the class, that’s what i would still want, but i see the situation. it’s okay.” her turn to smile. “you know what, just come next week. i think it’s okay.”
her presence is impressive. and there’s something about seeing her in action here at UCSC, after that other lousy-actor-Cali-governor (Ronald Reagan) made a public point out of it that Angela Davis would never teach at a public university in California again. and i’m eager to do the trajectory of this course. it’s aim is to look at slavery from the perspective of the failure of its abolition. the course is organized along six sections: (1) Paradoxes of Abolition and Legacies of Slavery; (2) Memory. Representations, Reparations; (3) Gender, Sexuality, Domination, Resistance: Feminist Approaches; (4) Slave Systems/Slave Lives: Classic Texts; (5) Political Economy of Atlantic Slavery: Anti-imperialist approaches; (6) Slavery and the Contemporary Era: Trafficking in Persons and Mass Imprisonment. i hope to be writing more about the classes in these pages, but listen, for next week we have to read the 700 pages of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, and it’s not getting better in the following weeks…