Remembering as an act of resistance.

My friend Kerri Kelly, years ago, said something that still haunts me: that the antonym of "remember" is "dismember" – to sever, to fragment, to tear apart. It feels fitting to think of the violent acts around us as intentional act of dismemberment. If the government wanted to, they could be much more subtle. With the rise of digital surveillance, they could be calmly, privately, reaching out to people to confirm their citizenship status.

But this overt attack–sending masked officials into the streets, setting up traffic stops, harassing people on sight, silencing protestors, using bodily force with abandon, killing without shame–is an intentional choice that goes far beyond the premise the Trump administration has presented. It signals to those that believed in it then to support now, a dog whistle to the most hateful members of our society. It mimics the actions of captors during the Fugitive Slave Act and echoes the horrors of Japanese internment intentionally, because these leaders know how compelling these parts of our past are to some. It’s also why these actions are supported by their work to discredit and discard our nation’s history. They keep the public unaware and uninformed of how to respond.

That’s why our response must be informed by both the past and present. Intellectuals and organizers have always placed remembering as a tool for resistance and healing. W.E.B. Du Bois understood that shared memories of both struggle and achievement help maintain cultural identity and pride. When he documented Black historical figures and events often excluded from mainstream narratives, he was providing tools for resistance.

Then there’s Toni Morrison's notion of "rememory" – the idea that historical trauma lives on in places and bodies across generations. In Beloved, when she writes about the ghost of slavery haunting contemporary America, she's not speaking metaphorically. We see this inheritance in everything from healthcare disparities to the racial wealth gap, making the act of remembering itself a form of defiance against erasure. 

bell hooks pushed this further, arguing that confronting painful memories – rather than suppressing them – is essential for both personal and community healing. She believed that while society often encourages people to "forget" or move on from painful experiences, this suppression acts as a form of "coping" rather than genuine healing. In Sisters of the Yam, she emphasized that "healing occurs through testimony, through gathering everything available to you and reconciling."

I appreciate Saidiya Hartman's work on critical fabulation, a method of using historical research, critical theory, and speculative narrative to reconstruct the lives and histories of people overlooked in historical records. This work was sparked by her research on enslaved African women, whose accounts of the transatlantic journey are scant. Critical fabulation pieces together fragments from archives (like names, numbers, songs, legal records) and uses imagination to tell "impossible stories," exploring what might have been to challenge dominant narratives and redress historical violence and dehumanization. 

Contemporary scholar Christina Sharpe offers perhaps the most nuanced approach through her concept of "wake work" – the practice of keeping alive memories of racial violence while simultaneously celebrating Black joy, creativity, and resistance. This balanced remembering prevents the reduction of Black history to trauma alone, while still acknowledging the weight of historical injustice.

What will this practice look like for you? Here’s how I’m shaping my own practice of remembering:

• Identify the key themes present in a current situation.

• Reflect on where these themes have presented themselves in the past.

• Write: What has changed my response to these themes now vs then? What’s changed in me to see them this way? What tools, skills, or behaviors do I bring to this now that I may not have before?

• What primary accounts are available for me from the past to learn from today? These can be audio recordings, journal entries, autobiographies, or artistic forms of expression, like art, music or film.

• What secondary accounts are available for me from the past to learn from today? These can be biographies, videos, essays, and other artistic forms of expression from researchers, historians, or other learners.

  • Note the ease of access and availability of these accounts. Has that changed based on current events? Who dictates access? Who makes it easier? Harder? And why?

• How do I respond in this moment?

• How do I archive my response in this moment? Consider how you can contribute primary or secondary information to support, both now and in the future. This can be your own books / art / etc.

What does your practice look like? Let me know in the replies! I’ll be sharing your thoughts from previous issues in Sunday’s newsletter–there are so many gems already!