“I’m Back Outside”: Emerging from Spaces of Recovery to re-Join Community

• In Event: Dreamscaping: J. Cole’s Dreamville and the Ecologies of Black Masculinity in Hip-Hop

Description for Program

Black theorists, from W. E. B. DuBois to James Baldwin have taken up as subject the exhaustion that comes along with being racialized as Black in a White supremacist society. Such exhaustion ultimately begets moments of retreat where Black subjects seek refuge from the harsh exposure of the White gaze and White violence. In this respect “outside” emerges as the space where Black subjects can engage in communal existence as well as communal resistance. At once, “outside” carries the allure of collectivity and the risk of vulnerability to attacks on one’s personhood. J. Cole navigates the liminal spaces between these blurred boundaries in his work “The Climb Back”. In the song’s ending refrain, Cole repeats “I’m back outside”. It is a declaration of his emergence from solitude where he took time to heal and marks his return to communal existence and resistance. The refrain signifies a defiance borne of rejuvenation and expresses a restoration of strength and resolve. Cole’s work represents a recognizable pattern that resonates with lived experiences of various marginalized people who live, work, and exist in spaces that actively or passively work to challenge their personhood at all turns. I read his lyrics as an apt descriptor for my experience as a Black woman in a graduate program at a conservative PWI. Within the past year, I have had to regularly negotiate public and private spaces for my own well-being, often returning from periods of hiatus with a resolve reminiscent of Cole’s own.

Author

• Victoria Washington, Texas Christian University