NAJMM

NAJMM is a public practice of study, research, writing, and ideological struggle through which I am trying to better understand myself, the world I am already a part of, and the historically constituted network of relations within which I encounter that world and participate in changing it. I begin from my position as a New Afrikan, as part of a nation whose historical condition poses basic problems of land, people, and liberation, and as a member of particular families, communities, organizations, and social formations that connect my everyday life to wider processes beyond it.

This means beginning from somewhere without mistaking that position for sufficient knowledge. “Here might be enough. Could not the same be said of elsewhere? Yes, I suppose. But I know precious little of elsewhere” (Reddy 58). I am trying to understand the particular junctions at which I find myself: points where different relations, histories, forces, and contradictions meet and act upon one another. Within them, I want to better understand the means available to me and to us for reading, thinking, knowing, and acting, and the meridians by which we establish our bearings: the objectives, commitments, accumulated knowledge, and historically posed problems by which we judge direction.

I also want to understand how the contradictions we encounter and act upon from particular positions are connected to transformations extending beyond what we can immediately see or direct.

Read the full purpose statement →