In The Black Shoals Tiffany Lethabo King uses the shoal—an
offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor sea—as
metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter
between Black studies and Native studies. King conceptualizes the
shoal as a space where Black and Native literary traditions,
politics, theory, critique, and art meet in productive, shifting, and
contentious ways. These interactions, which often foreground Black
and Native discourses of conquest and critiques of humanism, offer
alternative insights into understanding how slavery, anti-Blackness,
and Indigenous genocide structure white supremacy. Among texts and
topics, King examines eighteenth-century British mappings of
humanness, Nativeness, and Blackness; Black feminist depictions of
Black and Native erotics; Black fungibility as a critique of
discourses of labor exploitation; and Black art that rewrites
conceptions of the human. In outlining the convergences and
disjunctions between Black and Native thought and aesthetics, King
identifies the potential to create new epistemologies, lines of
critical inquiry, and creative practices.
