A Conversation "Overflowing with Memory": On Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley's "Water, Shoulders, Into the Black Pacific"

This conversation between Jafari S. Allen and Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (with Natalie Bennett, Rosamond S. King, Rinaldo Walcott, and Michelle Wright) follows a lively debate during the Black/Queer/Diaspora Work(ing) Group symposium in 2009. This debate centered on the promise and pitfalls associated with pushing beyond disciplinary frameworks and methodological conventions toward, for example, narrative theorizing and creative responses as a legitimate way to represent black women's (erotic) histories. Whither interdisciplinarity? What are the limits of various approaches and genres? This conversation serves as a preface to an excerpt from Tinsley's work of historical fiction. The conversation takes up scholars' responses to the impossibility of knowing some of the particularities of historical experience and subjectivity, as Tinsley's contribution attempts to revindicate the theoretics of those who, in Barbara Christian's words, "have always been a race for theory."