Writing And/As/About Resistance
with Eraldo Souza dos Santos

A four-week generative workshop over Zoom
Saturdays beginning May 11th from 10am to 12pm Pacific (May 11th, 18th, 25th, June 1st) *
(All meetings will be recorded for registrants who can’t make it live)

*this class was formerly set to begin May 4th, but has been shifted one week into the future

In his essay “Resist, Refuse” (2018), Teju Cole argues that the word “resistance,” once holy, has now become unexceptional. “Faced with a vulgar, manic and cruel regime,” he argues, “birds of many different feathers are eager to proclaim themselves members of the Resistance.”

Do we, in fact, use the word “resistance” too much and in inappropriate ways? If so, what forms of action or refusal can be properly characterized as resistance? More crucially, what is resistance and what does resisting entail?

Cole’s provocation will be our starting point in this writing workshop. We’ll be reading and discussing writings from authors such as Angela Davis, Julián Fuks, Ilya Kaminsky, Han Kang, and the Combahee River Collective. By combining readings and writing prompts, we’ll also explore genres such as the autobiographical essay, the declaration, the manifesto, and the revolutionary poem. Over the course of the workshop, special attention will be paid to the uses of the first person and the roles of the narrator in accounts of resistance.

Participants will have the opportunity to workshop their pieces and receive feedback in the second, third, and fourth meeting.

Assigned reading will include: Sophocles, Antigone; Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Angela Davis, An Autobiography; Han Kang, Human Acts; Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic: Poems; Julián Fuks, Resistance ... and more!

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This course offers two sliding scales based on your relative financial standing. The huge range listed below is meant to reflect the incredible disparity in economic conditions of people living in different parts of the world, and also the historical reality of stolen wealth in many different forms, generally from the so-called Global South to the North. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of how your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$350 Partner

$275 Supporter (Note: this reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$200 Companion

$150 Friend

Payment plans are always doable and scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

A 2022 LARB Publishing Fellow, Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a Brazilian writer currently based between Paris and São Paulo. He will be joining Cornell in Summer 2024 as a Klarman Fellow and the University of California, Irvine in Summer 2025 as an Assistant Professor within the Poetic Justice Cluster. His first book, to be published in 2025, is an autobiography of his illiterate mother and a meditation on the lived experience of Blackness and enslavement in modern Brazil. At the age of seven, his mother was sold into slavery by her white foster sister. It was 1968—eighty years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil and four years into the anti-communist coup d’état, during the month in which the military overruled the Constitution by decree. By weaving in extensive archival research and interviews, the novel narrates their journey to Minas Gerais—where she was born—and Bahia—the Blackest state in Brazil, where she was enslaved on a farm for three years—to investigate why the family that enslaved her has never been brought to justice. It also narrates his grandmother’s journey to search for her missing daughter. In March 2023, he offered a masterclass based on his novel at the prestigious UEA Creative Writing Course. You can keep up with Eraldo on Twitter at @esdsantos.