Shamelessly Blue: Pitch Complexes and the Social Otherwise

Abstract Early american Black Blueswomen—such as Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone—perform Blues as a praxis that both critiques and transforms the ways in which american Black people were—and continue to be—excluded from the construct of the human subject. Merleau‐Ponty's account of inter‐subjectivity is predicated on his account of the human subject who is always‐already in a social milieu in which they are never taken for an object. Subjectivity is affirmed through the subject's ability to differentiate itself from objects via sight. In this way the human subject is sensorially, affectively, epistemically, and axiologically organized as eye‐forward. The human subject's ability to exceed objectification runs counter to the lived experiences of a number of precaritized peoples, specifically, american Black people. If being seen without being objectified is the lived experience of the subject, then subjectivity is an exclusive way‐of‐ being in the world. Rather than inhabit this exclusion from human subjectivity as a lack, american Black people—as is evidenced by Blues—create a social otherwise with distinct ways of living—not just surviving or enduring—created within, but not wholly determined by, the pornotrope or the wake. This paper begins to sound out a way that this social otherwise breathes life into its own socio‐ethical experience via a turn to the aural. This paper takes up Blues to explore what expressive and affective ways‐of‐ being in the world are possible with an ear‐forward sensorial organization.