The Postcolonial Ghetto: Seeing Her Shape and His Hand

Abstract

This article maps the ghostly outlines of urban postcolonial subjectivities by hinging together several moving parts/frontiers: connotations of postcolonial; applications and implications of ghettoed places and lives; a telling of the closure of a vibrant, innovative urban community high school; and literary depictions of the subtleties and macro-aggressions of historical and ahistorical domination. Theoretical contributions include the construct of post+colonial; elaborations on the space and place of the ghetto; a mapping of colonial-metropole-nation relations and provisions for a cartographic discourse of urban postcolonial subjectivites; and a discussion of the colonizer's constructions of the postcolonial subject as dispossessed, murderable, and still haunting. When the state decided to close East Oakland Community High School (EOC) in 2007, nearly the entire student body, along with their families, teachers, and supporters, marched 8 miles through sporadic rain to the school district offices. Their journey transgressed lines of representation drawn by a state administration that had depicted the youth as disorderly, anti-school savages. It also transgressed colorlines and hood-lines, very real social divides that structured ghetto space. On Macarthur Boulevard and 63 rd Avenue, a group of Dirty Mackin Boyz (DMBs) locked arms to block the march as it crossed through their turf. The vice principal ran up to one young man, a former student. She said urgently, " They're closing EOC. We're marching for the school. " The youth motioned, his set dropped their arms, and the marchers passed. State turf also had its gang. Police were hired in extra numbers to protect the administration from the community. But sometime near midnight, the cops joined hands with the youth to pray and weep in the hallways of the central office after the decision to close the school was finalized. Outside, a caravan of cars pulled up to drive marchers home. Waiting alongside them was Lola, the jeepneyed-out " Mexican Bus " of glittering lights, multicolored paint, figurines, and flowers. Named after the daughter of a member of the Chicano teatro group Culture Clash, Lola regularly carried heavily intoxicated cosmopolitans to their urban playgrounds in San Francisco's nightlife. That night she ferried marchers for free, a postmodern magic bus ride from state turf to barrio homes. The Black Star Line (see Figure 1), an independent, black-owned van service would later transport many of these same youth—also for free—in the daily ghostlife of East Oakland Community High School. After school closure, a group of students set up their Available online at