I stand behind both of those remarks: this text has a swerfy undertone and critical fabulation/speculative history are not useful genres for these types of narratives.
Admittedly, I'm being v picky about the swerfy-ness as it's really just one sentence. But I read it as implying that Esther was in some way (morally?) superior to prostitutes because she didn't have sex *only* for money. There was no need to juxtapose her, in this way, with prostitutes to make the point the author was making.
As for 'critical fabulation'/'speculative history,' I found this text to have too much unnecessary speculative fabulation and not enough critical history. I know that the author works with extremely limited resources, but the way she fills in the blanks creates a one-dimensional image that contradicts her intentions. You quoted the mutual aid paragraph, which I think is great and certainly true. But how does Esther, the way she's presented in this text, fit in with this concept and particularly with the reciprocal nature of the mutual aid? All we are told is how up to the point of her arrest, Esther 'perfected the art of surviving without having to scrape and bow' by working as little as possible and by relying on her family and 'gentlemen friends' -- but what does this have to do with mutual aid? Esther's sister and grandmother helping raise her son is not 'mutual' aid.
This is also why I find the flaneur trope so problematic. Flaneurs, for the most part, didn't have to work, or could work very little and very comfortably. They certainly didn't have to look after their children and worry about vagrancy laws. And most definitely, they were not black women living in a white supremacist state shortly after the abolishment of slavery. So why extrapolate an epitome of white male privilege onto 1910s Harlem? For paragraphs and paragraphs of quite cliched rhetorical flights?
I absolutely agree with the importance of excavating these kinds of narratives and unlike other commentators, I like that they are being discussed as forms of anarchism. But I thought this was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Instead of fabulating what Esther thought about aesthetics, I would prefer Hartman to speculate more about how Esther, her family and her friends, or any other like-minded group of people, practised 'collaboration, reciprocity and shared creation.' To do this, though, you cannot center so much on a single person, however interesting she is.
I stand behind both of those…
In reply to some thoughts by @balm
I stand behind both of those remarks: this text has a swerfy undertone and critical fabulation/speculative history are not useful genres for these types of narratives.
Admittedly, I'm being v picky about the swerfy-ness as it's really just one sentence. But I read it as implying that Esther was in some way (morally?) superior to prostitutes because she didn't have sex *only* for money. There was no need to juxtapose her, in this way, with prostitutes to make the point the author was making.
As for 'critical fabulation'/'speculative history,' I found this text to have too much unnecessary speculative fabulation and not enough critical history. I know that the author works with extremely limited resources, but the way she fills in the blanks creates a one-dimensional image that contradicts her intentions. You quoted the mutual aid paragraph, which I think is great and certainly true. But how does Esther, the way she's presented in this text, fit in with this concept and particularly with the reciprocal nature of the mutual aid? All we are told is how up to the point of her arrest, Esther 'perfected the art of surviving without having to scrape and bow' by working as little as possible and by relying on her family and 'gentlemen friends' -- but what does this have to do with mutual aid? Esther's sister and grandmother helping raise her son is not 'mutual' aid.
This is also why I find the flaneur trope so problematic. Flaneurs, for the most part, didn't have to work, or could work very little and very comfortably. They certainly didn't have to look after their children and worry about vagrancy laws. And most definitely, they were not black women living in a white supremacist state shortly after the abolishment of slavery. So why extrapolate an epitome of white male privilege onto 1910s Harlem? For paragraphs and paragraphs of quite cliched rhetorical flights?
I absolutely agree with the importance of excavating these kinds of narratives and unlike other commentators, I like that they are being discussed as forms of anarchism. But I thought this was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Instead of fabulating what Esther thought about aesthetics, I would prefer Hartman to speculate more about how Esther, her family and her friends, or any other like-minded group of people, practised 'collaboration, reciprocity and shared creation.' To do this, though, you cannot center so much on a single person, however interesting she is.