Of Our Spiritual Strivings

Author: W.E.B. DuBois, Christina Quarles
Publisher: Walther Konig
Year: 2022
Pages: 89
ISBN: 978-3753300603

Upon its publication in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic The Souls of Black Folk made history as a work of sociological thought, and would go on to become a cornerstone of African American literature. In it, Du Bois combined history and memoir to advance a vital message of resistance in the dehumanizing context of the Jim Crow era. It was in this book that Du Bois, in the essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” wrote of the “double consciousness” experienced by the Black subject—“a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Refusing this fate, Du Bois passionately and creatively makes the case for the rights of Black people of the South to be treated with equality and justice.

Over a century later, Los Angeles–based artist Christina Quarles (born 1985) brings new energy to Du Bois’ unfinished project, speaking to his melodious text with her own distinctive vibrancies of color and line, testing and inverting the “double consciousness” idea. Like Du Bois, the central focus of her practice is to find political power in categories used to undermine particular populations.