I was in my mother’s womb when her sister, Cindy, died two months before
my birth. All head and curled body, I represented an apostrophe, spoken
to and brought to life by the language of angels my mother was given to
heal. In October of 1993, I came into the world intimate with death.
From an early age, I noticed the way my living experience was marked by
my conception and I endeavored to translate what I knew about language,
loss, personhood, and grief. Reading Barbara Johnson’s Apostrophe,
Animation, and Abortion offered (the) apostrophe as a visual compass and
an associative companion that supports auto-theoretical notions of my
birth with (the) apostrophe’s many operative definitions. Johnson
instrumentalizes the apostrophe as both a punctuation mark and a
rhetorical device—a duality I refer to as (the) apostrophe—to turn us
toward greater imperatives and revelations about agency within violent
and gendered disciplinary systems. This was the depth of reason I was
looking for. Apostrophic Studies, is just that, a series of studies that
collects information, synchronicities, and insights to constellate the
manifold disclosures and enactments of the device. I pay homage to
apostrophe’s etymological roots of turning as a method to forge
associations between seemingly disparate thematic territories. This
technique stimulates experimentation with tone, meaning making, and
point of view. This is a work of critical, creative invention in lineage
with Christina Sharpe, Maggie Nelson, Fred Moten, Lauren Berlant,
Jamaica Kincaid, and Canisia Lubrin—works structured by affective,
associative logic.