Contemporary Black female artists have reclaimed the everyday labor and domestic motions women have historically performed, as artistic gestures in their own right. For example, the ceramic and bronze sculptures of the African-American artist Simone Leigh have referenced vernacular processes like washing chores and needlework.

My history of madness in the Belgian Congo will rely on tracking transactional, micro, and urgent documents as gestures. These promise to open “spheres of ethos,” with human riddles, forms of upheaval, and violence (Agamben 1992).