Solofa Fatu Jr. (born October 11, 1965) is an American  professional wrestler, best known under the ring names Rikishi and Fatu with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), where he is a one-time Intercontinental Champion, two-time World Tag Team Champion, and one-time WWE Tag Team Champion. He is a member of the Anoa'i family of Samoan wrestlers. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by his sons, wrestlers Jey and Jimmy Uso, in 2015.

Early life
Solofa Fatu was born on October 11, 1965, in San Francisco to Solofa Fatu Sr. and Elevera Anoa'i Fatu, and grew up in the Sunnydale Projects in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood, where his maternal grandparents were preachers. He attended Balboa High School, and competed on the wrestling team.

In 1982, when he was seventeen years old, Fatu was wounded in a drive-by shooting that left him with a scar on his abdomen; he claimed in a 2021 interview that he had died for three minutes in the emergency room before being revived. He spent two months in the hospital, after which his mother, fearing for his safety, sent him out of state to live with her brothers Afa and Sika Anoa'i, with whom he trained to become a professional wrestler.

Professional wrestling career

Early career (1985–1992)

Montreal and International Championship Wrestling (1985–1986)
Fatu began his wrestling career in 1985, working for Gino Brito and Dino Bravo's Lutte Internationale promotion in Montreal as Prince Alofa, a high-flying babyface. He often teamed with the territory's top faces he was 1 time tv champion. Fatu also worked for International Championship Wrestling in New York City in that same year.

The Samoan Swat Team (1986–1992)
He and his cousin Samula Anoaʻi became The Samoan Swat Team (Samu & Fatu) in 1986 for New Japan Pro Wrestling. In 1987, they signed with the World Wrestling Council in Puerto Rico and  They used the "Samoan savage" gimmick their relatives The Wild Samoans successfully used by working barefoot, never publicly speaking English, and no-selling attacks to the head. They became the new WWC Caribbean Tag Team Champions (after a long vacancy) on November 7, 1987, in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico after defeating Invader I and Invader III. They held the title for just over a month before dropping it to Mark and Chris Youngblood before leaving the promotion.

Samu and Fatu next appeared in Texas, working for Fritz Von Erich's World Class Championship Wrestling. Storywise, Buddy Roberts brought them in to fight his fights against the Von Erich family and former Fabulous Freebirds partner Michael Hayes. The SST were given a big push right away; presented as an unstoppable force, they beat hometown heroes Kerry and Kevin Von Erich for the WCWA World Tag Team Championship on August 12, 1988. They remained undefeated in WCCW until they dropped the belts to Hayes and his new partner, Steve Cox, on September 12. They recaptured the title four days later. Hayes and Cox beat them for the title again on October 15, and, two days later, lost it back again.

On September 12, 1988, The Samoan Swat Team became double champions by beating "Hollywood" John Tatum and Jimmy Jack Funk for the WCWA Texas Tag Team Championship. They made their pay-per-view debut at AWA SuperClash III, the AWA's first and last PPV. They successfully defended their World Tag title against Michael Hayes and Steve Cox.

In early 1989, the SST left WCCW, vacating both championships. Swat Team signed with Jim Crockett Promotions, introduced as manager Paul E. Dangerously's replacement for The Original Midnight Express (Randy Rose and Dennis Condrey), who had left the promotion. The SST took over the Express' feud with The Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane), beating them at Clash of the Champions VI: Ragin' Cajun on April 2, 1989. The SST teamed with former rival Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy, and Jimmy Garvin at the 1989 Great American Bash, losing a WarGames match to The Road Warriors, The Midnight Express, and Steve Williams.

In the fall of 1989, Paul E. Dangerously was phased out and the SST took a new manager, "The Big Kahuna" Oliver Humperdink. They were also joined by Fatu's brother, The Samoan Savage. The SST lost more and more matches as 1989 drew to a close, but got a break when Sid Vicious was injured, leading his team, The Skyscrapers, to pull out of the "Iron Team Tournament" at Starrcade 1989. Fatu and The Samoan Savage, rebranded as The New Wild Samoans, replaced them. For the rest of their WCW career, Fatu and Savage teamed, while Samu only wrestled singles matches.

After leaving WCW in the summer of 1990, Fatu and Savage worked for several independent promotions in the US, Europe, Puerto Rico and Japan, often teaming with cousin Kokina Maximus. The three worked for the Universal Wrestling Association in 1991, where they won the UWA Trios Tag Team Championship and held it for just under two months. They headlined the UWA's 16th anniversary show, losing the title to Dos Caras, El Canek, and Mil Máscaras.

World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1992–2004)

The Headshrinkers (1992–1995)

After Samu and Fatu joined the World Wrestling Federation, they were renamed The Headshrinkers, but their savage gimmick remained. Kokina Maximus also joined the WWF, but was repackaged as Japanese sumo wrestler Yokozuna, and his relation to The Headshrinkers was not acknowledged. The Headshrinker's first notable angle came when they interfered to help Money Inc. beat The Natural Disasters for the WWF World Tag Team Championship. Soon after, The Headshrinkers feuded with The Natural Disasters and the recently formed High Energy.

Between 1992 and early 1994, The Headshrinkers occasionally challenged for the tag title and made sporadic PPV appearances, feuding with The Smoking Gunns and Men on a Mission. Fatu would receive a WWF Championship match against Bret Hart on the March 1, 1993 episode of Monday Night RAW. Despite interference by Samu, Fatu was unsuccessful.

The Headshrinkers helped Yokozuna win a casket match against The Undertaker at the 1994 Royal Rumble. In April, they turned face, took Lou Albano as their manager and challenged tag champions The Quebecers. They won the gold on the May 2 episode of Monday Night RAW. At King of the Ring on June 19, they successfully defended the title against Yokozuna and Crush. Their title reign ended at a house show in Indianapolis on August 28, when they lost to Shawn Michaels and Diesel. This happened a day before they were scheduled to defend against Irwin R. Schyster and Bam Bam Bigelow at SummerSlam. The match went on without the title, and The Headshrinkers lost by disqualification.

Soon after, Samu left the WWF to recover from injuries and was replaced by Sione (formerly The Barbarian). They were called The New Headshrinkers. The storyline reason for Samu's departure was that he was not coping well with manager Lou Albano's attempts to civilize him, particularly about wearing boots. The New Headshrinkers made only two PPV appearances, at the 1994 Survivor Series, where they were eliminated from their ten-man tag match, but helped their team win and at the 1995 Royal Rumble; Sione lasted about seven minutes early on and Fatu over five nearer the end. They entered a tournament to crown new WWF tag team champions in late 1994/early 1995, and lost to Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka in the semi-finals. For the first half of 1995, they worked with Jacob & Eli Blu, usually putting them over. Their final match was a loss to Men on a Mission at a June 22 house show in London, England, after which Sione left for WCW and Fatu was removed from WWF television.

"Make a Difference" (1995–1996)

After a brief hiatus, Fatu reappeared as a singles wrestler in July 1995 repackaged as a streetwise-street thug positive role model, for which he filmed several vignettes in his old San Francisco neighborhood touching on his real-life upbringing in the ghetto and preaching the messages of staying in school and saying no to drugs, all while he spoke fluent English. Each segment ended with the onscreen phrase "Make a Difference", making it the unofficial name of the gimmick. Fatu made his in-ring return on July 29 by pinning Rad Radford on WWF Superstars, and then enjoyed a run of victories over enhancement talent for the remainder of the year. However, the character did not get over with fans, and in 1996 Fatu was regularly booked to lose to stars such as Steve Austin, Vader, and Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Two men known as "The Samoan Gangster Party" (Fatu's cousins Samu and  Matthew Anoaʻi) additionally began showing up in the audience during his matches, but no storylines were ever developed. The "Make a Difference" gimmick was dropped in April 1996.

The Sultan (1996–1998)
In August 1996, Fatu was repackaged as The Sultan, a masked wrestler who never spoke, ostensibly because his tongue was cut out. He was managed by The Iron Sheik and Bob Backlund. He unsuccessfully challenged Rocky Maivia for the WWF Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 13. The Sultan vanished in January 1998, and Fatu left to train at Dory Funk's Funking Conservatory wrestling school. He would work from 1998 to 1999 in the independent circuit.

Too Cool and Intercontinental Champion (1999–2000)

After training at Funk's, Fatu returned on the November 13, 1999 episode of WWF Metal as Rikishi Fatu, beating Julio Fantastico. Rikishi  is the general Japanese term for a sumo wrestler, similar to his cousin's ring name "Yokozuna". "Fatu" soon became "Phatu", until he dropped the last name entirely after he started teaming with Too Cool. No mention was made of his WWF past. He had gained some weight, bleached his hair blonde, and wore a mawashi. Per Vince McMahon's request and Fatu's own willingness to honor sumo tradition, nothing was worn underneath the mawashi and his buttcheeks were exposed; this was unlike Yokozuna, who wore tights underneath the loincloth, which both McMahon and Fatu felt were unnecessary for the Yokozuna character. His ring gear gained immediate attention; on his televised debut with the gimmick on WWF Metal, play-by-play announcer Kevin Kelly responded that he was "a little concerned with, well, Rikishi Fatu's well...garment, or lack thereof," with color commentator Tom Prichard responding that "there isn't much of a garment there!".

Rikishi briefly feuded with Viscera before forming a wildly popular alliance with the duo Too Cool (Grand Master Sexay and Scotty 2 Hotty). One night, during Too Cool's traditional post-match dance routine, Rikishi joined them. As the dance routines became more frequent and longer, this popularity translated to a significant push. In the 2000 Royal Rumble match, he and Too Cool did the dance to their respective songs, much to the delight of the audience. He later eliminated seven opponents, and it took six wrestlers working together to eliminate him.

Rikishi also became known for his infamous signature maneuver – the Stink Face – as his buttocks were rubbed into the faces of opposing wrestlers. When his opponent was incapacitated in the corner of the ring, Rikishi would slap his buttocks to indicate the attack, and then he would turn around, hike his thong up, and smother his buttocks into his victim's face. On an episode of WWE Raw on May 15, 2000, Stephanie McMahon described Rikishi's buttocks as "bulbous", "smelly" and "sweaty" when describing the Stink Face. Kurt Angle, who received a Stink Face from Rikishi, said, "It was the worst smell I ever smelt in my life." The Stink Face also served as a finishing move at times, as wrestlers became physically ill from the maneuver, forcing them to leave the ring and thereby losing via count out. The Stink Face became known as the most repulsive move in the World Wrestling Federation, and this humiliating maneuver became very popular with the fans.

In May 2000, fan favorites Rikishi and Too Cool feuded with Edge, Christian and Kurt Angle, culminating in a victory at Judgment Day. After winning the Intercontinental Championship from Chris Benoit on the June 22 episode of SmackDown!, Rikishi qualified for the 2000 King of the Ring tournament. On June 25, at King of the Ring, he defeated Benoit in the quarterfinals and Val Venis in the semis. Both opponents hit him with a steel chair after losing, weakening his shoulder and helping Kurt Angle defeat him in the final. Stemming from Venis' attack, Rikishi faced him on July 6 and lost the title after Tazz hit him with a television camera. They rematched in a steel cage at Fully Loaded. In this match, Rikishi climbed the cage and, in an allusion to Jimmy Snuka, splashed Venis from the top. Rikishi soon lost the match after Tazz again hit him with a camera.

Heel turn and main event status (2000–2001)
On the October 9 episode of Raw, Commissioner Mick Foley used a slip of the tongue from Scotty 2 Hotty to implicate Rikishi as the person who had run over Stone Cold Steve Austin almost a year earlier at Survivor Series, the night after Rikishi debuted in the WWF. Rikishi admitted it, claiming it was to allow his cousin The Rock an opportunity for stardom, insisting that Buddy Rogers, Bruno Sammartino, Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan and Austin – "The Great White Hope" – had always been pushed, at the expense of Samoan wrestlers like Peter Maivia, Jimmy Snuka, Samu, Yokozuna and The Rock. Rikishi then turned heel.

Austin immediately set out for revenge, facing Rikishi in a No Holds Barred match at No Mercy. The match went to a no contest when Austin dragged Rikishi to the parking lot and tried to run him over; a police car drove in front of Austin's, saving Rikishi. Though arrested, Austin had brutally attacked Rikishi, cutting and bruising his face. Later that night, Rikishi interfered in The Rock's WWF Championship defense against Kurt Angle, but "accidentally" kicked the champ, allowing Angle to Angle Slam them both and win the title. After several attacks on Austin by an unseen assailant, it became clear that Rikishi had an accomplice. During a handicap match pitting Rikishi and Angle against Austin, Triple H came to the ring, seemingly to aid Austin, but swerved the audience by attacking him with a sledgehammer. Triple H then revealed he had masterminded the Survivor Series assault and hired Rikishi to drive the car.

While Austin began feuding with Triple H, Rikishi's tension with The Rock boiled over. Despite delivering a Stink Face to the Rock, Rikishi would lose to him in a match at Survivor Series. He then participated in a six-man Hell in a Cell WWF Championship match at Armageddon. Vince McMahon drove a flatbed truck ringside in an effort to dismantle the cage and stop the match. Before he could, commissioner Mick Foley had McMahon, Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco forcibly removed from the arena by security. The Undertaker then chokeslammed Rikishi from the top of the cell onto the wood chip-covered bed. Kurt Angle later retained the title.

In January 2001, Rikishi won a Fatal Four Way match on SmackDown! for the #30 spot in the 2001 Royal Rumble match involving Rock, Undertaker and Kane, after he pinned the latter. There, he eliminated The Undertaker, and was soon eliminated by The Rock. Haku returned to the WWF in the Rumble, and he and Rikishi formed a tag team and feuded with The Brothers of Destruction, The Dudley Boyz then The Hardy Boyz. The team split while Rikishi was sidelined with an eardrum injury in March. He returned on the May 3 SmackDown! and fought The Undertaker to no-contest. On the next Raw, he turned face once again and gave the Stink Face to Stephanie McMahon after she distracted him and cost him a non-title match with Austin. On May 20, at Judgment Day, he injured his shoulder in the opening bout with William Regal, which caused him to miss much of the year and the entire Invasion angle.

Various storylines, reunion with Scotty 2 Hotty and departure (2001–2004)

Rikishi returned on December 6, 2001, delivering a Stink Face to Vince McMahon and solidifying his face status. Upon the WWF Brand Extension, Rikishi was drafted to the SmackDown! brand. At Judgment Day, he faced Billy and Chuck in a "secret partner" match. His partner turned out to be Rico, Billy and Chuck's stylist. Despite Rico's best efforts to unfairly help Billy and Chuck, Rikishi and Rico won the match and became the WWE Tag Team Champions. Rico would later cause Rikishi to lose the titles back to Billy and Chuck in a rematch on the June 6 episode of SmackDown!.

In early 2002, Hulk Hogan was booked to face Rikishi in Hogan's first match back since leaving the WWF to go to rival WCW in the 1990s. Hogan won the match, but Rikishi was able to deliver a Stink Face to Hogan after the conclusion of the match.

Rikishi was not featured much in late 2002 and early 2003. He feuded with John Cena, Bill DeMott, and The Full Blooded Italians on SmackDown!. The return of Roddy Piper led Rikishi to challenge him as Piper had hit Jimmy Snuka with a coconut years ago on Piper's Pit. At Backlash, Piper's protege Sean O'Haire defeated Rikishi after Piper got hit with a coconut by Rikishi giving O'Haire time to hit the Widowmaker on Rikishi. Rikishi eventually formed a tag team with Scotty 2 Hotty, and the duo defeated the Basham Brothers for the WWE Tag Team Championship on the February 5, 2004 episode of SmackDown!, holding them for two and a half months before losing them to Charlie Haas and Rico on the April 22 episode of SmackDown!. Fatu, however, was released by WWE on July 16, 2004, for not following up with clearance from an injury that had him out of action since April 22nd Smackdown.

Independent circuit (2004–2019)

After WWE, Fatu continued to wrestle on the independent circuit. In October 2005, he shortened his ring name to Kishi after being notified by WWE legal representatives that WWE owned a trademark on the name "Rikishi". Fatu, as Kishi, would go on to work for Nu-Wrestling Evolution, a professional wrestling promotion based in Italy.
On February 17, 2007, Fatu competed as SUMO RIKISHI in a tag team contest at an All Japan Pro Wrestling event, as he was brought in by Keiji Mutoh to feud with Akebono. On August 12, 2007, Fatu competed in an 8-man tag, as Rikishi, at AAA's TripleMania event. On August 23, Fatu competed in a Triple Threat match against Samoa Joe and Sterling James Keenan at Ballpark Brawl VIII in Buffalo, New York. On November 17, wrestling as Rikishi once again, Fatu defeated Mike Rollins at a Heavy on Wrestling event in Duluth, Minnesota.

His recent match was on March 23, 2019, Grind City Wrestling in Memphis, Tennessee at halftime of the Memphis Grizzlies vs. Minnesota Timberwolves NBA game teaming with Jerry Lawler to defeat The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner & Scott Steiner) for the inaugural GCW Tag Team Championship.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (2007)
On the September 13, 2007 episode of Impact!, Fatu debuted in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling under the ring name Junior Fatu. On the September 20 episode of Impact!, Fatu lost to Christian Cage in his first match due to a distraction by Christian's partner A.J. Styles. On the October 4 episode of Impact!, Fatu, Samoa Joe and The Latin American Xchange defeated Christian, Styles, Senshi and Christopher Daniels. On the October 11 episode of Impact!, Fatu and LAX lost a six-man tag team match to Kurt Angle and Team 3D. At Bound for Glory, Fatu competed in the Fight for the Right Reverse Battle Royal which was won by Eric Young. On the October 25 episode of Impact!, Fatu defeated Robert Roode in a Fight for the Right Tournament match after interference by Samoa Joe. On October 30, however, it was reported that Fatu had been released from TNA, because he and TNA management failed to reach an agreement about a pay raise. Chris Harris took Fatu's spot in the Fight for the Right semi-final match.

Sporadic WWE appearances and Hall of Famer (2012–2020)

Rikishi appeared with his family at the 2012 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony to induct his cousin Yokozuna. He then made an in-ring appearance on Raw on July 16, 2012, defeating Heath Slater. During the match, he used the Samoan Spike and the Banzai Drop (the latter having been used as a finishing move since his 1999 repackaging as Rikishi) as a tribute to his deceased brother Umaga and cousin Yokozuna, respectively. After the match, he danced with his sons Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso. He then reappeared on the 1,000th episode on July 23 with other Legends to help Lita take down Slater.

Rikishi next appeared on the January 6, 2014 episode of Raw, where he reunited with Too Cool to defeat 3MB in a six-man tag team match.

On the February 9, 2015 episode of Raw, Rikishi was announced as the newest member to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2015.  His sons, who wrestle as Jimmy and Jey Uso, inducted him into the Hall of Fame on March 28, 2015.

Rikishi appeared on WWE for the Raw Reunion show on July 22, 2019.

On November 22, 2020, he made an appearance at Survivor Series during The Undertaker's retirement ceremony.

Other media
Rikishi is a playable DLC character in the Attitude Era-themed video game WWE '13. He also appeared in WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role, WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It, WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth, WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain, WWE 2K16, WWE 2K17, WWE 2K18, WWE 2K19, WWE 2K22 and WWE 2K23. Outside of the main series, he is featured in WWF No Mercy, WWF Raw, WWE Raw 2, WWE WrestleMania X8 and WWE WrestleMania XIX.

Fatu appeared in the Italian comedy film Natale a Miami. He also guest starred on the Nickelodeon show Victorious, as a sumo wrestler in the episode "Brain Squeezers."

Fatu appeared in the Netflix original film Sandy Wexler.

Fatu appeared in "The Big Party" episode of The Big Show Show.

Fatu under his "Rikishi" ring name is the Samoan judge in the "Wall Of The World" on the CBS show The World's Best.

Personal life
Fatu is a member of the Anoa'i family, which has had a presence in professional wrestling since the mid-twentieth century. He is the twin brother of Sam "Tonga Kid" Fatu and the older brother of Eddie "Umaga" Fatu. Fatu's uncles Sika Anoa'i and Afa Anoa'i wrestled as The Wild Samoans.  Many of his cousins wrestled including: Rodney "Yokozuna" Anoa'i, Afa "Manu" Anoa'i Jr., Samula "Samu" Anoa'i, Matt "Rosey" Anoa'i, Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoa'i, Lance Anoa'i, and Lloyd "L.A. Smooth" Anoa'i. His father, Solofa Fatu Sr., died of complications related to COVID-19 on October 4, 2020.

Fatu and his wife Talisua Fuavai-Fatu have five children, including Joseph Yokozuna and twins Joshua Samuel and Jonathan Solofa. Joshua Samuel, Jonathan Solofa and Joseph Yokozuna are currently signed to WWE where Joshua performs on the Raw brand and Jonathan and Joseph perform on the Smackdown brand as Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso, and Solo Sikoa, respectively.

Championships and accomplishments
Lutte Internationale
Canadian International Television Championship (1 time)
Northern States Wrestling Alliance
NSWA Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Samu
Portland Wrestling
Portland Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
Power Pro Wrestling (Memphis)
Power Pro Wrestling Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Comeback of the Year (2000)
Ranked No. 27 of the top 500 singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 2000
Ranked No. 347 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003
Revolución Lucha Libre
Campeonato Internacional Absoluto (5 times)
Universal Wrestling Association
UWA World Trios Championship (1 time) – with Kokina Maximus and The Samoan Savage
World Class Wrestling Association
WCWA Texas Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Samu
WCWA World Tag Team Championship (3 times) – with Samu
World Wrestling Council
WWC Caribbean Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Samu
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment/WWE
WWF Intercontinental Championship (1 time)
World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Samu (1) and Rico (1)
WWE Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Scotty 2 Hotty
WWE Hall of Fame (Class of 2015)
 Slammy Award for Best Etiquette (1994) –
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Worst Worked Match of the Year (1993)

References

External links

 Rikishi Interview

1965 births
20th-century professional wrestlers
21st-century professional wrestlers
American male professional wrestlers
American people of Samoan descent
American professional wrestlers of Samoan descent
Anoa'i family
American shooting survivors
Living people
People from Poinciana, Florida
Professional wrestlers from California
Professional wrestlers who use face paint
Sportspeople from San Francisco
American twins
WWE Hall of Fame inductees
WWF/WWE Intercontinental Champions
UWA World Trios Champions
World Tag Team Champions (WWE)
WCWA World Tag Team Champions
WWE Raw Tag Team Champions

Rikishi (wrestler)


Keron Thomas (c. 1975 – July 22, 2013) is primarily known for posing as New York City Subway motorman "Regoberto Sabio" on May 8, 1993, and operating an A train in revenue service for over three hours, when he was sixteen years old.

Early life
Thomas was born in Trinidad as one of three children, and moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville with his family in 1990. He became interested in trains upon moving to New York, and avidly studied the New York Transit Authority's book of rules and regulations and its preparation book for the train operator's Civil Service test. In December 1992, he was arrested for trespassing at a train yard in East New York.

A Train fame
Thomas signed into the 207th Street Yard in Manhattan and proceeded to operate the train that originated at the 207th Street station. Thomas's actions went unnoticed by the passengers on board the R44-type train, who were safely picked up and discharged at normal station stops along the route. He completed the trip to the Lefferts Boulevard station in Queens (one of the three southern terminals of the line), and almost made the full round-trip. However, Thomas operated the train too quickly rounding a curve in Washington Heights, just a few stops from completing his route. This tripped the train's emergency brakes (BIE, "Brakes in Emergency") and Thomas was unable to reset them.

The full scope of Thomas's actions was discovered after he was taken to the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) headquarters for drug and alcohol testing, a standard policy after motormen are caught speeding. Despite his actions, Thomas came to be seen by some as something of a folk hero and, as a consequence, was spared jail time. The New York Times reported: "Duty-bound to make it clear that people may not play subway motorman whenever they like but wary of punishing a folk heroand a mere boy, at thatlaw-enforcement officials settled yesterday on three years' probation for the 16-year-old who took the controls of a subway train for three and a half hours in May."

After A Train
In 1994, aged eighteen, Thomas was charged with attempted murder after being accused of stabbing another teenager in a dispute over a dice game. As a result, the probation he had received for commandeering the subway train was extended.

Subsequently, Thomas became an electrician rather than a subway motorman because it provided a bigger income. Later in life, he owned a trucking company.

Death
Keron Thomas died on July 22, 2013, of heart failure at the age of 37. He had battled chronic heart failure for years.

See also
Darius McCollum

References

External links

1975 births
2013 deaths
Entertainers from Brooklyn
American people in rail transportation
Trinidad and Tobago emigrants to the United States

Keron Thomas


Avital Ronell ( ; born 15 April 1952) is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic languages and literature and comparative literature at New York University, where she co-directs the trauma and violence transdisciplinary studies program. As Jacques Derrida Professor of Philosophy, Ronell also teaches at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.

She has written about such topics as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone; the structure of the test in legal, pharmaceutical, artistic, scientific, Zen, and historical domains; stupidity; the disappearance of authority; childhood; and deficiency. Ronell is a founding editor of the journal Qui Parle and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

An eleven-month investigation at New York University determined that Ronell sexually harassed a male graduate student, and the university suspended her without pay for the 2018–2019 academic year.

Biography
Avital Ronell was born in Prague to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia. She emigrated to New York in 1956. She attended Rutgers Preparatory School and graduated in 1970. As a young immigrant, Ronell later stated, she frequently encountered xenophobia and anti-Semitism. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College, and subsequently studied with Jacob Taubes and Hans-Georg Gadamer at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her doctorate of philosophy in German studies at Princeton University in 1979, where her advisor was Stanley Corngold and her dissertation concerned self-reflection in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Franz Kafka. When she met Jacques Derrida at a symposium and he asked her name, she introduced herself as "Metaphysics", and he later wrote that he "found this little game rather clever." She subsequently studied with Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris. She went on to help introduce Derrida to American audiences by translating his essay on Kafka's "Before the Law", his essay on the law of gender/genre, his lectures on Nietzsche's relation to biography, and a number of other works. Ronell became a close friend of poet and novelist Pierre Alféri, Derrida's son, who later influenced Ronell in the titling of several of her major works. Alféri moved in with Ronell as a teenager following the revelation of his father's adultery.

A professor at the University of Virginia for a short time period, Ronell claims she was fired because she taught continental philosophy and "went to the gym on a regular basis: [her] colleagues were shocked by this—it didn't correspond to their image of an academic woman!" She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Riverside and then at University of California, Berkeley where she taught with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Judith Butler. She was a close friend of the writer Kathy Acker and identified with Acker's fiction, saying they were "destined to each other." In 1996, she moved to New York University, where she co-taught a course with Jacques Derrida until 2004.

In 2009, the Centre Pompidou invited Ronell to hold an interview series with such artists and thinkers as Werner Herzog, Judith Butler, Dennis Cooper, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Suzanne Doppelt. Also in 2009, she began co-teaching courses with Slavoj Žižek. In 2010, François Noudelmann also co-taught with her, and co-curated the Walls and Bridges program with her in 2011.

Ronell served as Chair to the Division of Philosophy and Literature and to the Division of Comparative Literature at the Modern Language Association from 1993 to 1996, and gave a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in 2012.

Overview of works
Ronell argues for "the necessity of the unintelligible." In an account of the 1992 Rodney King beating, Ronell argued that the idiom of the "perfectly clear" recurrently serves as a code for the white lie. Instead of referring to herself as the author of a text, she has sometimes described herself as a "signatory," "operator," or even "television." She sometimes focuses on thinkers who clean up after other thinkers, arguing that what she calls "sanitation departments" sometimes undermine the work they are tidying up after.

Dictations: On Haunted Writing (1986)
Ronell investigates one of Goethe's most influential works, Conversations with Eckermann, which he did not write but instead dictated to a young schizoid companion, Johannes Peter Eckermann. Heralded by Nietzsche as "the best German book," Conversations with Eckermann contains Goethe's last thoughts about art, poetry, politics, religion, and the fate of German literature and philosophy. Ronell reads Conversations with Eckermann as a return from beyond the grave of the great master of German literature and science.

Ronell starts by exploring Goethe's focus on "a certain domain of immateriality—the nonsubstantializable apparitions ... [of] weather forecasting ... ghosts, dreams, and some forms of hidden, telepathic transmissions." Ronell renames the Goethe-effect what she calls "killer texts" and describes the effect as the textual machination destructive of values, of the "worthier (Werther, from The Sorrows of Young Werther)." The first part opens on Freud's debt to Goethe and reprints the frontispiece of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Ronell names Goethe the "secret councilor (Geheimrat)" of Freud and already anticipates her work on the Rat Man in the third footnote where she alludes to the "suppository logic, inserting the vital element into the narrative of the other." In the first section Ronell aims to "attune [her] ears to the telepathic orders that Goethe's phantom transmitted to Freud by a remote control system.

In general, Dictations: On Haunted Writing traces the closure without end of influence's computation. Ronell's task entails a reading practice where the analysis of a text must investigate the endless movement towards closure in dictation. Ronell thus practices what is called anasemic reading, a practice developed by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, in which the psychoanalyst traces the textual metaphors, rhetorical structures, and linguistic associations of a writer/patient.

"Part Two" presents a case of literary parasitism between Eckermann and Goethe, and opens at the scene of Goethe's table in Weimar "the eleventh of September 1828, at two o'clock." In other words, Ronell re-imagines the scene that Eckermann illustrates at the beginning and ending of Conversations with Eckermann. Ronell starts to address the fiction of the writer as a particularly admirable human being and argues for the necessary passivity of the writer as a human being. Ronell also troubles the notion of a body of work as a totality. Ronell remaps earlier arguments about feminine appropriation in terms of writing, for Eckermann, which "involves recuperating something 'for myself,' for the most part instinctively; it entails repetitive acts of appropriation."

Dictations: On Haunted Writing explores how the work of writing in general adheres to a call dictated from elsewhere, a call formative of desire.

The Telephone Book: Technology — Schizophrenia — Electric Speech (1989)
Ronell questions the operations that such ordinary objects as the telephone and book dictate. She signs the text as the operator of the switchboard alongside Richard Eckersley, operator of design, and Michael Jensen, operator of compositor. Eckersley's design departs from his "typographic subtlety and restraint" towards a computer design, marked by new page-making software programs to interpret the text typographically. Eckersley dislodges the text from presumed conventional settings and shifts the focus of reading with inexplicable gaps, displacements between sentences and paragraphs, mirror imaging of pages facing one another, words blurred to the point of indecipherability, and a regular exaggeration of negative line spacing, spilling sentences over into each other. Pushing the limits of an ordinary "Table of Contents" or "Footnotes," the operators set up a "Directory Assistance," in which chapters appear as reference indexes, and a yellow pages entitled "Classified," in which footnotes appear as soliciting advertisements.

Following "A User's Manual," the text begins as if the reader answers a call: "And yet, you're saying yes, almost automatically, suddenly, sometimes irreversibly." Ronell makes clear that The Telephone Book is a philosophical project on questions concerning the telephone, the call, and the answering machines: "always incomplete, always unreachable, forever promising at once its essence and its existence, philosophy identifies itself finally with this promise, which is to say, with its own unreachability."

Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania (1992)
Ronell takes as her point of departure Nietzsche's position that, as long as culture has existed, it has supported and inspired addiction. She develops an argument investigating destructive desires that coincide with the war on drugs and with the very addiction to drugs which the war claims to want to vanquish. The text intends to disturb simple comprehension of drugs on one side or another of a binary opposition.

Finitude's Score: Essays for the End of the Millennium (1994)
Research assistant and friend, Shireen R.K. Patell, helped bring Finitude's Score to fruition. Finitude's Score collects a series of reflections on the fragile memory left at the close of the millennium. It looks into the projects responsible for devastating humanity and a thinking of the future. Ronell asks why the twentieth century stakes so much on a diction of deficiency. For Ronell, it says that, "we have been depleted." Ronell traces the relegitimization of war, the philosophical status of the rumor, the questionable force of the police, the test sites of technology, the corporeal policies of disease and a thoroughgoing reconstitution of the subject of law. In sum, Finitude's Score reads the desire to finish once and for all, to be done with issues definitively, as the everlasting legacy of the Western logos.

Reception

Ronell's work has been both praised and criticized. In 1994, the journal Diacritics published a special edition "On the Work of Avital Ronell", in which Jonathan Culler wrote: "Over the past decade, Ronell has put together what must be one of the most remarkable critical oeuvres of our era ... Zeugmatically yoking the slang of pop culture with philosophical analysis, forcing the confrontation of high literature and technology or drug culture, Avital Ronell produces sentences that startle, irritate, illuminate. At once hilarious and refractory, her books are like no others." Judith Butler has said she feels deeply indebted to Ronell's influence on her work and wrote in an edited collection Reading Ronell: "The different path that Ronell takes is precisely the path of difference: gay, difficult, affirmative, ironic." The collection's editor Diane Davis highlighted the "singular provocation of Ronell's 'remarkable critical oeuvre,'" "the devastating insights, the unprecedented writing style, the relentless destabilizations." In the sixth session of The Beast and the Sovereign on February 6 of 2002, Jacques Derrida devoted special attention to Ronell's Stupidity and commends the untranslatable complexity of her "irony."

By contrast, in a 1990 review of The Telephone Book for the New York Times Book Review, novelist Robert Coover appreciated the "visual pyrotechnics" of the book's typography but found "the argument… to be that of a fairly conventional academic paper, recognizably party-lined with fashionable Continental voices like Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida," and found the connection that Ronell tried to establish between Heidegger, schizophrenia, and the telephone "weak." In a 2002 review of Stupidity for the Times Literary Supplement, philosopher Jonathan Rée said Ronell's "prose reads like a plodding translation of a French version of Heidegger, but there is hardly a sentence that does not try to stop the show to receive an ovation for its cleverness." Bernd Hüppauf (former chair of the German department at NYU who hired Ronell but was later replaced by her) similarly described her work as "translating incomprehensibility into pseudo-profundity."

Sexual conduct investigation and suspension
In September 2017, a student, later identified as her male former graduate student Nimrod Reitman, filed a complaint in New York University's Title IX office accusing Ronell of sexual harassment, sexual assault, stalking, and retaliation over the span of three years, when she served as his doctoral supervisor. In May 2018, the university found Ronell responsible for sexual harassment and suspended her for the 2018–19 academic year. Ronell never admitted to sexual harassment, claiming that both parties' emails contained "exaggerated expressions of tenderness" because they are "both gay," not because she was sexually harassing him. On August 16, 2018, Reitman filed a lawsuit against Ronell and the university, alleging sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking.

Brian Leiter published a letter dated May 11, 2018 to NYU written in defense of Ronell. The letter was written and signed by major figures in the areas of feminism, queer theory, philosophy, literature, and history, including Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Joan Scott, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jean-Luc Nancy, and others. Additionally, Lisa Duggan and Chris Kraus published blog posts denying Ronell's sexual harassment charges.

The letter was subsequently criticized for suggesting that Ronell should be excused on the basis of the significance of her academic contributions and for imputing a "malicious intention" to Reitman. The #MeToo movement came under scrutiny as feminist scholars continued to support Ronell, despite the charges of sexual misconduct. Butler later regretted some wording of the letter and regretted implying "that Ronell's status and reputation earn her differential treatment of any kind." Žižek argued that Ronell's years long sexual harassment of Reitman was "a series of acts of eccentricity." Duggan called Ronell's emails to Reitman "practices of queer intimacy."

Providing historical and institutional context, an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books argued that Ronell's inappropriate conduct was intimately linked to the power that she wields within the humanities as a "theory star."
Political scientist Corey Robin noted that "Ronell's largest claims were on his time, on his life, on his attention and energy".
Writer and critic Andrea Long Chu in The Chronicle of Higher Education described her experiences as a teaching assistant for Ronell at NYU, which made her believe Reitman's allegations. Noting that Ronell seemed to have felt 'persecuted' even while teaching, Andrea Long Chu argued that Ronell's desire for Reitman to make her 'feel loved' stemmed not from feeling 'entitle[d]' by 'status' to 'fuck'[sic] students, but, on the contrary, because "the relentless misogyny of the university" still seemed present to her:

Ronell returned to teaching at NYU in the fall of 2019. Her course, "Unsettled Scores: Theories of Grievance, Stuckness, & Boundary Troubles," was advertised on campus with a flyer asking: "How have we secretly internalized penitentiary structures?" Ronell's return caused protests and frequent demands by student groups for her termination, such as the petition circulated by the graduate-student workers' union, carrying some 600 signatures, which called upon NYU to fire Ronell, a demand that was endorsed by NYU's Student Government general assembly. In February 2020, she took a semester-long leave of absence. As of fall, 2023, Ronell continues to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses at NYU.

Selected honors and awards
 1995–1996: University of California President's Fellowship
 1993: Research Fellow Award
 1991: American Cultures Fellowship
 1981–1983: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Fellowship

Publications (selected)

Books
 (2018) Complaint: Grievance among Friends
 (2012) Loser Sons: Politics and Authority ()
 (2010) Fighting Theory: In Conversation with Anne Dufourmantelle () trans. by Catherine Porter from French
 (2010) Lignes de Front () trans. from English by Daniel Loayza
 (2008) The ÜberReader: Selected Works of Avital Ronell () (ed. Diane Davis)
 (2007) Life Extreme: An Illustrated Guide to New Life () co-authored by Eduardo Kac
 (2006) American philo: Entretiens avec Anne Dufourmantelle ()
 (2005) The Test Drive ()
 (2002) Stupidity ()
 (1994) Finitude's Score: Essays for the End of the Millennium ()
 (1992) Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania ()
 (1989) The Telephone Book: Technology — Schizophrenia — Electric Speech ()
 (1986) Dictations: On Haunted Writing ()

References

Further reading
 Ed. Jonathan Culler, Vol. 24, No. 4, "Special Section: On the Work of Avital Ronell," (Winter 1994), The Johns Hopkins University Press.
 Diane Davis, "'Addicted to Love'; Or, Toward an Inessential Solidarity" in JAC 19, No. 4 (Fall 1999)
 Ed. Diane Davis, Reading Ronell, Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009 :
 Ed. Diane Davis, The ÜberReader: Selected Works of Avital Ronell, Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009 :
 Mina Cheon, Shamanism + Cyberspace, New York: Atropos Press, 2009 :

External links

 Biography (archived) – Department of Comparative Literature at New York University
 Biography (archived) – European Graduate School
 Diane D. Davis. Avital Ronell Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech

1952 births
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
American women philosophers
American literary theorists
Semiticists
Princeton University alumni
Israeli women philosophers
Gender studies academics
Jewish American writers
Jewish philosophers
Comparative literature academics
Deconstruction
Academic staff of European Graduate School
Israeli literary critics
Israeli women literary critics
Literary critics of German
Literature educators
American women educators
Israeli women educators
American literary critics
American women literary critics
Living people
American people of Israeli descent
Translators of Jacques Derrida
Political philosophers
Poststructuralists
20th-century translators
21st-century translators
Rutgers Preparatory School alumni
21st-century American women
American women critics
New York University faculty
New York University Department of German faculty
Professors of German in the United States
Philosophers of technology
MeToo movement

Avital Ronell


Hernando Arias de Saavedra (September 10, 1561 – 1634), commonly known as Hernandarias, was a soldier and politician of criollo ancestry.  He was the first person born in the Americas to become a governor of a European colony in the New World, serving two terms as governor of Governorate of the Río de la Plata, 1597–1599 and 1602–1609, and one of the Governorate of Paraguay 1615–1617.

Early life
Hernandarias was born in Asunción, colonial Paraguay as the second son of María de Sanabria and Martín Suárez, an officer under Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. He had a sister, Juana de Saavedra, who later married Juan de Garay, the father of Jerónima de Contreras. His maternal grandparents were Diego de Sanabria and Mencia Calderón de Sanabria, who were wealthy from their holdings in Paraguay.

He entered the military at an early age. He participated in the exploration and conquest of the territory of what is now Paraguay and Argentina.  His talents as an officer and administrator led to his being named lieutenant-governor of Asunción in 1592 by Juan Ramírez Velasco. He served three terms.  While claiming most officials from Spain or Peru were lazy or corrupt, the new governor Diego Rodríguez Valdés Vanda y Lugarteniente wrote about Hernandarias:

In the same period, Hernandarias' half-brother, Hernando de Trejo, was named bishop of the Roman Catholic see of Asunción.

Governor of Rio de la Plata
In 1596 Hernandarias was elected as Lieutenant-Governor of the Rio de la Plata province, including Buenos Aires.  In 1597, upon the death of governor Valdés Vanda, King Phillip II ordered captain Francisco de Barraza to name a new governor of the province of Rio de la Plata.  Hernandarias was elected unanimously by the caudillo in Asunción as the governor of Rio de la Plata province, including Buenos Aires.

Hernandarias served three terms as governor: 1597–1599, 1602–1609, and 1615–1617.  As governor, he enacted a number of policies to stimulate the growth of what was at that time a small port town.  These included the creation of the first primary schools, kilns for creating bricks and tiles to replace adobe as a construction material, and the rebuilding of a fortress to protect the city from pirates.  Following the capture of two anchored ships by English privateers on March 18, 1607, he ordered the construction of a larger fort at the mouth of the Matanza River, in what is now the neighborhood of Vuelta de Rocha.  He also enacted measures against smuggling caused by prohibitions on import, export and the African slave trade.  During his term as governor of Buenos Aires, Hernandarias started several expeditions, including ones to Uruguay and Brazil to rein in the Portuguese bandeirantes, explore the Patagonia, survey the navigability of rivers and to find the mythical City of the Caesars.  Eventually in 1604, he was captured by the native Mapuche around 1,000 km south of Buenos Aires. He escaped and survived.

In 1603, Hernandarias changed the rules on Amerindian workers, ending the mita and encomienda labor systems. The Spanish had essentially depended on native labor in exchange for nominally converting them to Christianity.  He gained approval for this reform from King Phillip III. In 1608 he arranged the creation of the Jesuit and Franciscan reductions in the region of Guayrá (modern Paraguay). While it relocated many natives, compared to the previous system, it protected them from the ranchers and the encomienda. In 1611, visiting judge Francisco de Alfaro ordered the emancipation of all natives working on encomiendas who had been converted by the Jesuits. His proclamation is known as the Ordenanzas de Alfaro.

As Governor of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata, Hernandarias at the beginning of the 17th century opposed the burgeoning mate industry. He thought it was an unhealthy bad habit, and that too much of the Indian workforce was consumed the drink.  He ordered an end to the production in the Governorate of the Río de la Plata, while seeking approval from the Crown. It rejected his ban, as did the people involved in production, who never complied with the order.

Cathedral of Buenos Aires
Hernandarias was directly involved in the relocation of the church in Buenos Aires in 1603.  In 1616 craftsmen determined that the church's roof was deteriorating, and, in the course of repairs, the church collapsed. 1618 Hernandarias led the effort to construct the Cathedral of Buenos Aires.  Working with carpenter Pascual Ramírez, Hernandarias secured a supply of lumber from Paraguay as well as labor from Spanish colonists and converted natives.  On the construction of the Cathedral, Hernandarias wrote in a letter about the construction of the Cathedral:

Official decrees
On September 7, 1614 Hernandarias was named governor of Buenos Aires for his third and final term. He assumed the post on May 29, 1615. He introduced an initiative to split the Río de la Plata district in two: the Province of Buenos Aires, and the Province of Paraguay, including the settlements of Asunción, Santiago de Jerez, Villa Rica and Ciudad Real.  Though ordered in 1617, the partition needed the approval of the king, which was granted in 1618. The change was not carried out until 1620.  After the expiry of his term in 1617, Hernandarias was succeeded as governor by Diego de Góngora.

Marriage and family
In his personal life, he was married to Jerónima de Contreras with whom he had three daughters: Gerónima, Isabel and María Hernandarias retired with his wife to Santa Fe, Argentina, where he died in 1634 at the age of 72.
His remains and those of his wife were interred at the convent of San Francisco, in Santa Fe.

Legacy
 The Hernandarias District of Paraguay was named for him, as were the city of Hernandarias, Argentina in Paraná District, and the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel in Argentina.

Cattle introduction in the Banda Oriental

In 1604 Hernandarias traveled six month along Uruguay and Negro rivers looking for wood, coal and canes supplies on the Uruguay River Eastern Bank (Spanish: Banda Oriental). On his return to Buenos Aires he reported to King Felipe III of Spain describing those lands as excellent for cattle raising, and suggesting they be populated. The King didn´t heed his advice but in 1610 he deeded Hernandarias with the "Natural Peoples Protector" title and two islands at the confluence of Uruguay and negro rivers, present day Vizcaíno and Lobos islands. In 1611 Hernandarias disembarked fifty heifers and some bulls in Lobos Island and reached an agreement with the natives to protect animals with calves. He repeated the operation in 1617 with another fifty animals and the same number in San Gabriel Island on the Colonia coast. This act originated a great cattle herd in the region, the exploitation of which was determinant in the historical processes lending to colonization of present day Uruguay, so far overlooked by Spaniards.

The territory pastures proved to be very favourable for bovine reproduction, and the abundance of cattle attracted portuguese incursions from Brazil, Colonia del Sacramento foundation by Portugal (1678)  and Montevideo foundation by Spain (1726).

References

External links

Spanish colonial governors and administrators
16th-century Spanish military personnel
Governors of Paraguay
Governors of the Río de la Plata
1561 births
1634 deaths
Explorers of South America
Explorers of Argentina
Argentine military personnel
Argentine people of Spanish descent
Stockbreeding in Uruguay
Paraguayan people of Spanish descent
People from Asunción
People from Santa Fe, Argentina
Viceroyalty of Peru people
17th-century Spanish military personnel

Hernando Arias de Saavedra


Fieldia australis, usually referred to as fieldia, is a small climbing plant or epiphyte found in eastern Australian rainforests. Commonly seen in the cooler rainforests at higher altitudes. It also grows in the warmer rainforests with a high humidity. The plant uses adventitious roots to grip hold of tree trunks, mossy rocks or tree ferns.

Leaves are 3 to 7 cm long 1 to 3 cm wide, reverse ovate or elliptical in shape with toothed edges. The leaf stem is around 8 mm long. Flowering occurs mostly in summer or autumn, being an attractive, relatively long thin white flower. The fruit is a whitish berry with some purple markings. Egg-shaped or oblong, 1 to 3 cm long, and around 11 mm in diameter.

Taxonomy
Fieldia australis was originally described and placed in its own genus Fieldia by botanist Allan Cunningham in 1825. The name Fieldia honours Barron Field (1786–1846), judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, amateur naturalist and editor of the book Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales in which the genus and species name were first published. A second species, Fieldia australiana, was subsequently described.

References

Gesnerioideae
Epiphytes
Flora of New South Wales
Flora of Queensland
Flora of Victoria (state)
Monotypic Lamiales genera
Gesneriaceae genera

Fieldia australis