Theorizing "Freedom" and "Affect" Through the History of Black Education: A New Analytical Framework

• In Event: 68.021 - Innovations: Exploring Theoretical and Methodological Approaches in the History of Black Education

Abstract

Popular framings of Black educational history rely on the iconic Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois debate on industrial vs. classical education. Such framings obscure deeper conceptual understandings about schooling and Black life. I reimagine the Black educational trajectory by mining the reoccurring historical trope of ‘education as a bridge to freedom.’ Employing affect theory (Ahmed, 2004), and its critical assertion that emotions do work in mobilizing communities, this paper demonstrates how Black Americans’ longing for freedom shaped their educational pursuits, forming a “Black educational heritage.” This paper explores “Black educational heritage” as an historical framework that widens the aperture of educational possibilities when studying or teaching about Black education during the 19th century and beyond.

I analyze historical scholarship using critical theory on affect and freedom to offer three claims. First, the convergence of the common school movement, abolitionist ideology, and anti-literacy laws (discourse) informed Black America’s belief in ‘education as a bridge to freedom.’ Second, the embodiment of this ideal by those who sought freedom provided currency for the project of Black education moving forward. Lastly, by exploring freedom, affect, and education at their intersection, scholars of Black education can offer more precise grammar in our analysis of the historical archive.

Many scholars have underscored the kinship between education and freedom, but this cultural view has been under-theorized for its analytical uses (Douglass, 1855; Williams, 2007; Anderson 1988; Woodson, 1915; Hager, 2013; Franklin, 1981). Harding (1981) recounted how even “before their freedom from slavery had been officially recognized by the nation…the black community was …defining their own freedom…Freedom meant education.” (p. 265). Williams (2007) offered, “It made perfect sense that someone who had climbed into a hole in the woods to attend school would, in freedom, sacrifice time and money to build a schoolhouse” (p. 5).

By attending to the work of feelings, affect theory (Ahmed, 2004) works to bifurcate the emotional and imaginative elements of Black education that are entrenched in intellectual and institutional histories. An affective reading picks up where the archive fails us (Trouillot, 1995; Hartman, 2008). Thus far, we have only been able to say that Black people saw education and freedom as inextricably bound—this is not enough. Previous analyses fall short in articulating the heaviness of education, when we measure it against the types of risks and sacrifices Black people made to acquire it.

Affect theory facilitates a more precise interpretation of how schooling was affixed in the minds of the most abject and dispossessed of American society. What did it mean for Black people to covet education as freedom? How should this distinct cultural perspective inform our analysis of Black educational history in the contemporary moment? “Black educational heritage” urges scholars to consider how education and freedom have been culturally valued by Black America as a first step in our process of inquiry. It offers a more expansive view of educational possibility, and moves beyond worn frameworks that have previously limited the scope of our analysis.

Author

• Jarvis Ray Givens, Harvard University