Sounding Black: Fugitively Fungible Black Sound in Ethnographies of Communication in Education

• In Event: Uncovering Ideologies Behind Discourse of Educational Narrative, Policy, and Curriculum Across Time

Abstract

This study works toward (re-)imagining Black futurity in language education. Adopting the framework of Black fungibility (e.g., Hartman, 2017) this study examines un(der)valued yet radically generative Black speakerhood. A genealogical textual analysis of ethnographies of communication that catalyzed Black cultural “mismatch” discourses demonstrates continuity between mismatch and deprivation discourses, with both representing “pathological” Black “matriarchy,” chaotic, antagonistic language socialization, and fungible Black speakers. This study proposes that Black speakers’ extensive “signifyin(g)” (e.g., Gates, 1988; Mitchell-Kernan, 1972), or language figuration, in the archive is a form of “fugitive fungibility” (e.g., Snorton, 2017), i.e., how blackness fluidly responds to white incursion. This reframing provides space to explore new Black subjectivities in language education.

Author

• Justin Pannell, The University of Pennsylvania