Those Loud Black Girls Making Spaces of Something Like Freedom: Black Womxn and Academia

• In Event: Beyond Coursework and Research Projects: Mentorship of and by QTBIPOC Scholars Toward Collective Transformation

Abstract

In the current socio-political climate, academic institutions are quick to distribute “Black Lives Matter” statements while upholding systems of anti-black oppression. This dialogue centers the praxis of two Black womxn researchers who loudly declare that abolition is a matter of making systemic change felt in the lives of Black people, particularly Black womxn, girls and gender expansive femmes. This dialogue asks, in what ways are Black womxn calling upon their inner lives/feelings and those of other Black womxn to make spaces for “something like freedom” while conducting abolitionist research and at what cost?

Black womxn scholars in academia are punished, disciplined and excluded from university spaces in similar ways to Black girls and gender expansive femmes in K-12 schools (Nash, 2019; Morris, 2017; Shange, 2019; Fordham, 1993). Black womanist and feminist theorists draw these linkages to feelings as “inner lives” by hooks and “felt life” by Nash, to reveal the generational cycles of repression, surveillance and disciplining of Black womxn’s embodied expression (Nash, 2019; hooks, 2015; Sharpe, 2008). bell hooks (2015) explains, “it was only in carefully cultivated spaces of social resistance, that slaves could give vent to repressed feelings.” Given the normalization of violence against Black femmes, abolitionist research processes must be guided by what Sharpe calls an “ethical trinity”of “caring, seeing, and of being in the wake of Black dispossession (Shange, 2019).” I center the concept of “inner” life as an area of important “mutual recognition” among Black womxn to address the toxicity of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy embedded in private and public life (hooks, 1994).

This dialogue opens a space-time to revisit an old timer’s research process where the newcomer was a participant. These two scholars come together to ponder the geographies of surveillance navigated by Black womxn researchers and educators making spaces “of something like freedom” within and outside of academia (Shange, 2019). Thus, this dialogue sits at the confluence of Black women’s “inner lives' ' and “fugitive” research processes that create love amid the “(im)possibility of liberation”(Shange, 2019). hooks describes this method of producing knowledge through deep reflection as an evidence of love’s presence and an act which has the power to heal (hooks, 2015). bell hooks explains, “when we know love, when we are able to search our memories and see the past with new eyes; we are able to transform the present and dream the future. Such is love’s power. Love heals (hooks, 2015; pg.111).” As an act of reflecting together, this session explores how their research relationship moved to mentorship and healing.

The old-timer scholar writes in text that certain affective exchanges “woke me up” which resulted in her making changes in the research process. The dialogue offers a means to learn and feel from each scholar's perspective and revisit the “unfinished nature of long-term fieldwork” (Shange, 2019; hooks, 2015). The dialogue will explore the development of the relationship between researcher and participant and how their inner lives shaped the research process and opened possibilities for the future.

Authors

• Noor Maria Jones-Bey, New York University

• Savannah Shange-Binion, University of Pennsylvania