Mule of the World: Gendered Antiblackness and the Invention of the Nonhuman Anti-Citizen

• In Event: Run Dat Back: Situating the Race for Theory and Antiblackness in Education Through Black Women Theorizing

Abstract

Purpose
Anti-blackness should be understood as inherently gendered as opposed to an ancillary experience that fastens anti-Black racism to the masculine subject by default (Beale, 1971/2008, 1981; Collins, 2009; Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 1991; Davis, 1981; González, 1988; Hartman, 2008; Smith, 1985). In the ethos of #SayHerName, we can only apprehend the totality of anti-blackness and its roots in capitalistic exploitation, forced labor, and sexual violence through a gendered analysis (Davis, 1981; Walker, 1972). It is this very gendered element that traces the “ink of [anti-]citizenship” through which “nations etch and scratch their borders onto human flesh” (Patel, 2017, p. 62), make Black women into “the mule of the world” (Walker, 1972, p. 405), and transtemporally turn Black women’s “womb into a factory producing blackness as abjection...” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 74).

The purpose of this article is to serve as a provocation to rethink our philosophies, theories, and paradigms in tandem with rethinking citizenship within the domain of anti. We know that historically, “certain subjects have always been outside the right to citizenship” (Gomes & Rodrigues, 2018, p. 3). In terms of theorizing citizenship, scholars must also ask how the field is [not] equipped with the theoretical and analytic tools necessary to apprehend global white supremacy (Allen, 2001; Beliso-De Jesús & Pierre, 2019; Winant, 2008), the paradox of Black anti-citizenship, and its relationship to gendered transnational anti-blackness?

Theoretical Framework
To extend the conversations beyond CRT alone and deal with the global dimensions, we draw from BlackCrit in education (Dumas & ross, 2016) as it explains how “Black bodies become marginalized, disregarded, and disdained, even in their highly visible place within celebratory discourses on race and diversity” (p. 417). We propose that BlackCrit can be used to advance a global theorization of the paradox of Black citizenship. In doing so, we return to introductory examples to further explicate—vis-a-vis BlackCrit’s framing ideas—how transnational gendered anti-Black racism functions across geopolitical boundaries. Finally, we posit that BlackCrit in tandem with postcolonial, decolonial, African Diaspora, and transnational Black feminist studies more aptly captures racial capitalism and systems of coloniality at play in discussions of gendered transnational anti-Black racism.

Methods/Modes of Inquiry/Data Sources
To frame our argument, we draw from anecdotes of gendered anti-blackness in Colombia, Canada, and the U.S. to make hemispheric parallels for our global treatment. We use BlackCrit as the point to return to the work of Spillers, Sharpe, and Wynter as commentary on BlackCrit’s three guiding principles.

Arguments/Conclusion/Significance
In this article, we add to the BlackCrit theoretical project but in doing so return to Ladson-Billing and Tate’s (1995) original treatise to begin scholarly treatments of racism in education with the concept of citizenship and the denial of, which are both funded by anti-blackness. Our article is simultaneously a provocation to suspend our “critical” lexicon of both citizenship and racism in the same manner that Black life was and continues to be suspended in the Middle Passage (Hartman, 2007, 2008, 2016).

Authors

• Tianna Dowie-Chin, University of Florida

• Christopher L. Busey, University of Florida