Watching From Below: Dark Sousveillance of Black High Schoolers

• In Event: From Early Childhood to Educational Researchers: Foucault and Contemporary Theory in Education

Abstract

I explore how Black high school students practice dark sousveillance or outmaneuver white supremacy at their school. Simone Browne took guidance from Foucault’s panopticon to theorize about the constant surveillance that Black people experience. Unique from Foucault, Browne theorized U.S. Black life, and noted that despite discipline, Black people forge ahead demanding justice. Thus, Black student voices within this paper are necessary to make visible the concealment conducted by the larger society’s disciplinary methods that render blackness as deserving of punishment. Black students’ epistemologies are used to extend Browne’s theory. Understanding dark sousveillance is important because behaviors from Black students (e.g., “talking back”) deemed as troublesome are rooted in racialized (mis)understandings. This paper disrupts harmful perceptions of Black students’ actions.

Author

• Janelle Grant, Purdue University
  Presenting Author