"All Necks Are on the Line"

• In Event: Just Research/ers: Resisting Censorship and Mis-Education/Advancing Human Freedom Collectively

Abstract

An intergenerational duo auto-Afronography paper opens the Symposium. An activist scholar and community-based activist researcher analyze what is at stake in the current political climate: censorship threats to academic freedom reinforce the coercive nature of assimilationist mis-education. The Cambridge dictionary individualistically interprets what the idiom “neck on the line” means: “to do something that you know might fail.” This analysis embraces Noble Laureate, but now banned author, Toni Morrison’s communal standpoint: “As far as the future is concerned . . .when one writes as critic or as author [or researcher], all necks are on the line”. This paper affirms the moral obligation/s of just researcher/ers to use collective inquiry to support critical militant education. Research examples presented develop and use the epistemic authority of those whose knowledge is de-valued and whose lives are expendable. The point is not just to “interpret the world” but to mobilize just research/ers to change it-- in the Black Studies/Black radical tradition of collective study and struggle to advance human freedom.

Authors

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author

• Mosi Deterville-Makori, Sankofa Cultural Institute, New Orleans
  Presenting Author