Pedagogies of Abolition: A Phenomenological Exploration of Radical Study in Black Trans Communities

• In Event: Engaging Education Work in and With LGBTQ+ People and Communities

Abstract

This paper draws on research that takes up what abolitionist scholar Meyerhoff (2019) refers to as the education-carcerality nexus, an analysis of “the co-constitutive relations between the education-based mode of study and process of criminalization, policing, and incarceration” (p. 206). This analysis puts “education itself into question” (p. 205), theorizing that education is “a specific mode of study, not a universal one” (p.15), creating the opportunity to explore alternative modes of study (including Black radical study) that share the abolitionist commitments of creating a world without police and prisons.

My study is a phenomenological exploration of how pedagogies of abolition manifests in the everyday lives of Black trans folks. I define the phenomenon pedagogies of abolition as the process of teaching/learning an abolitionist praxis (Author B, 2022). Abolitionist praxis serves as a Black radical mode of study (Meyerhoff, 2019) working to transform our reliance on carceral state power and the logic that perpetuates it. This study specifically asks: how do pedagogies of abolition manifest in the everyday lives of Black trans folks? and how do those manifestations teach us how to study in abolitionist ways? Using an informal study group to create a fugitive network (Harney & Moten, 2013) of Black trans folks committed to abolition, the researcher studies with and alongside the group to articulate where and how these pedagogical moments manifest and work to shape our abolitionist world-making practices.

This study explores three specific manifestations of pedagogies of abolition: relational ethic, embodied knowledge and holding change, both within the study group itself and in the lives of the participants. The three manifestations explored in this study illuminate the ways in which (modes of) study that center relationality, embodied ways of knowing and intentional building of collective spaces, create methods to enact an abolitionist praxis in our everyday lives. Grounded in the researcher’s experiences as a Black trans community educator, this research explores Black trans life as inherently pedagogical, teaching new ways of being and knowing that do not rely on carcerality, anti-Blackness, and gender based violence.

Author

• Qui Alexander, University of Toronto