“We Must Become Undisciplined”: Reimaging Black Education through Black Epistemologies

• In Event: Black Roots and Reservoirs: Reclaiming Black Education Through Radical Everyday Knowledge Cultivation

Abstract

This essay synthesizes literature and critical theories across multiple disciplines to reimagine the possibilities of Black education when we center Black epistemologies. I employ Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) to theorize the educational experiences of Black people navigating educational policies and practices that maintain anti-black, white hegemonic understandings of knowing (Dumas, 2016; Dumas & ross, 2016). In my conceptual framework, I define blackness by its social relationality and structural position rather than racial identity alone (Hartman, 2022; Sharpe, 2016).

The inclusion of Folklore and Performance Studies contributes to the review of literature by highlighting memory, embodied knowledges, oral traditions, and story-telling practices that inform Black epistemologies (Conquergood, 2002; Lifson, 2024; Taylor, 2003). Lastly, I utilize wake work as a theoretical and conceptual framework to rethink how we might become undisciplined in reimagining Black education (Sharpe, 2016).

I review literature related to my topic of Black epistemologies in formal and informal contexts. I describe formal contexts as situated within the public school system or other formal education settings. I describe informal contexts outside the public school system and other formal education settings. I utilized a modified synthesis technique for analyzing the literature based on the work of Strauss and Corbin (1990, 1998). Incorporating Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1998) in the synthesizing method allowed me to analyze the literature extensively, highlighting related phrases, theories, and concepts while centering my theoretical and conceptual frameworks.

The literature suggests the existence of a repertoire of embodied literacies, which engage ephemeral and ineffable knowledge that is not easily reproduced or codified into words (Conquergood, 2002; Lifson, 2024; Taylor, 2003). Embodied literacies are formed at the margins of society and the bottom of the socio-racial hierarchy, known through one’s bodily and racialized experiences (Conquergood, 2002; Lifson, 2024; Ramirez, 2014). Based on these findings, I argue that everyday practices and performances function as text, shaping memory and Black epistemologies that shape education and sustain the Black community (Hartman, 2022; Lifson, 2024; Morrison, 1998).

This paper is a starting point for what it might look like to use modes and methods of research and teaching rooted in Black epistemologies. Sharpe (2008) suggests modes and methods of research and teaching that undo the “racial calculus and…political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago” (p. 6). I recommend multi-disciplinary approaches to research and praxis that help to reimagine Black education through embodied literacies, oral traditions, story-telling, and (re)memory. This paper contributes to the existing literature by centering Black epistemologies and multi-disciplinary approaches to education in the wake.

Author

• Cambria Conley, University of Maryland