Naming the Unseen Wounds: Introducing Spirit Lynching as Public Spiritual Violence in Higher Education

• In Event: From Spirit Lynching to Radical Well-Being: Kinship as Resistance to Violence in Higher Education

Abstract

This presentation introduces spirit lynching as a critical analytic to describe public, racialized-gendered forms of spiritual violence enacted within and by institutions of higher education. While the concept of spirit murder, first introduced by Williams (1987) and later theorized by Love (2016), has been used to understand how educational systems devastate the minds, bodies, and spirits of students and faculty of color, we argue that this framework requires an urgent expansion. In the context of academic spaces where harm is often both systemic and public, we advance the term spirit lynching to name a specific form of collective, often spectacular violence that is public, witnessed, and socially amplified.
Spirit lynching operates at the intersection of institutional betrayal, racialized-gendered precarity, and performance. It targets those most vulnerable within the academic hierarchy, particularly Black women, through mechanisms that include public accusation, online mobbing, institutional complicity, and professional ostracization. While spirit murder can be subtle, slow, and institutionalized, spirit lynching is sudden, shaming, and performative. It weaponizes the spectacle, inviting both bystanders and perpetrators to participate in or witness the symbolic annihilation of the scholar’s spiritual core.

Drawing from a critical collaborative autoethnographic analysis (Davis et al., 2021) of an incident at an academic research conference, we recount how one of us became the target of an orchestrated public attack, an assault that began in person but was quickly amplified through social media. The incident was not isolated; it was emblematic of a recurring pattern within academic culture, where internalized coloniality and white fragility fuel a collective hunger for ritualized sacrifice, often at the expense of outspoken or vulnerable minoritized faculty. The attack operated through the logics of misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey and expanded by Trudy (Bailey & Trudy, 2018), to name the intersecting racial and gendered violence that targets Black women. Our case is a manifestation of misogynoir in real time: a punishment for audacity, for confidence, for presence.
Spirit lynching is also epistemic violence. It calls into question the legitimacy of the scholar’s intellect, labor, and belonging. It is often cloaked in the language of accountability or ethical concern, which makes it harder to detect and more difficult to challenge. But the impact is visceral: insomnia, fear, disassociation, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and spiritual fragmentation. By naming this phenomenon, we aim to provide scholars with a framework that more accurately describes their experiences, while also holding institutions accountable for the role they play in staging and legitimizing these acts.

Ultimately, this presentation situates spirit lynching as a useful analytic for scholars, administrators, and educational researchers committed to building more humane academic cultures. It directly addresses the AERA 2025 theme by unearthing and naming a painful but persistent history within the field of education research, while also setting the stage for future work rooted in healing, accountability, and resistance. We invite the audience to reflect on the structures that enable spirit lynching, and to join us in imagining responses rooted in care, clarity, and collective transformation.

Author

• Candice Peters, Appalachian State University