Openings: Breach, Black Liveliness, and the Curriculum-as-Event

• In Event: Knowing Otherwise: Methods, Archives and Educational Research Reimagined through Black Radical Traditions

Abstract

Whereas educational institutions exist in the afterlife of the plantation, of the Middle Passage, of enslavement, of capture, geographies—the practice and study of mapping the world and its inhabitants—and pedagogy—the practice and study of teaching—converge in the curriculum-as-event. That is, the curriculum is a site and process—the how—for determining what it means to be human. Wynter’s (1994) critique of the academy, and specifically the curriculum-as-event, as an anti-Black assemblage that structures and underwrites physiological and neurobiological desires and emotions—affect—about Blackness is of importance, as this organization normalizes and replicates the order of knowledge. Following the seeds of Black critical theory, the work, then, is two-part: to notice and breach the patterns (McKittrick, 2021). Otherwise stated, even as the sociopolitical forces that constitute racializing assemblages (Weheliye, 2014) hold steady, the hold is not total (Sharpe, 2016; Spillers, 1987; Wynter, n.d.). There are openings. Openings as interregnums—as interval, invitation, and introduction—can serve as a point of rupture. Breach.

Theoretical Framework
I am interested in how breach occurs in the curriculum-as-event—small openings that annotate an otherwise and give shape and texture to Black liveliness and living. Specifically, in this paper I ask: How might Black poetics intervene on the racializing affect of the curriculum-as-event? To pursue this question conceptually, I deploy the loophole of retreat (Jacobs, 1987) as a theoretical framework. Loopholes of retreat function as material and metaphorical openings that rupture geographic and pedagogical modalities that constrain the sight, sound, and expressions of Black living (Okello, 2024).

Mode of Inquiry and Data Sources
In doing so, I employ Black feminist autoethnography (Boylorn, 2013, 2016) to conduct a reflective and situated close reading of my teaching and public speaking in formal and informal education settings between 2015–2025. During that time period, I have performed more than 100 invited/keynote presentations alongside my formal teaching courses in higher education settings.
As part of my practice, I open every class session or speaking event with a sample of Black knowledge or cultural production—a poem, reading excerpt, personal story, or otherwise. I home in on my use of a poem by Assata Shakur titled “Affirmations,” and others like it, distilling the poem as the aesthetic site that enables listeners to encounter Black being in its particularities.

Substantiated Conclusions
An examination of this opening yielded several considerations for pedagogy and curricular design. Namely, the openings enunciate the Black quotidian, pierce affective atmospheres, and evidence—that is, leave traces of—Black living. These findings deepen understandings of the curriculum-as-event as a site where affect can be reshaped through aesthetic and relational strategies. In the full paper, I elaborate on each of these findings and their potentialities for educational contexts.

Scholarly Significance of the Study or Work
This study puts forth the loophole of retreat as a generative framework, and poetics and performance as sites and methods of inquiry that see, come alongside, and take seriously Black liveliness and living in and beyond educational contexts.

Author

• Wilson Kwamogi Okello, Pennsylvania State University