Rest as Resistance: A Redefinition of Being, Doing, Work, and Stillness.

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Rest as an Extraordinary Literacy: Black Women Educators Reclaiming Power Through Stillness, Silence, Silliness, and Refusal

Abstract

This paper draws on sacred and spiritual frameworks to interrogate capitalist orientations of being and doing. Drawing equally from Hersey’s rest as resistance (2022, 2024) and Staples-Dixon’s (2023, 2024) theory of extraordinary literacies, this presentation argues that Black women’s rest practices constitute embodied literacies of refusal, reclamation, and divine redefinition. Within this framework, the body becomes both author and archive, rejecting surveillance and inscribing truth through stillness—an act of sociospiritual agency (Staples-Dixon, 2023, 2024).
A profound tension exists between sacred worldviews that regard the body as a vessel of the spirit and economic ideologies that reduce the body to an instrument of production. This paper contends that authentic doing is the sacred work of generating life and spiritual transformation, in stark contrast to the capitalist ethos that equates personhood with perpetual output. Neoliberalism, the Protestant Work Ethic (Weber & Kalberg, 2013), and the myth of the “strong Black woman” all collude to entrench this logic. Though often cast as a celebration of resilience, this myth operates as a mechanism of harm—burdening Black women with toxic expectations of over-functioning and self-sacrifice, often at the expense of their well-being and spiritual integrity.
The biblical counter-narrative of Mary and Martha of Bethany offers a revelatory paradigm shift: rest is not merely the absence of activity, but a sacred disruption of grind culture. While Martha embodies anxious productivity, Mary practices radical stillness, choosing divine presence over performance. Framed as an extraordinary literacy, this stillness becomes a spiritual technology through which Black women reclaim ownership over their bodies, labor, and personhood.
This reclamation is crucial in educational institutions, where Black women are often compelled toward overachievement simply to affirm their belonging. Rest, as sacred praxis, offers an alternative epistemology—anchored in empyreal dialectics—that liberates Black women to redefine the conditions of work and knowledge production. Sufficient work should be enough; work authored by a body at rest.
References
Collins, P. H. (2022). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
Easwaran, E. (Trans.). (2007). The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press. (Original work approximately 5th-2nd century BCE)
Irenaeus of Lyons. (1885). Against heresies. In A. Roberts & J. Donaldson (Eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. 1). Christian Literature Publishing Co. (Original work approximately 180 CE)
Nag Hammadi Library in English. (1990). (J. M. Robinson, Ed.). HarperOne. (Original texts 2nd–4th century CE)
Plato. (1977). Phaedo (G.M.A. Grube, Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work approximately 380 BCE)
Taylor, J. H. (2001). Death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt. University of Chicago Press.
Upanishads. (n.d.). (e.g., Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad). (Original works approximately 800-400 BCE)
Weber, M., & Kalberg, S. (2013). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Routledge.

Author

• Phoebe Quaynor, Pennsylvania State University