Echoes Without Sanctuary: A Black Queer Feminist Methodology of Grief

• In Event: Reorienting Method: Counter-Story, Embodiment, and Refusal as Currency in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

This paper introduces Grief as Method through the Black Queer Feminist methodology of Fractal Threading. Engaging the lynching archive Without Sanctuary, it names Fugitive Witnessing as a praxis that honors the embodied, nonlinear temporality of Black grief. Rather than seeking resolution, this methodology listens for rupture, resonance, and refusal. It positions the archive not as a site of neutrality or evidence, but as a threshold for return. This work refuses redemptive coherence and centers the ache of inherited memory. It is not a study of grief, but an offering through it—a methodology for those marked as unarchivable, for those living otherwise.

Author

• Ashley Williams, University of Georgia