‘We’re Each Other’s Harvest’: Deviant Emotions as Catalysts in Black MaGes’ Activism”

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Explaining Movement Participation: Threats, Grievances and Emotions

Abstract

This article examines how Black people of marginalized genders (Black MaGes) mobilize deviant emotions—fear, anger, and mistrust—as catalysts for protest participation. Using 20 interviews with participants in Black Lives Matter and Women’s March protests (2017–2021) across the United States and employing a Black feminist love-politics framework to contextualize these emotions as rational, sustaining forces for activism rather than disruptive inhibitors. Fear manifests as a tangible sense of proximity to death and as an embodied experience; anger appears in both suppressed and direct expressions, while trust varies based on protest makeup and perceived inclusivity. Participants leveraged these emotions to assert agency, prioritize care, and challenge movements’ exclusionary practices. By centering Black MaGes experiences, the study extends challenges to social movement research, which pathologizes such emotions, instead positioning them as vital to movement engagement. This reorientation highlights how Black MaGes transform stigmatized emotional responses into tools for engagement, advancing scholarship on the affective dimensions of racial and gender justice movements.

Author

• Jalia L. Joseph, James Madison University