“Fight Like Hell”: Witnessing Performances of Black (un)Mothering in the Carceral State

• In Event: Wading in the Waters of Black Diaspora Memory, Embodied Archives, Performative Resistance

Description for Program

This paper explores my experience transforming ethnographic interviews centered on the embodied knowledges of Black women who survived pregnancy during incarceration, into a staged public performance. I reflect on the act of witnessing lived experienced as a political act and the responsibilities I felt as an ethnographer to represent interlocutors on their terms on the page and on the stage. I argue that putting one's body in a place of collaborative sharing communicates reciprocity of engagement and kinship. I also recount the journey of producing, directing, and writing a multivocal piece shaped by the interlocutors who who involved from start to finish, including their physical presence. I ask how performance as a communal practice, can transform social change and advocacy as public-facing art.

Author

• Megan Foster, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill