Black Feminisms in Composition: Position Statement
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What type of writing, reading, composition, or literacy practices do racialized individuals need to navigate social structures? Inversely, how have social structures written, read, and composed racialized individuals, particularly women/femmes/butch of color? To me, Black feminisms in composition engage with these questions in committed, ethical, and intellectual ways. I'm pretty loose with the "composing" process--visuals, audio, video, markings on wall. However, I am about acknowledging and engaging the human vis-à-vis (white) Man in every iteration of composing and compositions.
Aimee Meredith Cox’s Shapeshifters exemplifies this particular stance: |
I ask that instead of approaching their stories as narrative puzzles to be solved by superficially affixing them to the theoretical perspectives developed through Black feminism, queer theory, youth cultural, and girlhood studies, for example, we explore their potential to inform and transform theory and thereby, its ripple effect on policy and material realities. |
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While I don’t think scholars of color “superficially” affix lived realities to theoretical perspectives, I appreciate the imperative to see black girls' experiences for what they are rather than imposing constructs, beliefs, values, and practices on them. Prolonged interaction with individuals creates a new lens to view scholarship, so this reason may have incited Cox's statement--or the historically colonial gaze of ethnography. In any instance, I agree with Cox in her request to place academic theories secondary to lived experience. Simultaneously, I place lived experience (as theory) at the forefront. In this regard, I'm all right with intuition, gut-feeling, or straight up unexplainable rejection to historically academic forms of knowing/being/existing.
Wynter and Weheliye writings really speak to me as well. Particularly, I take to their efforts in challenging current notions of the Human and by extension Humanity. In her reading of The Temptest, Wynter identifies an “ontological absence” through Caliban’s non-existent partner. This ontological absence has pretty serious consequences because, as Wynter demonstrates, “socio-systemic hierarchies” emerge. Weheliye contributes to this discussion in his efforts to “disentangle Man from the human." In other words, the Humanities, as they exist now, historically and currently exclude people and “spaces deemed void of full human life." What this means is that the Humanities must include Black ontologies and epistemologies to actualize the very idea, ideal, and practice of Humanity. Through these different efforts, Black feminisms in composition inscribe themselves—through writing or through their body—into Humanity. At an instructional level, Black feminisms in composition seem to interrogate pedagogy because of the adultification of girls. It’s a problem because this adultification criminalizes black girls, which sets them up for more reprimands, harsher punishments, and ultimately, higher incarceration rates. Consequently, this adultification leads me to a belief that black girl andragogies may apply more faithfully to an instructional situation in K-12 settings than a pedagogy. A pedagogy implies a child learning in a safe setting, but andragogy carries particular connotations. From an andragogical position, the “traditional” student is displaced for a non-traditional one. And realistically, black girls, or any ethnic/racial minority, don't typically constitute a traditional student. Therefore, I advance the concept of andragogy to situation black girls learning in school because of the adultification currently in process. Nevertheless, pedagogy should be the goal. |
(From left to right) Kayla Sparks, Angela Mack, Cody Jackson. Photograph by José Luis Cano
The Human(ities)
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The enactment, understanding, and study of the human serves as the locus of the Humanities, especially in its responsibility to engage with meaning. Sylvia Wynter's "Afterword: 'Beyond Miranda's Meanings: Un/silencing the 'Demonic Ground' of Caliban's 'Woman'" and Alexander G. Weheliye's Habeas Viscus demand for a more complete conception of the Human to articulate a missing component of meaning and meaning-making practices. Wynter points out that the secularization of Western Europe replaced a supernatural law for a Natural Law. This substitution fortified an "ontological absence" in which The Temptest's Caliban's non-existent mate serves as a prime example. The absence of Caliban’s mate, a native/savage woman, constitutes an ontological absence, so every meaning and meaning-making practice after this ontological absence produces a partial conception of the totality of meaning because a “savage” woman is muted. In other words, the ontological absence produced a system of meaning devoid of an entire presence, an entire human. Therefore, an ontological absence renders incomplete meanings and meaning-making practices--an incompleteness that harms the human and Humanities. Wynter advocates for a "demonic ground" that acknowledges, contemplates, enacts, voices, and centers this ontological absence. In conversation with Wynter, Weheliye advances his method to arrive at a humanity outside of Man, in other words, from a "demonic ground." Weheliye lists manifestos from various racialized groups--for example, The Combahee River Collective Statement; Trail of Broken Treaties: For Renewal of Contracts--Reconstruction of Indian Communities and Securing an Indian Future in America!; Third World Women's Alliance, Black Woman's Manifesto; and Zapatista Manifesto--as his inspiration. In this sense, his racialized assemblages networks the various racialized discourses into the conversation of the Human in the modern west from a transnational scope. Therefore, Weheliye conceives the "Man versus Human battle" as an ontological and epistemic ground where every racialized group relationally plays a role. Jointly, Wynter and Weheliye identify a huge gap in the ideal, practice, and concept of the Human. By extension, the Humanities writ large suffers from this gap. As a scholar, then, I seek to use this understanding of the Human to inform meaning and meaning-making practices. The Humanities possess a responsibility to seek, find, and incorporate the Human outside of Man so as to dictate new modes of being and meaning. While I'm not standing on "demonic ground" yet, this particular goal can be reached by incorporating Black feminisms. The map below highlights a few topics I found through Black feminisms.
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[I]n the context of our specific socio-human realities, a "demonic order" outside the "consolidated field" of our present mode of being/feeling/knowing, as well as of multiple discourses, their regulatory systems of meaning and interpretive "readings", through which alone these modes, as varying expressions of human "life," including ours, can effect their respective autopeosis as such specific modes of being. Black Studies and other incarnations of racialized minority discourse offer pathways to understandings of suffering that serve as the speculative blueprint for new forms of humanity. |
Mapping Black Feminisms | Mapping Humanities
IlLegible Bodies
Their reflections on why their lives unfold in ways they do, as well as the decisions they make and the actions they do and do not take because of this, are the basis of my theoretical framework. My feminist qualitative inquiry methodology engages experience as evidence, the evidence of felt intuition, witnessing, testifying, and testimonio, and theory in the flesh. I do not seek verifiable or replicable "proof." |
Black bodies form the locus of Black Feminist Thought. Yet, black bodies--and even wider, bodies of color--still require more presence in post-secondary institutions. As of May 2019, Black females account for 2% of full-time professors. (Black males and Latino males each account for 2% of full-time professors. Latina females, American Indian/Alaskan native, and individuals of two (or more) races each comprise less than 1% of full-time professors.) Therefore, I consider black female bodies as currently illegible to most post-secondary institutions. In a literal sense, the demographics barely make a mark in the composition of the post-secondary landscape. In another sense, scholarship that considers and inscribes the experiences of black bodies still require more committed attention and dedicated resources. Legibility implies readability. Black bodies can read their situations, yet institutions often fail in their ways of reading black bodies, so I'll consider these institutions as illiterate in this regard. Aimee Meredith Cox's Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship and Mel Michelle Lewis's "A genuine article: Intersectionality, Black lesbian gender expression, and the feminist pedagogical project" contribute inscribing these experiences in ways institutions can read them. They do so carefully, methodically, and boldly.
Cox builds a theoretical framework that focuses the choreography--circumstances, decision-making, and maneuvering--of her participants. Many of the individuals in Shapeshifters navigate through a "struggly" situation, which "requires strength to get through but does not offer strategies to get out." In essence, a struggly situation overloads many methodological approaches. The impact of racial, economic, social, structural, gendered, and sexualized forces present circumstances that few theoretical frameworks can account for comprehensively. Consequently, Cox employs a theoretical framework that understands her participants' experiences in the materiality and decision-making itself. In Lewis's "A genuine article," Professor Deborah encounters a loaded situation: [T]his is my point, there's race....Then, there's gender, there's sexuality, and so I don't know, but I know it was a loaded moment." These intersecting identities (over)load moments and ensuing interactions. Making these nuanced moments legible requires encapsulating intangible characteristics, which may or may not transpire again. Therefore, Lewis's feminist qualitative inquiry methodology doesn't subject experiences to verifiability or replicability. Through this approach, Lewis makes legible the experiences of black bodies. In essence, these scholars center experiences, reflections, decision-making, and intuitions as "theoretical frameworks" to understand and make legible lived realities commonly misunderstood or excluded from institutions and scholarship. |
Monumented Bodies
The Case for Andragogy
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The term pedagogy implies educating children. Andragogy encompasses adults. Specifically, andragogy has a close relationship with developmental education in the post-secondary setting. In this setting, the "non-traditional" student works at the heart of instruction. Given the punishment, pushout, and criminalization of black girls at the K-12 level, I find it more fitting to consider andragogy as the type of approach currently in place, for the system treats them like adults. Simultaneously, andragogy forcibly de-centers an imagined white student in the US public education system. In the context of andragogy, reading and composing practices demand (re)articulation.
The purpose of reading and texts selected to achieve this purpose deserves methodical contemplation. The acknowledgment of a multi-modal method of reading has expanded notions of the act of reading. Primarily, digital platforms have impressed their presence on these reading practices. Nevertheless, a less acknowledged act of reading emerges from the ability to read racialized situations. Black girls, time and time again, have articulated their ability to read their social situation in school systems and in society at large. So, how does this reading practice impact English Language Arts and literacy in general? This particular reading practice should, at minimum, interrogate traditional notions of reading and reading skills. For instance, in Texas, reading comprehension focuses on the metacognitive level of reading, so the texts themselves remain undefined. For educators, this opens up the possibilities for selecting texts: situations, books, websites, images, sounds, or other. Nevertheless, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) at elementary, middle, and high school levels create certain limitations with their language, which directs attention toward "correct" and "traditional" acts of reading. Standardized exams further exacerbate this teaching freedom. Hence, on the one hand, I'm illustrating the larger goal of reading as a metacognitive and embodied act, which lends itself to reading racial situations, economic situations, gendered situations, sexualized situations. On the other hand, I'm acknowledging the heavy impediments at practicing this form of reading. Yet, the possibility exists. Writing carries with it the connotation of alphabetic and linear writing. Consequently, I'll use the term composition as it encapsulates the act of composing in broader ranges, that is, in the making of texts in multiple spheres. Black girls compose texts. K-12 settings should strive toward these acts of composing. As Cox demonstrates, black girls compose their bodies to write themselves through struggly situations and compose their own citizenship in these contexts. In a more traditional angle, the topics of composition can shift. The rise of urban fiction as a genre depicts possible and needed topics for reflection and composition. From a pedagogical perspective, prison systems, drug abuse, domestic violence--issues discussed in urban fiction--present topics that may seem outside of scope. From an andragogical perspective, these topics (or themes) fall squarely in its parameters. These topics engage with lived experiences of many individuals. The ability to theorize composing, identify existing composing practices, and enact these compositions in the class offers great flexibility and possibility to educators and their students. While I advocate for andragogy as a more appropriate term and practice, it serves to draw attention to the state of literacy for black girls (they exist as adults in education systems) and to de-center a white curriculum. In a social and economic system that makes it difficult for black girls to succeed, education must engage with their lived realities, which means engaging in reading and composing practices that enhance their social and material conditions. Hopefully, pedagogy can apply as a term and practice soon. |
