Black life beyond injury: Relational repair and the reparative conjuncture

Abstract

In our political present, shaped by the insurgent recognition of the consequences of antiblackness following the murder of George Floyd, but whose influence is quickly expiring, this article examines what the possibilities are for African American reparations. Thinking from this reparative conjuncture, the article examines the societal and ethical limitations of what kind of reparations this moment can produce. Identifying that the harms against African Americans and Black life in the Americas more generally are harms against Black relations, the article engages with the possibility of the relational discipline of Black ecologies to offer a framework for conceptualizing a full sense of reparation. However, in recognizing that Blackness as conceived within Black studies, and thus Black ecologies, is still largely limited to a commitment to the study of antiblack violence and its related practices of resistance, the article advances novel pathways for pursuing a formula for repair outside the terms of Black injury, which might produce relational repair.