Re(cover)ing Revelations: Formulating Black Ancestral Text Analysis in Education Research

Abstract

Traditional research on Blackness in education often renders Black people nonhuman (Wynter, 1994). In this article, we formulate Black ancestral text analysis, a qualitative research method in which Black thinkers excavate the ancestral knowledges offered in intellectual texts. Our method rejects the white gaze of counting and condemning Black people in education research by reflecting on Black interiority and analyzing the texts that Black intellectuals produce. This article offers a set of research protocol questions to guide an analysis of how Black thinkers re(cover) un/seen, embodied, and alternative knowledges from multigenre historical and literary texts. Through this qualitative approach, we gather information about the texts, including knowledge about the story, the storyteller/storytelling, and the storage (the archival collection). Further, through deep meditation, we come to understand ancestral knowledge, or alternative forms of knowledge when reflecting on the un/seen and the silences in texts. Black ancestral text analysis emerged from a curiosity to explore alternative forms of knowledge and recovery in education research. We present an example of this ancestral knowledge excavation process using Wynter’s critique of the inner eye, school curriculum, student activism outlined in news articles, and Alvin Ailey’s (1960) “Revelations.” We conclude with a discussion of the communal obligations and ethical commitments of abstracting alternative knowledges within Black education research.