Rethinking Blackness: Some Concluding Thoughts on Power and Knowledge

Abstract

In this chapter, I share some concluding thoughts on writing the book, by highlighting particular struggles at the curious interface of skin, body, psyche, hegemonies, and politics. Re-theorizing Blackness has not been easy; given that we do have certain hegemonic understandings of Black identity and Blackness making it difficult to dispense. Bringing a sense of agency and resistance to Blackness, and not being afraid to engage in the radical politics of Blackness and Black identity, have been essential for discursive and intellectual politics. It is noted that a critical study of Blackness as an alternative to Western approaches to schooling and education cannot be pursued outside the prism of African philosophy and Indigenous cultural knowings. A study of Blackness should place local cultural knowledge and community voices in the educational discourses and practices for change. Moreover, a study of Blackness should also lead to questioning the relevance of academic scholarship for local communities (e.g., the curricular, pedagogic and instructional implications, and the scholarship’s relevance to addressing social problems that afflict our myriad communities today). Such intellectual pursuits contribute to making us whole, engaged, and committed “scholars.” But more important, the pursuit of community and creating “communities of learners” where Black and African scholarship is recognized and excellence mentored is also key to Black success. At the end of it all this is about a search for Black unity with an end goal of Black power (e.g., intellectual agency and power). Advancing a way forward to [re]theorizing Blackness, a framework for analyzing power relations is crucial. This is where Mbembe’s conception of necropower is relevant as a critique of our institutions and in understanding anti-Black racism and the Black body in settler societies. In rethinking power in relation to Blackness and Black identity however, I want us to be working with power as not necessarily repressive, but productive in terms of self-actualization, resistance, and coming to voice. We must acknowledge that Blackness in itself is a point of self-affirmation and reclaiming.