Still, nobody mean more: Engaging black feminist pedagogies on questions of the citizen and human in anti-Blackqueer times

Abstract

ABSTRACTStill, Nobody Mean More explores how Black youth constructed as queer subjects by state apparatuses and sociocultural institutions encounter, survive, and resist premature death. Engaging with women and queer of color theories this paper interrogates how the queerness of Blackness works to erase certain subjects from contemporary political campaigns eliding claims to the status option or protection of the citizen and/or human. Specifically, this paper, through the cases of recently slain Baltimoreans, Mya Hall, Korryn Gaines, and Freddie Gray, explores the question embedded in #BlackLivesMatter – do they, and which ones? Illustrating how discourses of difference structure and mediate value, this paper ultimately turns to Black queer feminist pedagogies to imagine otherwise.