Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet
Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture
Bryant Keith Alexander, Mary E. Weems, Dominique C. Hill, Durell M. Callier
- 230 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet
Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture
Bryant Keith Alexander, Mary E. Weems, Dominique C. Hill, Durell M. Callier
About This Book
Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet promotes the importance of intergenerational Black dialogue as a collaborative spirit-making across race, genders, sexualities, and cultures to bridge time and space.
The authors enter this dialogue in a crisis moment: a crisis moment at the confluence of a pandemic, the national political transition of leadership in the United States, the necessary rise of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color activism—in the face of the continued murders of unarmed Black and queer people by police. And as each author mourns the loss of loved ones who have left us through illness, the contiguity of time, or murder, we all hold tight to each other and to memory as an act of keeping them alive in our hearts and actions, remembrance as an act of resistance so that the circle will be unbroken. But they also come together in the spirit of hope, the hope that bleeds the borders between generations of Black teacher-artist-scholars, the hope that we find in each other's joy and laughter, andthe hope that comes when we hear both stories of struggle and strife and stories of celebration and smile that lead to possibilities and potentialities of our collective being and becoming—as a people.
So, the authors offer stories of witness, resistance, and gettin' ovah, stories that serve as a road map from Black history and heritage to a Black futurity that is mythic and imagined but that can also be actualized and embodied, now. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and activists in a wide range of disciplines across the social sciences and performance studies.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Section V B(l)ack Talk
In the world of the southern black community I grew up in, “back talk” and “talking back” meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure. It meant daring to disagree and sometimes it just meant having an opinion…. Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is not mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice.2
Notes
- Here I also use this construction of “a tripartite of reflection, refraction, and reflexivity” in my discussions on autoethnography as qualitative methodology. The most recent of such discussions will appear in Alexander, B.K. “Teaching and engaging autoethnography as qualitative methodology” in the conference proceedings: Pasque, P. A. & Alexander, E. (Eds.). (2021). Advancing culturally responsive research and researchers: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. New York: Routledge. From the 1st Annual Advanced Methods Institute (AMI) Conference (Theme: Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers) sponsored by The Ohio State University, College of Education & Human Ecology—June 2, 2021. Columbus, OH.
- See hooks, bell (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston, MA: South End Press, 5, 9.
- See Smitherman, G. (1994). Black talk: Words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.