Pulling Ourselves Together: Embracing Black Feminist Reparative Theory and Pedagogy in “Post-George Floyd” Higher Education

Abstract

This article considers how institutions of higher education participated in the national “racial reckoning” that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Using the work of Pan-Africanist jurist Motsoko Pheko, memoirist Sisonke Msimang, poet Audre Lorde, and Black queer feminist critics Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and M. Jacqui Alexander, the authors reflect on the principled research practices and ethos that catalyze sustainable repair. Durable forms of repair include reconnecting the feeling body with the knowing self, stillness, and tarrying. The authors (two doctoral students and a professor colleague) also consider repair through attention to the material conditions of knowledge production (collaborative writing, reclaiming the sacred, and questioning what it means to make something whole without reproducing a singular dominating episteme) to disrupt academic hierarchies. Arguing that repairing society, the planet, or the ways that questions are asked and answered requires ongoing wrestling with our current climate of racial terror in higher education, this article embodies the authors’ reparative principles and envisions paths towards educational justice.

Keywords

• reparative principles
• Black feminist pedagogies
• post-George Floyd higher education
• cross-talk