Due to the limitations of meaning-making theory that absolve history of its dynamic and lasting effects on minoritized existence in the present and rely on an organizing principle that formulates the subject-object relationship as synonymous with a more complex and evolving self (a trajectory that leads to self-authorship), this research study proposed that educators consider an alternative approach to theory construction. What would happen if educators and researchers squarely centered the [Black] body in a sociopolitical (Okello, 2018) context that considers the historical, social, political, affective, and physiological tenets of one’s existence?
I deployed a Black feminist literary criticism to analyze four decades of Black existentialism and three critical scenes in the development of my artistry. This methodology enabled me to clarify what Lisa Anderson (2008) calls a Black feminist aesthetic, or “the elements of the text/performance that invoke a particular history, politics, or philosophy of a `community’ (broadly construed)” (p. 115). Moreover, this methodology instructs my analysis to key into themes and strategies theorized through Joy James’ (1999) concept of limbos, which considers the various ways Black bodies progressively move forward despite the vulnerability of their positions. This approach responds directly to my purpose and research questions that seek to discern how Black bodies make meaning and decisions inside their social worlds, given the precarity of their allotment by asking two guiding research questions: How has the [Black] body been schooled?; and How might examining the present-day condition of Black bodies in conversation with literary records of Black existentialism contribute to the deconstruction and reconstruction of self-authorship theory? Situating the present day Black body in conversation with classical theorists—classical by definition, “relates to the most highly developed stage of an earlier civilization and its culture” (Brown, 2009, xvii)—of Black existentialism, assisted me in bringing attention a theoretical canon that has long been ignored in canonical meaning making literature. By sitting with the textual teachings of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, in conversation with my performance archive/memories, I demonstrate the ways in which Black existential discourse contributes to the deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning-making theory, specifically self-authorship. Self-definition (Okello, 2018) emerges as a theory in the flesh (Hurtado, 2003; Johnson, 2001; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981) and departure from self-authorship, moving away from the embrace of the subject-object principle of theorizing.
Self-definition was pieced together bone by bone, from the thoughts, labor, and genius of Black creatives, as to hold a Black body in a Western, United States context and survive, is to be creative. The aesthetics of self-definition, which I have outlined as validating standpoint knowledge, prioritizing self-love, emphasizing agency, foregrounding identity as performative, and dreaming/imagining futures, limbo in and against the shifting rules in society, across history, demonstrating the jointed agility and creativity of black meaning-making structures. Ever moving forward, this was recovery work and the first mapping of its kind, laying the groundwork for the third-wave of student development theory.