Transnational Perspectives on Black Subjectivity

In this article, five black researchers bring their insights into conversation about meanings of blackness in contemporary Australia, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. We critically interrogate blackness transnationally, but also within the historical contexts of our work and lived experiences. Situated within critical race studies, we draw on multiple theoretical frameworks that seek to preserve the complexity of blackness, its meanings and implications. We examine what it means to be made black by history and context, and explore the im/possibilities of transcending such subjectification. In so doing, we engage blackness and its relationality to whiteness; the historical, temporal and spatial dimensions of what it means to be black; the embodied, affective and psychical components of black subjectivity; and the continued marketization of blackness today. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise of continued engagement with black subjectivity, but with critical reflexivity, so as to avoid the pitfalls of engaging blackness as a static and essentialised mode of subjectivity.