Black Radical Becoming: The Politics of Identification in Permanent Transformation

Abstract

In this article, I develop an argument about the radical nature of black politics that is based on individual and collective becoming. The process of becoming is immanent to blackness, which can be understood as a dynamic collective reservoir marked by time, space, and power. Such collective reservoir is not only in constant transformation, but also can be accessed though countless routes — for example, art, spirituality, and political organizing. Thus, as black people, we are always becoming black. While the understanding and employment of the concept of race are central to these forms of political blackness, the dangers of race-thinking are permanently debated. The resulting political vocabulary and practices, ever reformulated, self-critical, and drawing their acumen from a cultivation of vulnerability, emphasize race as an energizer of political identification and action that moves beyond traditional identity politics whose political programs reflect the consciousness and experience of belonging to discrete (racialized, gendered, sexualized, national) groups. The radical nature of this specific form of black politics is based on (a) its constant self-critique and reformulation, (b) its Afrodiasporic transnationalism, and (c) its commitment to social justice. To make this argument, I draw on ethnographic data gathered while collaborating with activists in Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles, and engage with black feminisms, critical race theorists, and the art of John Coltrane. Black radical becoming offers both a vital critique of our colonization and a blueprint for the formation of new, ethical, and anti-fascist subjectivities and sociabilities.