Pulses from the multitude: virtuosity and black feminist discourse

Abstract

Using a dialogic format this conversation between two authors uses political theorist Paolo Virno's conception of the “multitude” to examine and compare two different arenas of black feminist protest that took place on social media in the latter half of 2013. As a performative article, it offers historical and theoretical background to the terms “multitude,” “public intellect,” and “virtuosic labor” in racialized capitalist formations, situating them to provide an alternative to the power of the State – an alternative that unlike the State does not claim to confer rights. The article looks at the Facebook response to a call from the Crunk Feminist Collective to white feminists to speak out on the verdict exonerating Trayvon Martin’s killer and offer counter images to those that describe Martin's killing as justified. It then looks at the public dialogue around the applicability of the term “feminism” to Beyoncé's self-titled “visual album.” Through aesthetic inquiry, the authors look at the form these examples of protest take to situate and propose the active viewing of these aesthetic forms by others on social media, as well as by the authors of this article, as a kind of virtuosic labor. The article concludes with a series of poems created using the “cut-up” technique designed to transmit feeling through subjective action and a task manifesto for white feminists to use as a guide.

Keywords:

• Black feminism
• feminist theory
• critical race theory
• Marxism
• Italian political theory (Virno)
• aesthetics
• queer theory
• popular culture
• social media
• labor
• police studies
• racial violence
• materialism
• whiteness
• Crunk Feminist Collective
• Beyoncé
• Trayvon Martin
• Renisha McBride
• Jonathan Farrell
• Jordan Davis
• Michael Brown
• Sandra Bland
• Tamir Rice
• Miriam Carey
• Tanisha Anderson
• Eric Garner
• Yvette Smith
• Shelly Frey
• Darnisha Harris
• Malissa Williams
• Alesia Thomas
• Philando Castile
• Shantel Davis
• Sean Bell
• Kendra James
• Rekia Boyd
• Shereese Francis
• Raynette Turner
• Amadou Diallo
• Aiyana Stanley-Jones
• Tarika Wilson
• Alton Sterling
• Kathryn Johnston
• Ralkina Jones
• Ronald Madison
• Alberta Spruill
• Kendra James
• Yvonne Smallwood
• Aura Rosser
• Eleanor Bumpurs
• LaTanya Haggerty
• Kindra Chapman
• surplus

Notes on contributors

Maya Winfrey is a Ph.D. candidate in the Performance Studies department at New York University (NYU). She received her bachelor's degree from Macalester College in Studio Art. The working title of her dissertation is “Afro-Asian Aesthetics: The Unmaking of Racialization in Asian American Art Since 1990.” Her research and teaching interests include Black and Asian American visual and performance art, curation, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and critical race theory. She has presented papers at the American Studies Association, American Comparative Literature Association, Cultural Studies Association, Modern Language Association, and Performance Studies International. She has taught at NYU and Dartmouth College.

Beth Stinson is a scholar, writer, and artist whose research and teaching focuses on social aesthetic practices, feminist pedagogies & writing, feminist theory & critical race/ethnic studies, sexuality & space, informal economies, art & literature of west and central Africa, and postcoloniality in relation to development policies. Stinson is currently working on her first manuscript, Recursive Feminisms: The Self-Organizing System of Ladyfest. She has published her work in Women & Performance and for an anthology on Race, Oppression, and the Zombie. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University in Performance Studies and an MFA from UC Irvine. She presently teaches at Barnard College, NYU, and Metropolitan College of New York.