Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Black girls came before the law, but were not protected by it,” (Hartman, 2020, p. 29).
Black girls came before the law but were not protected by it” (Hartman, 2020, p. 29).
A video of Hartman discussing her research for this project.
I was first introduced to Saidiya Hartman as an undergraduate studying philosophy. Reading Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, where Hartman explored intertwined dynamics of terror, power, and subjectivity during the era of slavery in the United States and its aftermath, it was the first time I was provided literature that refused to align itself with white spectatorship. Hartman has taught me to pause, sit in silence, and critically imagine new possibilities of being.
Hartman was born and raised in New York City and is a professor at Columbia University in the Department of English. In centering life, Hartman’s use of archival work demonstrates the historical connections between slavery and modern-day racialized relations. In ‘Venus in Two Acts’ (2008), Hartman refers to her methodological story-telling as ‘critical fabulation’: an ‘impossible writing that attempts to say that which resists being said’ and an account of history that is ‘with and against the archive’, bending time by emerging the past, present, and future into a shared continuum.
Wayward Lives centers young Black girls and women to provide a narrative beyond the archival documents often read as objective truth and undeniable facts. In engaging with this work, multiple examples of women who have refused the image painted about them find ways to oppose it. Whether it be in the refusal to have children, the refusal to provide a landlord with certain personal information, or being unapologetic and refusing to allow researchers, saviors, and others in similar fields access to them. In this text, Hartman is interested in engaging the reader with difficult questions that necessitate deep analysis of how young Black girls and women have been treated in the United States. In a way that discusses the violence without centering it, Hartman questions the validity of the archival documents and narrates a different story that still employs the work of the archival documents.
Guiding Questions:
Archival Challenges and Narrative Formation: How does Hartman challenge traditional archival documentation and its claim to objectivity In what ways does Hartman critique the legitimization of archival documents and their role in perpetuating systemic violence? How does her methodology of "critical fabulation" reframe the narratives of young Black girls and women? What are the ethical implications of Hartman’s refusal to provide sources for certain archival documents? How does this refusal speak to issues of consent, violence, and the ownership of historical narratives? What does Hartman mean when she describes Black social life as "emerging in the world marked by negation, but exceeding it”? How can this framing help us rethink how history and identity are constructed?
Violence and Representation: How does Hartman narrate violence without centering it, and why is this distinction important? How does this approach differ from traditional historical or sociological accounts of Black life? What does Hartman’s critique of previous sociologists, researchers, and photographers reveal about the production of knowledge regarding Black bodies? How can this critique inform contemporary research practices in similar fields?
Fungibility, Autonomy, and Resistance: How does Hartman’s discussion of fungibility help us understand the tension between being desired and discarded? How does this concept relate to the legal and social frameworks that failed to protect young Black girls from violence? What role does naming (or anonymity) play in the autonomy and resistance of the young Black girls and women Hartman writes about? How can the act of renaming or withholding names serve as a form of refusal or reclamation?
Policing, Gender, and Intersections with Whiteness: What does Hartman’s analysis of Helen Parrish and the relationship between white women and police forces reveal about racialized and gendered dynamics of power? How does this example contribute to our understanding of segregation and control in urban spaces? How does the hypersexualization of young Black girls intersect with broader systems of policing, surveillance, and social control?
Resistance and Everyday Refusals: How does Hartman highlight the everyday acts of resistance and refusal by young Black girls and women? How do these acts challenge dominant narratives about Black life as solely defined by suffering and subjugation? What does Hartman’s portrayal of refusal (e.g., refusing children, withholding information) suggest about the politics of agency and autonomy?
Broader Implications: How does Wayward Lives complicate the narrative of progress and freedom in the United States? How does it challenge the mythologies surrounding the Great Migration and urban possibilities? What lessons can contemporary scholars, activists, and educators take from Hartman’s work in how they approach storytelling, archives, and the histories of marginalized groups? In what ways does Hartman ask readers to confront their positionality as interpreters of the histories she narrates? How can this be applied in other academic and social justice contexts?
Welcome to the Bibliosphere!
It all begins with an idea.
Hola mis pedacitos de cielo,
Remember when I confessed that no one really taught me how to write as a graduate student? Well, no one taught me how to read either (rip).
In the Graduate Student section, I added some reading guidelines that I feel will be most helpful for this section.
Welcome to the bibliosphere! Each post in this section will feature a book or a curated collection of articles centered around a specific theme. Posts will include a brief summary, guiding questions for reflection, and supplementary audio or video resources to help orient and deepen our engagement with the material.
Unlike the book reviews already included in my blog, this section is designed as a virtual reading club—a space to read, reflect, and celebrate the joy of knowledge for its own sake.
Stay reading,
Caramela