self/self-work/work/working self

I spent this summer researching black liberation/power theory and creating a digital library of texts which theorize power. My research aims to show the deeply connected relationship between theory and self-making, and how theorizing about power and race works to inform and shape our experience of the self and others. My fellowship revealed the blurriness of existing in the text itself—reading is so self- reflexive, and it became difficult to distance myself from the work I was doing. I hope to encourage the Bryn Mawr College community to push beyond the edge of comfort, and think about the breadth and depth of a topic like “power.” The project began as “From Academia to Activism: The Collision of Theory and Praxis in the Black Liberation Movement,” and the title stays true, but I felt restricted by it, and as time progressed the title morphed into “Theorizing Power.” The central question I came to the research with was just that—what is power and how is power intrinsically racialized, and a further instantiation of the black/white ontological antagonism?

I love my work more than anything. Monique's comment about "work" resonates with me, as I have found center through channeling my experience into something beyond me, something that might sustain me and others beyond just my own contextual bounds.