DEVIANCE AS RESISTANCE: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of constructing a field of investigation based in African American Studies and borrowing from queer theory and Black feminist analysis that is centered around the experiences of those who stand on the (out)side of state-sanctioned, normalized, White, middle- and upper-class, male heterosexuality. This would entail a paradigmatic shift in how scholars of Black politics and more broadly African American Studies think and write about those most vulnerable in Black communities—those thought to be morally wanting by both dominant society and other indigenous group members. Using a theoretical framework for studying Black politics that highlights the construction and malleability of categories as well as the work of processes of normalization found in queer theory in tandem with the detailed understanding of power, in particular as it is structured around and through axes such as race, gender, and class found in African American Studies, we might gain new insights into the everyday politics of those at the bottom in Black communities. Despite the feelings of some in Black communities that we have been shamed by the immoral behavior of a small subset of community members, those some would label the underclass, scholars must take up the charge to highlight and detail the agency of those on the outside, those who through their acts of nonconformity choose outsider status, at least temporarily. An intentional deviance given limited agency and constra…