Infinite Essence

Black Methodology, Artful Inquiry, and the Possibilities of Black Aesthetics

Bibliographic Data

ID2387259
AuthorsW K Okello (0000-0002-5056-1514, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA)
Year2025
Volume32
Issue2
Pages141-148
Publication date2025-02-17
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1077-8004 • E-ISSN: 1552-7565
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10778004251316188
OpenAlexW4407622436
LanguageEN
References cited19

Anti-Blackness, as a sociopolitical matrix, fails to acknowledge Black livingness, necessitating a departure from traditional representational modalities to engage with Black "living" in its fullness. Black aesthetics emerge as imaginative spaces, inspiring change and expansiveness, challenging normativity by centering Blackness. Mikael Owunna embodies this tradition, melding visual media, engineering, and African cosmologies in projects like Infinite Essence. By illuminating Black bodies in darkness, Owunna disrupts notions of Blackness as void, offering a method to envision Blackness beyond racialized and colonial violence. This conceptual exploration foregrounds Black methodology. Specifically, Owunna's process illuminates several dimensions, or what I refer to as commitments, for taking up Black aesthetics as artful inquiry in research practices that I denote as forecasting, shuttering, tenderness, and gravitation

Aesthetics · Art · Autoethnography · Black feminism · Black women · Epistemology · Sociology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

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Open DOIOpen Access