Black Bodies That Matter: The Case for Beautiful Rage

Professor James Garrison will discuss how the arts (including poetry like Audre Lorde’s) should be a foreground concern in the case for rage. Furthering Myisha Cherry’s work to adapt Lorde’s work in order to articulate black rage, I thus argue for what I call “beautiful rage.” This can be an effective path to genuine mourning that aims, as Cherry says, at “not destruction of the good or elimination of the other, but change in racist beliefs, expectations, policies, and behaviors that shape and support white supremacy.”

Artworks like this invite audiences to delight in playing around in thought with big ideas, even if the content might be unsettling. This isn’t angry speech with a bullhorn forcing attention; this is beautiful rage attracting that attention instead. Thus, beautiful rage ameliorates a problem in expressions of rage explored by Cherry, including Lordean rage—namely the possibility of alienating allies and repelling those in power from engaging.