Becoming response-able with a protest placard: white under(-)standing in encounters with the Black German Other

Abstract

This paper emerged from an encounter with the Black Lives Matter placard I understand that I will never understand but I stand with you in Leipzig, Germany, and it centers white understanding as a constitutive practice of whiteness. This is mainly a theoretical contribution (learning towards the philosophical), although it includes some interview data and observations from protest participation. I contribute to raciolinguistics by reading the concept of the white listening subject through Barad’s new materialist notion of apparatuses, asking what exactly constitutes white understanding. This allows me to bring out the potentials and pitfalls (i.e. the counter/productivity) of white understanding as a reflective practice, which I put into conversation with my embodied practice of under-standing (i.e. standing under) the placard at a BLM protest in Berlin. I show how the white body is measured by a Black norm in the protest space, producing a productive discomfort filled with opportunities for becoming response-able towards the Black Other, but also towards whiteness. Considering the ethico-esthetic framing of this collection, I pursue an aesthethics of wor(l)ding that inter-rupts, dis/entangles, and walks around with and in words. It gestures towards what we usually leave out when pursuing one analytical avenue over another.