Project overview

With this Emma Goldman Prize project, Professor Akwugo Emejulu builds on her forthcoming book, Fugitive Feminism (Silver Press, 2021). This text explores what happens when Black women attempt to flee the category of the human, undertake speculative practices to become fugitives and exist in a liminal space. This book draws on Black feminist radical theories and activism in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the emerging sub-discipline of Afropessimism in Black Studies. Much of the work on fugitivity is often abstract—it theorises affect, dispositions and orientations. What is missing from this area of study is empirical work documenting how, practically, Black women flee the category of the human. In this project, Professor Emejulu will chart the everyday practices of fugitivity in Europe through in-depth interviews with Black women activists and artists who are attempting to transform the ontological categories of their existence.