The politics of loving blackness in the UK

Abstract

Can ‘loving blackness’ become a new discourse for anti-racism in the UK and the broader black diaspora? This thesis will critically assess the concept of ‘loving blackness as political resistance’ as outlined by the African American feminist bell hooks (1992). The thesis will show the ways in which blackness has been both negated and denigrated in western cultures and thus constructed in opposition to notions of love and humanness. Conversely, love and blackness are also rehabilitated in different ways by Black diasporic populations in Britain through the transnational space. The transnational space can provide opportunities for constructing, networks of care, love and anti racist strategies that affirm the value of blackness and Black life. However, the transnational space can also be fraught with risks, dangers and exclusions providing Black and migrant populations with uneven forms of citizenship and belonging to western neo-liberal states. Loving blackness within a transnational context can help to create a dynamic space to affirm blackness against racial exclusions and dominations whilst providing a lens to suggest alternative ways of being human.