Towards a More Critical Consciousness: Race-Making, Affect, and Counter-Knowledges

Abstract

While the development of a critical consciousness in racialized youth is not a new subject area, the inclusion of the human capacity for, and the necessity of, affect as crucial components of identity formation and collective action are often missed. Through four semi-structured interviews with 18-25-year-old Black and African young adult attendees of an annual week-long camp for multi-racial families, as well as a content analysis examining the cultural and pedagogical foci of the camp's youth-focused strategic plan, I seek to determine whether and how the camp facilitates the development of a critical consciousness in its youth attendees. Guided by a Gramscian-Marxist theoretical framework, I seek to understand how experiences of a double consciousness can be transformed in order to foster counter-knowledges. In this reading, the relationship between double consciousness and counter-knowledges also becomes a fruitful site for the formation of forms of affect that can cater to anti-capitalist struggles.