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Black Lives Matter as "social movement": theorizing the materiality of movement of the social

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dc.contributor.authorClark, Jordin, author
dc.contributor.authorDunn, Thomas, advisor
dc.contributor.authorDickinson, Greg, committee member
dc.contributor.authorCespedes, Karina, committee member
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-14T16:05:11Z
dc.date.available2019-09-12T16:04:38Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractUtilizing Michael Calvin McGee's notion of social movement as a set of meanings that move the social, this thesis builds upon and adjusts the discursive focus of McGee's rhetorical theory of social movement to include materiality, particularly material movement as influential in changing the social. To do so, I build upon theories of sociality, space, and movement to present movement and motion as material texts that hold rhetorical power to inflect and produce our cultural and social understandings of our sociality. Analyzing the Black Lives Matter's Black Friday protest at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago in 2015, this thesis argues that protests—in their material movements—remake public spaces and the societal, spatial, and individual social body to carve out an imaginary and thus sociality in which Black lives matter. The aptly named Black Lives Matter movement is a social movement that makes visible systemic racism that disciplines, endangers, and marginalizes Black lives, with the goal to reimagine a world where Black people are free to exist and live—where Black lives matter. Our current social and spatial imaginary constructs the Black body as a subject of exclusion and allows whiteness to ignore and disregard that Black lives matter. However, during the Black Friday protest at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago in 2015, as this thesis argues, the protesters disrupted the embodied and spatial rhythms of the Magnificent Mile to open a fissure within the shopper's social/spatial imaginary wherein the protesters compelled them to recognize Black lives while urging them to accede that they matter.
dc.format.mediumborn digital
dc.format.mediummasters theses
dc.identifierClark_colostate_0053N_14322.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/183955
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherColorado State University. Libraries
dc.relation.ispartof2000-2019
dc.rightsCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.
dc.subjectmateriality
dc.subjectmovement
dc.subjectrhetoric
dc.subjectMcGee
dc.subjectBlack Lives Matter
dc.subjectprotest
dc.titleBlack Lives Matter as "social movement": theorizing the materiality of movement of the social
dc.typeText
dcterms.embargo.expires2019-09-12
dcterms.embargo.terms2019-09-12
dcterms.rights.dplaThis Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights (https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/). You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
thesis.degree.disciplineCommunication Studies
thesis.degree.grantorColorado State University
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (M.A.)

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