Educating Flesh: Blackness and the (Primal) Scene of Campus Insurrection at San Francisco State College (1968-69)

Abstract

Highlighting the relationship between the racial slavery in the formation of U.S. colleges and universities and the archive of Black student revolt, this dissertation examines one of the longest and most violent Black student strikes in the history of postsecondary education–the San Francisco State College strike in 1968-1969. Rather than deconstruct the strike for a central meaning or produce a (counter)narrative history, this dissertation argues that the politics of Black student revolutionaries during this strike radicalizes constructions of the modern educational subject and invites a reconsideration of Black educational subjectivity. Working towards the notion of the captive subject of education as a theory and method for reading the guerrilla tactics of Black students during the five-month siege of campus to elucidate these claims, this dissertation overreads reading the actions of Black student revolutionaries in solidarity with the political, affective, and psychic conditions that engender slave insurrection to suggest an alternative theory of the Black educational subject that emphasizes the psychopolitics of student protest.