Theorizing Feminist Civil Disobedience with Black Lives Matter

• In Event: Feminism, Resistance, Violence

Abstract

Recent scholarship in civil disobedience has exposed the limitations of liberal conceptions of civil disobedience by examining movements, activists, and the history of civil disobedience. Yet this literature has paid insufficient attention to the predominance of male-centered perspectives on civil disobedience. In response to this omission, this paper seeks to foreground women’s experience of civil disobedience and outline an initial sketch of a feminist theory of civil disobedience. For this sketch, we draw on the practice of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). This social and political movement emerged in 2013 in response to police brutality against black people and adopted methods of non-violent civil disobedience in protest against racial oppression.


We focus on the M4BL for two interrelated reasons. First, the M4BL developed its philosophy and practice in self-conscious opposition to the masculine form of political organizing and offers a black, feminist, queer lens on the theory and practice of civil disobedience. Second, critics have often criticized the M4BL for not conforming to the established frameworks of civil disobedience while obscuring the powerful alternative to the prevalent, masculine model of civil disobedience that the movement provides.


The three aspects of the feminist conception of civil disobedience that we construct from the M4BL’s theory and practice are: first, an intersectional approach to theorizing oppression that centers the experience of the most vulnerable perspectives, such as Black women; second, a decentralized and democratic approach to organizing that is focused on empowering the movement’s diverse members, including women that remained marginalized within the individualist, charismatic leadership models; and third, attentiveness to the politics of care and healing as essential aspects of organizing that dispenses with the presumption of an always-already virtuous civil disobedient. A feminist conception of civil disobedience, we argue, can account for women’s neglected contribution to the theory and practice of civil disobedience and lead to a more inclusive study of civil disobedience within political science.

Authors

• Jennet Kirkpatrick, Arizona State University

• Masa Mrovlje, University of Leeds