Revolutionary love and states of pain: The politics of remembering and almost forgetting racism

This article explores the pivotal place of early memories of racial violence in the lives of racialized women, what these women inherit from such encounters and the kinds of racial literacies (Twine, 2010) they subsequently develop. This article makes two primary arguments. First, building on black feminist scholarship, the analysis highlights the intergenerational transmission of racial literacies and the familial care and affective instruction to protect loved ones from racial harm. I argue that the loving labour of such home based practices are essential in fostering knowledge about racism but are often overlooked in thinking about projects of social change. Second, this article enables us to appreciate both the political labour and disparate practices that racism and knowledge about it generate. So often, racialized women are caught between feelings and experiences that materialize oppression in their daily lives and neoliberal horizons that evacuate collective histories and interventions.