Trauma, escape and claims to black metaphysical space: Black feminist engagements with ‘transracialism’

This article produces a Black feminist analysis of trauma narratives in the mythologising of ‘transracial’ identities, and reflects on the implications of theorising such claims through a lens of Black metaphysics. The article starts with an analysis of the trauma narratives, finding they evoke two contrasting conceptualisations of the relationship between Blackness and trauma: first, that which articulates Blackness only through pain and suffering, then that which constructs Blackness as an oasis from trauma, invisibilising Black suffering. I argue that the seeming conflict in these two simultaneously produced imaginaries reveals an underlying logic that understands Blackness as constitutionally estranged from the ontological grounds of whiteness. From here, I read the transracial/trauma myths via two distinct traditions of Black metaphysics – one informed by afro-pessimism, and the other by Black feminist anti-identitarian critique – which develops into a reflexive analysis that questions how my own political motivations produced a theoretical interpretation at odds with my commitment to a Black feminist project. The final argument of the article is for a Black feminist position that can better respond to the problematics of transracialism.