5. Beyoncé

Chapter Five ("Beyoncé") uses the occasion of the viral sensation of Beyoncé's Super Bowl half-time performance of 2016 as a way to critique the affirmative pedagogy and lay the groundwork for transformative pedagogy.

Perhaps the most vocal response to Beyoncé's performance, at least in the mass corporate media outlets like Fox News or CNN, was from conservative voices who perceived it—or, at least, said that they did—as a provocation to attack the police. In more popular media such as YouTube and Facebook, Beyoncé's performance received a more favorable response and she was for the most part praised not only for embracing her blackness but also for adding her voice to popular movements such as Black Lives Matter that are protesting against police brutality and mass incarceration, what Michelle Alexander calls the "new Jim Crow." However, to stop here and simply rehearse this familiar debate—to, in other words, follow the Graffian imperative and "teach the conflict"—does not, I argue, really get at the underlying question of why the conflict over Beyoncé's performance in the first place. A transformative reading, I argue, is reading beyond the cultural obviousness produced by the dominant media environment in order to uncover the cultural "unsaid" and thereby not only become a conscious position taker in the ongoing debates, but also someone who is able to intervene in them and open up space for change.

Keywords: Beyoncé; New Jim Crow; Black Lives Matter; Graff; identity politics; cultural politics; pedagogy; transformative critique.