Black Feminist Hashtaggin' as a Rhetorical Form of Care

This chapter utilizes a Black queer and feminist rhetorical lens to explore Black women’s hashtaggin’ as a worldmaking praxis. I interrogate Black women’s social media discourses surrounding #MuteRKelly and #SurvivingRKelly to critically reflect on critique as a generative form of care that invites Black women and girls to dream and move beyond the White social imaginary. As a truthtelling practice, I argue that Black feminist hashtaggin’ rhetorically constructs alternative frames to engage nuanced questions of agency, bodily autonomy, and care amid ontological precarity. These frames are meaningful as they critique normative conventions around support and protection that enable us to (re)imagine what care looks, sounds, and feels like for Black women and girls beyond anti-blackness. Ultimately, I contend that Black feminist hashtaggin’ operates as a rhetorical form of care that generates space amidst precarity to imagine livable futures for Black women and girls.