ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Black Lives Matter has assembled technologies of appearance, comprised of assemblages of co-presence, persistent looking and embodied protest. Digital co-presence allows a certain by-passing of physical and social constraint. Appearance invokes co-presence between physical and online spaces. Digital co-presence has sustained a persistent look at what white supremacy keeps out of sight, off stage and out of view. Co-presence, persistent looking and the articulation of Black and blackness came together in performed action as a set of technologies of appearance, especially after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. #BlackLivesMatter mobilized political bodies from vulnerable bodies that can be harmed and can die in order to sustain a movement. Black Lives Matter uses persistent looking to refuse to look away, creating a deliberate engagement with the loss of so many through reenactment.
