Against the grain: Deep reading as abolitionist praxis in education

On the matter of reading techniques and citational politics, there is a way of reading, even in progressive circles, that prioritizes extraction, recitation, liberal individualism, and attendant categorization, methods and rationales that foreclose the material and intellectual reach of anti-colonial scholars, namely scholars in and of the Black radical tradition. To do our best work is to undo how and why we read—an epistemic shift in reading technique(s). We use an abolitionist frame to engage Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases, a pamphlet produced by abolitionist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Wells-Barnett published the pamphlet as a way to refuse—critique the status quo and create amid negation—the violence of lynching and sought to compel readers toward the eradication of lynching. In this article, we sit with Wells-Barnett’s abolitionist project, reading against the grain, in an attempt to grapple with its sociopolitical implications for the contemporary moment and future of educational research, teaching, and study. Centrally, we ask how might deep reading, or reading against the grain, ethically advance interdisciplinary research, teaching, and study practices in education? A close reading of Wells-Barnett’s (1892) pamphlet, theorizing with abolitionist praxis as both critique of existing structures and the active imagining of otherwise possibilities, surfaced several considerations for a praxis of deep reading. Specifically, the praxis of deep reading unfolded as enunciations, resonances, assemblages, and adjacencies. We conclude with recommendations for incorporating these frames into research and curricular development.