Dr Victor Peterson II

RACE.ED Archival Research Fellow
Dr Victor Peterson II

RACE.ED Archival Research Fellow, April - June 2022

Victor Peterson II's (PhD, King's College London) research centers on Articulation theory--how relations of subordination and dominance emerge--as well as global conceptions of blackness and the sound of social movements. His monograph, Black Thought: a Theory of Articulation, is currently under contract with Routledge's African and African Diaspora Series. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he has also published peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Black Studies, The CLR James Journal, and others. He teaches at The New School and New York University.

Website: vpii.us

Project Title: Archiving Mood: Black Sound and Social Movements

This project studies how changes in modes of expression map changes in the socio-political structures to which they respond. During his time at the Institute, Peterson will consider songs as archives of the sentiment of a time and place. These archives are projected into circumstances wherein others test if that mood can be replicated in terms relevant to them. If not, they are inspired to change those conditions. If moods characterize one’s orientation within circumstances and towards others, then organizing sound begins to model how people organize themselves. Developing improvisation as poetic computation, these techniques are not random but are cultivated in particular ways. Strategies cultivated in Black musical expression globally begin to model the emergence and praxis of social movements. Evidenced by the global eruption of protests in 2020, in tracing the sound of movements today this project analyzes the significance of what Black Arts Movement founders in the past claimed to be the basis of decolonial practice. Improvisation is political praxis.