The black feminist actuarial: Untimely. Early. Too soon

This article is an extended meditation on JoAnne Epps’ death. I argue that popular black feminism has instructed us on how to interpret her death by training us to use an actuarial reading practice. By actuarial, I mean a black feminist deployment of arithmetical ideas to manage an uncertain future, and to predict the likelihood of what is to come, including death. I use the term black feminist actuarial to describe an interpretative framework that contains implicit ideas about life span, duration and the time of black life, and thus reads all black deaths as equivalent. The black feminist actuarial reading marks the space of risk (the university) and the practice of risk (work), and offers risk mitigation strategies (radical divestment from work, including what Tricia Hersey has called rest as resistance). This reading practice alerts black feminists that black female academics’ deaths – regardless of the conditions of those deaths – are early, premature, untimely and too soon. Yet, this article seeks to trouble that reading practice by asking us to seriously contend with Epps and her love of her work, her university and her own institutional life.