Blackness as Matter

This is the introduction to a special section on Blackness as Matter. The collection builds upon a series of dialogues that emerged at two seminars, the first on “Urban Life at the Extensions,” which convened at the University of London Institute in Paris in 2023 and the second, “Ecologies of Black Living,” at the British Academy in London (2025). Both seminars were concerned with Black livingness and the current politics of inhabitation in times of heightened uncertainty, ecological collapse, and the exhaustion of representational politics. Extending these conversations this special issue asks what a deep engagement with the concept of matter might bring to conversations on Black livingness in such uncertain times.