On Blackness Liveliness and What It Means to Be Human

<p><b>Develops a theoretical and methodological focus on Blackness to rethink ideas about humanity underpinning the field of student development.</b></p><p><b>Winner of the 2025 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Division B of the American Educational Research Association </b></p><p>In No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues Jamaican writer and theorist Sylvia Wynter critiques the social and human sciences for perpetuating social hierarchies particularly through the Western humanist framing of Man as the universal representation of humanity. Human development theories revolve around this concept necessitating acquiescence to the category Man to claim humanity. But Blackness complicates and unsettles these terms in ways the fields of higher education and educational research are in many ways just beginning to confront.</p><p><i>On Blackness Liveliness and What It Means to Be Human</i> extends Wynter's critique to human development and academic knowledge production arguing that Black specificity can create new possibilities for Black being. Wilson Kwamogi Okello closely examines holistic development theory aiming not to reform but to reimagine the self it presupposes. Taking what he describes as a multimodal and multisensory approach Okello engages a chorus of writers thinkers and cultural workers-Baldwin Bambara Brand Hartman Lorde Sharpe Spillers Wilderson and more-to reframe Blackness as a social political and historical matrix going beyond the study of Black experiences biology or culture. Punctuated throughout by stunning images from artist Mikael Owunna's Infinite Essence series the book proposes and enacts a methodological attunement to Blackness that can guide theory policy and practice toward an alternative praxis for the benefit of Black living.</p>