Taking a knee

Hastings, Tom (2021) Taking a knee. Platform: the journal of theatre and performing arts, 15 (1). pp. 26-41. ISSN 1751-0171

Text (Hastings, T., Taking a knee, Platform: Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts, vol. 15 (1) 2021. All rights reserves, 2021.) THastings Taking a Knee.docx - Accepted Version Download (654kB)

Abstract

Kneeling was ubiquitous during the recent Black Lives Matter protests that were organised in response to the police murder of George Floyd. This transnational gesture was also deployed by mainstream media as a sign of multiracial, coalitional politics, its uniformity supplying state actors with movement material for expressions of unity. Having first situated the protests in relation to anti-Black violence and the national lockdown in the UK, this essay interrogates kneeling’s relation to coalitional politics. Drawing on the Black Radical Tradition, I ask whether this gesture’s stamp of unity neutralised the radical demands of Black Lives Matter. By analysing this gesture’s deployment during a speech by the South London rapper, Still Shadey, I seek to describe a wider gestural economy, figuring this gesture as Black performance in relation to what Rizvana Bradley calls ‘a history of interdicted and coerced movement’. Finally, I argue that the balancing act itself—the difficulty of sustaining a knee—disrupts this gesture’s absorption into state choreography by transmitting a kinaesthetic experience of social mobility. Kneeling’s ‘vibratory potential’, I argue, renews the possibility of a coalitional politics in the face of liberal calls for unity.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	In the journal issue Balancing acts
Keywords:	Black Lives Matter, politics, Black Radical Tradition, performance, protest, kneeling, Black social dance
Depositing User:	Karen Smith
Date Deposited:	01 Jul 2026 13:31
Last Modified:	01 Jul 2026 13:31
URI:	https://theplace.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/7

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