Dignity Images, a project by American Artist, assembles photographs that participants have taken and withheld from social media timelines. Value springs from narration and interiority instead of circulation and fungibility. This work demonstrates our approach to black performance and imagination. What does the vital nature of performance allow, resist, and refuse? How does the history of racial capitalism inform performance theory today? We will complicate speech act theory and "the performance of everyday life" with close attention to both the speech of objects and the animating forces of that speech. Students will submit weekly response papers and give a final presentation. Readings include texts by manuel arturo abreu, J.L Austin, Marquis Bey, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Treva Ellison, Erving Goffman, Wilson Harris, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Jose Munoz, Cameron Rowland, Legacy Russell, Hortense Spillers, and Sylvia Wynter.