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Dear Science and Other Stories
In Dear Science and Other Stories Katherine McKittrick presents a creative and rigorous study of black and anticolonial methodologies. Drawing on black studies, studies of race, cultural geography, and black feminism as well as a mix of methods, citational practices, and theoretical frameworks, she positions black storytelling and stories as strategies of invention and collaboration. She analyzes a number of texts from intellectuals and artists ranging from Sylvia Wynter to the electronica band Drexciya to explore how narratives of imprecision and relationality interrupt knowledge systems that seek to observe, index, know, and discipline blackness. Throughout, McKittrick offers curiosity, wonder, citations, numbers, playlists, friendship, poetry, inquiry, song, grooves, and anticolonial chronologies as interdisciplinary codes that entwine with the academic form. Suggesting that black life and black livingness are, in themselves, rebellious methodologies, McKittrick imagines without totally disclosing the ways in which black intellectuals invent ways of living outside prevailing knowledge systems.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published January 29, 2021
68 people are currently reading
1238 people want to read
About the author
Katherine McKittrick
14 books131 followersKatherine McKittrick is a professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University. She is an academic and writer whose work focuses on black studies, cultural geography, anti-colonial and diaspora studies, with an emphasis on the ways in which social justice emerges in black creative texts (music, fiction, poetry, visual art). While many scholars have researched the areas of North American, European, Caribbean, and African black geographies, McKittrick was the first scholar to put forth the interdisciplinary possibilities of black and black feminist geography, with an emphasis on embodied, creative and intellectual spaces engendered in the diaspora.
McKittrick has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University; she received her degree in 2004.
Since 2005, she has been Professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, with joint appointments in Cultural Studies and Geography. She is currently Editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
McKittrick’s work has focused on black feminist thought and cultural geography, as explored in her book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006). The book has been reviewed in Gender, Place & Culture, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Religion, & Literature, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and American Literature. The book was followed by Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (2007), which she co-edited with Clyde Woods. The book has been reviewed in Canadian Woman Studies.
McKittrick’s research draws on the areas of black studies, anti-colonial studies, cultural geographies, and gender studies, and attends to the links between epistemological narratives and social justice. Creative texts she analyzed include music, music making, poetry, visual art, and literature, while specifically looking at the works of Sylvia Wynter, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Robbie McCauley, M. NourbeSe Philip, Willie Bester, Nas, Octavia Butler, and Dionne Brand.
(from Wikipedia)
McKittrick has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University; she received her degree in 2004.
Since 2005, she has been Professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, with joint appointments in Cultural Studies and Geography. She is currently Editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
McKittrick’s work has focused on black feminist thought and cultural geography, as explored in her book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006). The book has been reviewed in Gender, Place & Culture, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Religion, & Literature, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and American Literature. The book was followed by Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (2007), which she co-edited with Clyde Woods. The book has been reviewed in Canadian Woman Studies.
McKittrick’s research draws on the areas of black studies, anti-colonial studies, cultural geographies, and gender studies, and attends to the links between epistemological narratives and social justice. Creative texts she analyzed include music, music making, poetry, visual art, and literature, while specifically looking at the works of Sylvia Wynter, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Robbie McCauley, M. NourbeSe Philip, Willie Bester, Nas, Octavia Butler, and Dionne Brand.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 30, 2021
The four stars are for the strength and importance of the core argument. Namely, too many people thinking about Blackness are too content simply describing Black oppression and not nearly interested enough in thinking about the liberatory potential of Blackness itself. This is because (and this is where the science comes in) too many people are still, unwittingly are not, wedded to biological notions of what race is. Even as people dutifully parrot that race is a social construct, they still see it as something constructed in a fundamentally biological way. Put differently, *somehow* the same people that were Black when we were measuring skulls with calipers are still Black now that we *claim* to have left that behind for a social constructivist view of race. It's time to actually let go of biology (and afro-pessimism) and start thinking about Black liberation and the overturning of a biocenteic order that insists on white supremacy and Black inferiority.
The one missing star is because that's basically it. The book gets to its point right away and then is just content to repeat itself and play with form. I appreciate experimentation, especially in academic writing which can get dull, but the experimentation here fails, in my opinion (which is okay, if an experiment's success was pre-determined it wouldn't be much of an experiment). McKittrick is a good Black feminist (although she disavows feminism in the book because it's roots are too white) and so is generous and detailed with her citations. But perhaps too much so. There is one chapter which is basically just a summary of her mentor Sylvia Wynter's Black Metamorphosis and another chapter that is like a remixed Encyclopedia entry where I think (?) all of it is just quotes/paraphrases of other people. My thought is, if I want to read other people, I'll read them myself, just point them out to me. I picked your book up to read you.
I would highly recommend this book, I'm tempted to say to anyone, but realistically it's probably too steeped in academic discourse for a lay person to care about most of it. But I do think the central argument is an important one for everyone is this world where the liberal position has become "believe science" without a reckoning of what science is. Which is not to say that science is bad or wrong, but that science is incomplete, can't account for many of the things that are important to living meaningful lives, and has a long racist history that extends into our present moment. And if that's all you take away from the book, that's enough.
The one missing star is because that's basically it. The book gets to its point right away and then is just content to repeat itself and play with form. I appreciate experimentation, especially in academic writing which can get dull, but the experimentation here fails, in my opinion (which is okay, if an experiment's success was pre-determined it wouldn't be much of an experiment). McKittrick is a good Black feminist (although she disavows feminism in the book because it's roots are too white) and so is generous and detailed with her citations. But perhaps too much so. There is one chapter which is basically just a summary of her mentor Sylvia Wynter's Black Metamorphosis and another chapter that is like a remixed Encyclopedia entry where I think (?) all of it is just quotes/paraphrases of other people. My thought is, if I want to read other people, I'll read them myself, just point them out to me. I picked your book up to read you.
I would highly recommend this book, I'm tempted to say to anyone, but realistically it's probably too steeped in academic discourse for a lay person to care about most of it. But I do think the central argument is an important one for everyone is this world where the liberal position has become "believe science" without a reckoning of what science is. Which is not to say that science is bad or wrong, but that science is incomplete, can't account for many of the things that are important to living meaningful lives, and has a long racist history that extends into our present moment. And if that's all you take away from the book, that's enough.
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May 14, 2021McKittrick's writing is always so clear when reading it but once I try to write about it, the fine points of her ideas instantly escape my grasp. She works with such complex ideas but understands them so well that you think you do too during your cursory read. This book is as exciting and interesting as her Demonic Grounds.
McKittrick takes on the compulsion to know in this new book. Science, the paradigm of knowing, both "socially produces what it means to be biologically human" and lays the groundwork for division within the human (i.e. Wynter's man1-man2). both creates the human Her chapter on methodologies was especially compelling to me as someone in a data driven science.
Two quotes:
"what if we read outside ourself not for ourselves but to actively unknow ourselves, to unhinge and thus come to know each other?"
"these scholars...are much more interested in how we know, how we come to know, than in what we know....questions with knowable answers are ineffective analytical questions..."
McKittrick takes on the compulsion to know in this new book. Science, the paradigm of knowing, both "socially produces what it means to be biologically human" and lays the groundwork for division within the human (i.e. Wynter's man1-man2). both creates the human Her chapter on methodologies was especially compelling to me as someone in a data driven science.
Two quotes:
"what if we read outside ourself not for ourselves but to actively unknow ourselves, to unhinge and thus come to know each other?"
"these scholars...are much more interested in how we know, how we come to know, than in what we know....questions with knowable answers are ineffective analytical questions..."
June 18, 2021
A liberating and profoundly inspiring collection of reflections, interventions, and artistic/poetic expressions that together constitute a perfect union of Black theory and praxis. It’s one of those books that pretty much exhausted my highlighter.
October 7, 2025
o sigui referent!!!!
segona rellegida: hi ha tantes coses en aquest llibre!!!! es increible. tant de bo saber com fer una metodologia que es mogui aqui dins
segona rellegida: hi ha tantes coses en aquest llibre!!!! es increible. tant de bo saber com fer una metodologia que es mogui aqui dins
April 5, 2024
paradigm shifting to say the least
June 22, 2023
I have a complicated relationship to McKittrick's work, one where I am unsettled - wayward even. On one hand, I embrace the disruptive promise of demonic grounds, of Blackness. On the other hand, I am perpetually critical of what these analyses offer outside of the exclusively intellectual realm, mired in the aesthetics of revolution and resistance. Or is it me lost in the expanse of social science conditioning?
Still, in many ways, McKittrick offers a compelling thesis that really does force us to contend with the ontological and epistemological foundations of scientific thought - Blackness is a necessary exclusion from this project amid its current trajectory. But as I sit reading these remixes and experimentations I still often wonder what is to gain and flourish within the fugitive production of knowledge.
Still, in many ways, McKittrick offers a compelling thesis that really does force us to contend with the ontological and epistemological foundations of scientific thought - Blackness is a necessary exclusion from this project amid its current trajectory. But as I sit reading these remixes and experimentations I still often wonder what is to gain and flourish within the fugitive production of knowledge.
March 7, 2021
I did not know of Katherine McKittrick previously. I came across this book thanks to Chanda Prescod-Weinstein who, at the time of this review, will have her book The Disordered Cosmos out in a few days. I have it pre-ordered. Prescod-Weinstein had done a podcast with the author and it received rave reviews as did the book. The reviews intrigued me so much so that I had to purchase it and I am glad I did.
This book is unlike any I have read before. It is, as the summary suggests, a create and rigorous study of black and anticolonial methodologies. I will be honest here and state that I cannot properly comment on what is being presented in this book because I lack the knowledge that is required to do so. I can honestly say when I bought this book I thought I would have it read in a week. It took close to a month because I respected the work. I took notes, made lists and hope to have time to put in the effort to read some of the referenced materials so that I can perhaps revisit this work again with more understanding of the material.
The more I read the more I realize that you cannot really give a true commentary on what is being presented in this book unless you have read the referenced materials. Within the stories and studies are many citations that the author makes as references and, as the author points out, you need to read the referenced materials in order to go deeper. During the course of reading this book I have done just that, making a wish list of materials cited and it is large. Thanks to this book I now have an incredible knowledgebase of materials to help further increase my understanding of topics that I know very little about.
Aside from this book peaking my interest in the works of Sylvia Wynter & Edouard Glissant among others there were some subjects that were brought up which I had not heard of before and fascinated me. One being Drexciya. I had never heard of Drexciya before and it comes up through the synth band of the same name. From the book:
"Drexciya, which eschewed media attention and its attendant focus on personality,[5] developed a nautical afrofuturist myth.[6] The group revealed in the sleeve notes to their 1997 album The Quest that "Drexciya" was an underwater country populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown off of slave ships; the babies had adapted to breathe underwater in their mothers' wombs.[7] The myth was built partly on Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993)"
This also introduced me to the story of the slave ship the Zong. Horrific!
One other interesting section is about Davonte Flennoy who was pegged as 20 times more likely than the average Chicago Public Schools student to kill or be killed. It sadly turned out to be true but the study that determined this outlined how little value is put on black life. The author looks at the racism involved with the algorithm that predicted this individual's life span and suggests that it had to have involved "administrative and methodological steps that require racism before they beign to work through and toward the problem." (pg. 111 of kindle edition).
This book is far above 5 stars for what you can get out of it. I recommend this book especially to those who want to expand their outlook on life and challenge themselves by getting a deeper understanding of this work.
This book is unlike any I have read before. It is, as the summary suggests, a create and rigorous study of black and anticolonial methodologies. I will be honest here and state that I cannot properly comment on what is being presented in this book because I lack the knowledge that is required to do so. I can honestly say when I bought this book I thought I would have it read in a week. It took close to a month because I respected the work. I took notes, made lists and hope to have time to put in the effort to read some of the referenced materials so that I can perhaps revisit this work again with more understanding of the material.
The more I read the more I realize that you cannot really give a true commentary on what is being presented in this book unless you have read the referenced materials. Within the stories and studies are many citations that the author makes as references and, as the author points out, you need to read the referenced materials in order to go deeper. During the course of reading this book I have done just that, making a wish list of materials cited and it is large. Thanks to this book I now have an incredible knowledgebase of materials to help further increase my understanding of topics that I know very little about.
Aside from this book peaking my interest in the works of Sylvia Wynter & Edouard Glissant among others there were some subjects that were brought up which I had not heard of before and fascinated me. One being Drexciya. I had never heard of Drexciya before and it comes up through the synth band of the same name. From the book:
"Drexciya, which eschewed media attention and its attendant focus on personality,[5] developed a nautical afrofuturist myth.[6] The group revealed in the sleeve notes to their 1997 album The Quest that "Drexciya" was an underwater country populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women who were thrown off of slave ships; the babies had adapted to breathe underwater in their mothers' wombs.[7] The myth was built partly on Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993)"
This also introduced me to the story of the slave ship the Zong. Horrific!
One other interesting section is about Davonte Flennoy who was pegged as 20 times more likely than the average Chicago Public Schools student to kill or be killed. It sadly turned out to be true but the study that determined this outlined how little value is put on black life. The author looks at the racism involved with the algorithm that predicted this individual's life span and suggests that it had to have involved "administrative and methodological steps that require racism before they beign to work through and toward the problem." (pg. 111 of kindle edition).
This book is far above 5 stars for what you can get out of it. I recommend this book especially to those who want to expand their outlook on life and challenge themselves by getting a deeper understanding of this work.
February 20, 2024
This is light-footed and crackling scholarship, audacious in its ambition and incredibly adept at pulling off everything it attempts. From the first page, it feels like a victory lap.
Academia can be so sedentary and insular, and Katherine McKittrick picks at every insidious presupposition that reifies its current form. The book's closing line is, "I want to sustain wonder," and that humility and openness feels both exciting and singular—how many academics hold that as their central preoccupation? Through McKittrick's lens, many of the trappings of institutionalized scholarship collapse because she moves away from discourse motivated by power. Instead, readers are drawn into an almost gravitational pull towards a genuine desire to learn, which entirely shifts frameworks of scholarly discussion, particularly as they relate to Blackness. The whole book feels like an invitation.
Elsewhere, McKittrick quotes Sylvia Wynter's line: "The ethic is the aesthetic," and this also seems like a central impulse of the work—that scholarship, art, and resistance are interwoven, and any attempt to separate them merely perpetuates systemic injustice. This premise allows her to address an incredible range of topics from citation practices to the racist underpinnings of predictive algorithms, and it all feels exciting and surprising and inspiring. This won't make sense, but reading it felt a lot like hearing an amazing album for the first time—where you feel wonder that it exists and gratitude you get to hear it.
This is a book where commenting on it feels reductionist, so please just read it!
Academia can be so sedentary and insular, and Katherine McKittrick picks at every insidious presupposition that reifies its current form. The book's closing line is, "I want to sustain wonder," and that humility and openness feels both exciting and singular—how many academics hold that as their central preoccupation? Through McKittrick's lens, many of the trappings of institutionalized scholarship collapse because she moves away from discourse motivated by power. Instead, readers are drawn into an almost gravitational pull towards a genuine desire to learn, which entirely shifts frameworks of scholarly discussion, particularly as they relate to Blackness. The whole book feels like an invitation.
Elsewhere, McKittrick quotes Sylvia Wynter's line: "The ethic is the aesthetic," and this also seems like a central impulse of the work—that scholarship, art, and resistance are interwoven, and any attempt to separate them merely perpetuates systemic injustice. This premise allows her to address an incredible range of topics from citation practices to the racist underpinnings of predictive algorithms, and it all feels exciting and surprising and inspiring. This won't make sense, but reading it felt a lot like hearing an amazing album for the first time—where you feel wonder that it exists and gratitude you get to hear it.
This is a book where commenting on it feels reductionist, so please just read it!
June 27, 2023
I am going to revisit this text in the future because when I am not nose-deep in McKittrick's text and thinking about it on an intellectual and academic level, I kept thinking about practical application, which feels like an unjust question to be asking such a rich text. This is a book that challenges, in terms of expectations and the act of reading itself, but also one's relationality and preconceptions. I spent a lot of time thinking about McKittrick's critique of interactive maps that have time lapses that depict traumatic historical events like the slave trade, her opposition to them as she expresses confusion about how to interact with them. I think this first encounter with the book is a lot like the first touch and that I will need to revisit it over time as a become more malleable to it and read more in the field of Black thought.
February 24, 2021
Absolutely loved this book!!! McKittrick analyzes how knowledge and liberation and collaboration intersect through a series of essays (that range in topic from citational practices, to algorithms, and even a music playlist). Storytelling as theory. Black living as rebellious methodology. Ways to counter academy’s disciplining. Sustaining curiosity and wonder. This book gives me so much hope about the future of academia—each page really breathes so many possibilities that I hope we realize. In the meantime I’m going to start reading footnotes more :)
September 8, 2025
My book club discussion was far more interesting than the book itself actually. There's a lot of squishiness in this project and my mind constantly wandered while I read. But the discussions of it were some of the more interesting topics we've ever explored. Perhaps that's exactly what the author intended... the text being a kind of springboard to help people come together and discover new things. "Description is not liberation."
December 29, 2023
This book is definitely not for everyone, and is probably one of the most challenging books I've read. It has fundamentally changed the ways in which I think about knowledge and communication, as well as other topics. I now understand a little bit of why anyone in a field related to McKittrick's quotes her and cites her as part of their intellectual development.
June 18, 2021
Gosh. This book is heavy and demands an ongoing return and repetition. the practice. the lessons. the love. The black feminist thinking that McKittrick practices - curious, thoughtful + full of care in its questions and holdings, and rebelliously interdisciplinarity - is generous in all it offers.
March 29, 2023
This book rocked my world!! 🌎✨As a Latin American Studies/Black Studies graduate student, this book reframed my entire research and encouraged me to adopt a Black feminist geography lens for my work. McKittrick is a truly inspiring Black intellectual and scholar. Amazing!!!!
April 21, 2023
reading something that 'stretches' what counts as science/methodology is really great and I loved this BUT I will say it is a challenging read ... certainly parts of it where I felt like it was a little too entrenched in academic discourses
August 21, 2024
Enjoyed myself. Read in one sitting. Love the way she writes. Imma work on my reply (not necessarily to her but in reflection of the book) these next few weeks on my Substack for sure. Clarreese.substack.com — watch for the drop.
February 12, 2025
"Science is a shadow, a story, a friendship. Science reveals failed attachments." (3)
"The logic of race is anchored to a monumental biocentric narrative that is invested in replicating scientific racism (even in critique)." (149)
"The logic of race is anchored to a monumental biocentric narrative that is invested in replicating scientific racism (even in critique)." (149)
February 25, 2021
Katherine McKittrick is in her bag once again with this one! Also, a very accessible book for folks who want to get into Black science studies, critiques of liberal humanism, and the academy!
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July 2, 2021Intellectually very challenging.
September 6, 2021
Magnificent
November 16, 2021
My brain hurts, but this is gonna be one I come back to again and again throughout my life.
November 13, 2022
At a certain point while reading this book, I realized: "I have no idea what the author is saying." That's probably on me.
October 15, 2023
love your spotify playlist by the way
December 22, 2024
for class
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September 8, 2025Read for local bookstore’s “Theory Social.”
February 8, 2023
Katherine is a genius and this book is proof of the ways her incredible mind works. I’m in complete awe every time I’ve had to read any chapter from Dear Science.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews