Blackness and the Sociality of Sports: A Conversation with Fred Moten Sociality of Sports: A Conversation with Fred Moten (co-authored with Roberto Sirvent; Lateral 15.1, Spring 2026 (forthcoming)).

Using the management of Black athlete protest (e.g., Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Brittney Griner) in the post-Ferguson era as a foil, Moten, political theorist Roberto Sirvent, and Black cultural theorist Charles Athanasopoulos engage in a critical conversation surrounding Black sociality which has bearing on the arenas of sports, art, and the academy. The conversation begins with Sirvent’s question surrounding Moten’s previous statement that “Black lives matter to the NFL just like they did to Thomas Jefferson.” This question brings to the fore the distinction between poetic socialities of “Black life” and Black “lives” as units of countability. Such a distinction leads Athanasopoulos and Moten to meditate on how one discerns the excess sociality within team sports from the logics of individuation and countability which come to manage and evaluate athletes. 

In turn, the discussants begin to ponder the appropriate terms for considering how Black athletes themselves may have their own investments in the logics which reduce them to countable units: perversity, co-dependency, co-option, complicity, ambivalence, do words even go there? How do such terms come each with their own assumptive and diagnostic logics? How do we relinquish our search for purity (of an arena, person, community, object of study) as concomitant with Black liberation? Moten asks us to consider what it might mean to engage, in that sense, in a non-diagnostic form of Black study. Athanasopoulos responds by considering how one might engage in a process of Black radical discernment which both avoids purity diagnostics while at the same time maintaining a reflexive eye toward our own practices of Black study and activism. These questions concerning complicity and purity thus result in a broader meditation on the linkages between sports, art, and the academy. 

Prompted by Sirvent’s questions about fandom, ownership, and enjoyment, Moten reminds us of how the logics of individuation come to bear on academics in his remarks that “academic culture is the only culture in the world where fellowship means, ‘oh, I get to go be by myself.’” He contrasts this with the raw sociality which exists in team sports through the example of baseball legend Clayton Kershaw's voice breaking when discussing being with his teammates during his retirement announcement, and the importance of Allen Iverson’s constant accompaniment by his loved ones. In discussing Iverson further, Moten critically inverts how we read Iverson’ infamous line on “practice” as a way of thinking about Black sociality. The conversation thus ends with a reflection on how scholars, students, and activists can “see through” the individuating logics of recognition or purity by refocusing on the “practice” and fellowship of Black study/activism.