Through a media ecology analysis, I argue that the subjectivity of Brown's body was kept alive through the movement, as the hashtag and associated imagery can be seen as material extensions of Michael Brown's body and a desire to make sense of Brown's death through an affective exchange with the body in peril.
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Further, the embodied affect of the movement overlapped and entangled with that of offline spaces, where protesters on the ground in Ferguson and other communities began to raise their hands above their head in a desire to not only create an external spectacle of Brown's victimhood, but to live within the subjectivity of his abject body. #HandsUpDontShoot offers an example how the convergence of subjectivities occurs affectively: the hashtag, while making a discursive appeal to consider Michael Brown's rumoured stance of surrender when he was shot by Wilson, also featured photos of movement participants recreating his pose with their own bodies.
Brown's death led to the development of a hashtag movement called #HandsUpDontShoot on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, which critiqued the disparate treatment of racial minorities and the excessive use of (often deadly) force by police on black bodies. On 9 August 2014, Michael Brown, a young man of barely 18 years, was killed by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, which renewed discourse surrounding the occurrences of racial violence in the United States enacted at the hands of police. More specifically, I contend that these shirts are not only symbols of grief, expressions of empathy, and coping mechanisms but are also a public stance against racial injustice and anti-Black racial terror. The evidence for this link is shallow: despite fears that climate change may. I discuss how shirts of the movement preserve memories and call for action. The concept of ungoverned space pervades discussion of global security. In this article, I argue that the memorial shirts, or what I call the “shirts of the movement,” operate as a form of visual life writing the shirts collectively (in reference to the larger movement) and individually (in reference to the deceased person) tell a story. Hence, the study of memorial shirts necessarily includes an analysis of death, trauma, justice, and spirituality. Just as some see wearing a memorial shirt as a way to honor the memory of a person no longer physically with us, others view it as a trigger that reignites the trauma associated with the person’s death. In fact, many people ask how these memorial shirts can simultaneously evoke joy and pain. Whether displaying the name or face of the deceased person, or a quotation from a famous ancestor like Martin Luther King, Jr., these shirts exert great power. While it is true that many people are “being memorialized by a hashtag,” the shirts, which are wearable memorials, are ever-present in the movement as well. (rest in peace) shirts, also known as memorial shirts, which are significant and visible pieces in the Movement for Black Lives.
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