The Black Feminist Reader

Citation

Whiu, L. (2001), "The Black Feminist Reader", Women in Management Review, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 305-307. https://doi.org/10.1108/wimr.2001.16.6.305.1

If you have ever been the sole member of a subordinate group in the company of the dominant group or have wondered about the relationship between the social categories of race, gender and class, then The Black Feminist Reader will be a most engaging addition to your reading list. If you have ever had to negotiate differences or commonalities with members of a subordinate or dominant group; or are a black, coloured, indigenous or third world woman, who is seeking out new or alternative theories and practices for liberation and transformation of the institutions, ideologies, epistemologies and structures that perpetuate practices and tactics of oppression, then this book is essential reading.

The Black Feminist Reader is an intense and vivid socio‐politico‐historical journey into the diverse, complex and often contradictory experiences, ideologies, epistemologies and ontologies of African‐American women. The editors have selected and reprinted ten essays, which in their opinion (p. ix) “best reflect the literary, social, and political critiques that mark [black] feminism as singular, controversial, and transformative”. The essays are all reprints of works written or delivered over the last 25 years which “address key themes within black feminisms: the intersection of sex, gender, and race, sometimes class and ideology”. The Black Feminist Reader is organised into two parts: Part I, Literary Theory; and Part II, Social and Political Theory. The book begins with an overview of each of the essays, followed by a very helpful Editors’ Introduction (pp. 1‐7) which provides a brief historical overview of black feminisms. It ends with three key feminist statements, one from the Combahee River Collective, one entitled “African American women in defense of ourselves” and an open letter from Assata Shakur (see Appendix, pp. 261‐83).

In between these contours, The Black Feminist Reader confronts, challenges and critiques dominant “whitemale” (see Morrison’s use of this term, p. 25), liberal hegemony, white liberal feminist hegemony and black phallocentric hegemony which have operated to silence and erase black women. This book review illuminates and focuses upon the following themes that have emerged from this collection of essays: identity politics as a source of knowledge validation; erasure and silencing of black women; articulating the complexities, multiplicities, and intersectional experiences of black women’s lives; and the development of transformative consciousness, epistemologies, theories and practices.

In her revealing analysis of the impact of Afro‐American culture on contemporary American literature, Toni Morrison poses the question: “other than melanin and subject matter, what, in fact, may make me a black writer? Other than my own ethnicity – what is going on in my work that makes me believe it is demonstrably inseparable from a cultural specificity that is Afro‐American?” (p. 42). Michael Awkward poses a similar genre of question as he considers his relationship to feminist criticism and his role and contribution toward actualizing the goals of feminism when he asks: “Is male participation in feminism restricted to being either appropriative and domineering or not antifeminist? … To put the matter differently, is gender really an adequate determinant of ‘class’ position?” (p. 93).

Both Morrison’s and Awkward’s sets of questions highlight the difficult, yet inevitable identity politics that arise in the projects of reclaiming and validating epistemologies, ontologies and ideologies that have been actively suppressed and violated by centuries of oppressive tactics and practices. Underpinning both sets of questions is an attempt to locate the subjugated’s spaces that distinguish them from the powerful, and from which the subjugated may articulate their diverse and complex experience. In Toni Morrison’s words: “We are the subjects of our own narrative, witnesses to and participants in our own experience, and in no way coincidentally, in the experience of those with whom we have come in contact. We are not, in fact, ‘other”’ (pp. 31‐2).

The social, historical and economic contexts within and out of which resistance and liberation projects have developed are critical to a deep and thoughtful, but non‐appropriative understanding of oppressed peoples’ projects of reclamation, validation and liberation. A significant and material part of the social, historical and economic contexts for African‐American women is the violence of slavery in all of its forms, which Hortense Spillers illuminates in her multi‐layered, spiralling analysis. The historical and contemporary operation of oppressive tactics and practices has acted to silence and erase black women’s distinct experiences. For example, Kimberle‘ Crenshaw’s intersectionality analysis of several antidiscrimination cases in the USA demonstrates the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis. She explains that the effect of this tendency on black women is “that antidiscrimination doctrine essentially erases black women’s distinct experiences and, as a result, deems their discrimination complaints groundless” (p. 214). Crenshaw goes on to examine historical and contemporary issues in both the feminist and the civil rights communities and highlights how both communities’ acceptance of the dominant framework of discrimination has hindered the development of an adequate theory and praxis to address problems of intersectionality.

Other forms of erasure and silencing are addressed by Barbara Christian who points out how the race for theory, “with its linguistic jargon, … its gross generalizations about culture, has silenced” black women (p. 13). From an internal perspective, Joy James argues that “the majority culture’s desire or need to bring “closure” or containment to the black revolutionary struggles that fuelled radical black feminism (such as Combahee) has filtered into black feminist ideology, altering its potential for transformation” (p. 243). James points out that the reconfiguration of radicalism to fit within liberal paradigms by some black feminisms thus “enables an erasure of revolutionary politics and a rhetorical embrace of radicalism without material support for challenges to transform or abolish, rather than modify, state corporate authority” (pp. 247‐8).

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the theme of silence and erasure is a tactic utilised by the dominant white culture and state in its treatment of the indigenous Maori peoples’ claims to tino rangatiratanga or self‐determination and sovereignty. Annette Sykes, a Maori lawyer pointed out recently, that one line of fundamental division between the Crown and Maori is power sharing which is at the heart of the constitutional framework. She notes that: “it is the one issue on which the Crown delivers nothing but an oppressive silence” (Sykes, 2001, p. 40).

This theme of silence and erasure is the departure point for exploration of what appears to be one of the key goals of this book: to promote critical thinking and development of transformative consciousness, epistemologies, ontologies and ideologies that are grown from and reflect the complex and diverse realities of African‐American women’s lives. bell hooks points out that: “It is essential for continued feminist struggle that black women recognize the special vantage point our marginality gives us and make use of this perspective to criticize the dominant racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and create a counterhegemony” (pp. 144‐5). Barbara Christian also explains that: “… what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is” (p. 21). Both bell hooks and Barbara Christian highlight and validate the particular experiences of black women and demonstrate how those experiences locate black women uniquely to “envision and create a counterhegemony”.

In her essay, Patricia Collins’ vision of an Afrocentric feminist epistemology is grounded in her contention that: “as a result of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, apartheid, and other systems of racial domination, blacks share a common experience of oppression [which has] fostered shared Afrocentric values … [and] a distinctive Afrocentric epistemology” (p. 190). Collins develops some dimensions of an Afrocentric feminist epistemology which include: distinction between knowledge (which without wisdom is adequate for the powerful) and wisdom (which is essential for the survival of the subordinate); concrete experience as a criterion for credibility; contextual rules take priority over abstract principles in governing behaviour; and connectedness as a primary way of knowing (pp. 191‐6). In relation to the development of black feminist literary theory, Barbara Christian issues a cautionary note against exalting theory which, if not rooted in practice, has the potential to become prescriptive, elusive, elitist (p. 18). She also cautions against tendencies to “want to make the world less complex by organizing it according to one principle, to fix it through an idea which is really an ideal” (p. 18), and monolithic, monotheistic and monologic. This does not mean that black women should not theorise, or that they do not theorize, on the contrary Barbara Christian contends that “people of color have always theorized” (p. 12).

There are a lot of synergies between the projects of black women envisioning and creating counterhegemony and the projects that are engaging Maori women in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In particular, Ani Mikaere points out:

Maori women must develop theories which not only identify the sources of our oppression but which also enable us to both recognise and nurture our collective female strength. Kathie Irwin has observed that theory is “a necessary part of our revolutionary equipment” (Mikaere, pp. 160, 162‐163, n 540). Theorising our experiences is an important step in the struggle to regain the female power that colonisation has stripped away (Mikaere, 1995, p. 160).

While it is imperative that Maori women develop the theories that describe and explain our lives and experiences, Linda Smith has noted that:

This does not mean rejecting all feminist theories. Rather, it means that we, as Maori women, should begin with an understanding of our own condition and apply analyses, which can give added insight into the complexities of our world. Consequently, the first task of any theory is to make sense of the reality of the women who live within its framework. The second task is to provide women with a framework, which will assist in emancipating them from racism, sexism, poverty and other oppressions (Smith, 1997, p. 48).

The Black Feminist Reader is a rich source of historical, social, legal and political inquiry and analysis of African‐American women’s lived realities. It provides both the theory and the framework along with criticism, inspiration and vision, all of which are necessary to journey beyond our oppressive realities and to envision new theories and consciousness which are revolutionary and transformative.