Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality > Feminist Philosophy > Varieties of Feminism > Black Feminism

Black Feminism

Edited by Kristie Dotson (Michigan State University)
About this topic
Summary

Black feminist philosophy is a version of feminism whose primary focus concerns, at least to some degree, Black women from within African diasporic contexts. It has the aim of understanding problems facing Black women along with identifying and/or uncovering liberation strategies. It also includes work that seeks to highlight the ways Black women's thought illuminates broader philosophical questions and issues. Least one think that Black feminist philosophy only concerns oppression, it also concerns celebrations of the lives and work of Black women across African diasporic contexts. These investigative paths lead to particular social ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatic orientations, for example. 
Key works Intersectionality: A conceptual tool that demands identification of multiple social relationships for the purpose of rendering visible experiences that have been theoretically erased by prevailing, relevant practices of knowledge production. Crenshaw 1989, Crenshaw 1991 Double Jeopardy: A metaphor developed to gesture to the need to consider multiple vectors of oppression when attempting to understand ranges of vulnerability for any given group. (Beale 1969) Interstices: A metaphor developed to signal to gaps within contexts of signification that signals empowerment and disempowerment. (Spillers 1984) Unknowability: A form of active ignorance that is created by utilizing socio-epistemic orientations that render complex positions in our social landscapes difficult to detect. (Williams 1905)
Introductions Crenshaw 1989, Collins 1991/2008
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98 found
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1 — 50 / 98
  1. added 2018-11-30
    Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne. [REVIEW]Nora Berenstain - forthcoming - Mind:fzy082.
    Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny combines traditional conceptual analysis and feminist conceptual engineering with critical exploration of cases drawn from popular culture and current events in order to produce an ameliorative account of misogyny, i.e., one that will help address the problems of misogyny in the actual world. A feminist account of misogyny that is both intersectional and ameliorative must provide theoretical tools for recognizing misogyny in its many-dimensional forms, as it interacts and overlaps with other oppressions. (...)
  2. added 2018-11-09
    On the Politics of Coalition.Elena Ruíz & Kristie Dotson - 2017 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (2):1-16.
    In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of the philosophical role “method” plays in MacKinnon’s argument, (...)
    No categories
  3. added 2018-08-19
    Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.Patricia Hill Collins - 2000 - London: Routledge.
  4. added 2018-08-19
    Women, Race, & Class.Angela Y. Davis - 1981 - New York: Vintage.
  5. added 2018-02-18
    Situated Black Women's Voices in/on the Profession of Philosophy.Anita Allen, Anika Maaza Mann, Donna-Dale L. Marcano, Michele Moody-Adams & Jacqueline Scott - 2008 - Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 23 (2):160-189.
  6. added 2018-02-17
    The Prison Contract and Abolition Democracy.Eduardo Mendieta - 2007 - Radical Philosophy Today 5:209-217.
    This article discusses the fortuitous genesis of the book of my conversations with Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Democracy and traces some of the intellectual and philosophical sources that informed the specific questions and approaches that inform the dialogue. Davis’ relationships to Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, as well as to Foucault, are discussed. Similarly, Davis’ place within a critical black American political-philosophical tradition is analyzed. The essay focuses mainly, however, on the way in which Davis’ work on the prison industrial (...)
  7. added 2018-02-17
    Book Review: Bell Hooks. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York and London: Routledge 2000. [REVIEW]Kim Q. Hall - 2003 - Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 18 (2):233-236.
    No categories
  8. added 2017-03-30
    Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice.Patricia Hill Collins - 2001 - Hypatia 16 (2):91-93.
  9. added 2017-02-14
    Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy.Beverly Guy-Sheftall & George Yancy - 2010 - State University of New York Press.
    Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy in dialogue.
    No categories
  10. added 2017-02-14
    Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought.Patricia Hill Collins - 2004 - In Sandra G. Harding (ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. Routledge.
  11. added 2017-02-13
    Resistance, Language, and Law: An Interview with Angela Y. Davis.Chad Kautzer - 2005 - In Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, Empire. Seven Stories Press. pp. 105-132.
  12. added 2017-01-22
    The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment: On Angela Y. Davis's Abolitionism.Eduardo Mendieta - 2007 - Human Studies 30 (4):291 - 309.
  13. added 2017-01-15
    Book Review: Patricia Hill Collins. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. University of Minnesota, 1998. [REVIEW]Iris Marion Young - 2001 - Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 16 (2):91-93.
    No categories
  14. added 2016-12-12
    Traditio: Feminists of Color and the Torn Virtues of Democratic Engagement.R. Coles - 2001 - Political Theory 29 (4):488-516.
  15. added 2016-12-08
    Situated Black Women's Voices in/on the Profession of Philosophy.George Yancy - 2008 - Hypatia 23 (2):155-159.
  16. added 2016-12-08
    On Angela Davis and Abolition Democracy.Douglas Kellner - 2007 - Radical Philosophy Review 10 (2):149-156.
  17. added 2016-04-05
    Representative Women: Slavery, Citizenship, and Feminist Theory in Du Bois's “Damnation of Women”.Lawrie Balfour - 2005 - Hypatia 20 (3):127-148.
    In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.
  18. added 2016-04-05
    Sarah Grimké: Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Other Essays.Elizabeth Ann Bartlett - 1989 - Hypatia 4 (1):175-180.
  19. added 2015-04-17
    Is Transracial Adoption in the Best Interests of Ethnic Minority Children?: Questions Concerning Legal and Scientific Interpretations of a Child’s Best Interests.Shelley M. Park & Cheryl Green - 2000 - Adoption Quarterly 3 (4):5-34.
    This paper examines a variety of social scientific studies purporting to demonstrate that transracial adoption is in the best interests of children. Finding flaws in these studies and the ethical and political arguments based upon such scientific findings, we argue for adoption practices and policies that respect the racial and ethnic identities of children of color and their communities of origin.
  20. added 2015-04-05
    Comment and Debate: Feminists, Black Candidates, and Local Politics: A Report From Baltimore.Nancy Hartsock - 1984 - Feminist Studies 10 (2):339.
  21. added 2015-03-23
    Bringing Bell Hooks to Japan.Cabell Charles - 2007 - Fenomenologia. Diálogos Possíveis Campinas: Alínea/Goiânia: Editora da Puc Goiás 7:89-99.
  22. added 2015-03-23
    Bell Hooks.Seduced by Violence No More - 2006 - In Elizabeth Hackett & Sally Anne Haslanger (eds.), Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Oxford University Press.
  23. added 2015-03-23
    Patricia Hill-Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment Reviewed By.April Herndon - 2001 - Philosophy in Review 21 (1):20-22.
  24. added 2015-03-23
    Defining Black Feminist Thought.Patricia Hill Collins - 1997 - In Linda J. Nicholson (ed.), The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory. Routledge.
  25. added 2014-11-09
    Musing: A Black Feminist Philosopher: Is That Possible?V. Denise James - 2014 - Hypatia 29 (1):189-195.
  26. added 2014-11-09
    Buddhism and Bell Hooks: Liberatory Aesthetics and the Radical Subjectivity of No-Self.Leah Kalmanson - 2012 - Hypatia 27 (4):810-827.
    This article engages bell hooks's concept of �radical black subjectivity� through the lens of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self. Relying on the Zen theorist D?gen and on resources from Japanese aesthetics, I argue that non-attachment to the self clarifies hooks's claim that radical subjectivity unites our capacity for critical resistance with our capacity to appreciate beauty. I frame this argument in terms of hooks's concern that postmodernist identity critiques dismiss the identity claims of disempowered peoples. On the one hand, identity (...)
  27. added 2014-08-24
    Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, And: Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization, And: Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Review).Sarah Lucia Hoagland - forthcoming - Hypatia 22 (2):182-188.
  28. added 2014-08-24
    Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups (Review).Patricia Hill Collins - 2005 - Hypatia 20 (4):227-230.
  29. added 2014-08-11
    “Now, How You Sound”: Considering a Different Philosophical Praxis.Devonya N. Havis - 2014 - Hypatia 29 (1):237-252.
    This paper is a tentative attempt to set out some of the basic points for articulating an alternative philosophical praxis derived from some Black women's lives and experiences. It begins with an explanation of delegitimating processes and the importance of not dividing theory from practice. The essay offers six practices that outline the unique critical attitude that constitutes philosophical practices rooted in Black women's lived experience and asks “How we sound” when doing academic philosophy.
  30. added 2014-07-21
    A Black Feminist Statement.Black Feminism - 1995 - In Beverly Guy-Sheftal (ed.), Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought. The New Press.
  31. added 2014-07-03
    Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Review).Emily Grosholz - 2007 - Hypatia 22 (4):209-212.
  32. added 2014-07-03
    Audre Lorde's (Nonessentialist) Lesbian Eros.Ruth Ginzberg - 1992 - Hypatia 7 (4):73 - 90.
    Audre Lorde reopened the question of the position of the erotic with respect to both knowledge and power in her 1983 essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power." This is not a new question in the philosophical literature; it is a very old one. What is different about Audre Lorde's examination of Eros is that she starts with a decidedly lesbian conception of Eros, in marked contrast to other Western philosophers' work.
  33. added 2014-06-16
    “Thinking Familiar with the Interstitial”: An Introduction.Kristie Dotson - 2014 - Hypatia 29 (1):1-17.
    It's not that we haven't always been here, since there was a here. It is that the letters of our names have been scrambled when they were not totally erased, and our fingertips upon the handles of history have been called the random brushings of birds. (Lorde , ix) Because… [racialized peoples'] dehumanization has not been successful, conceiving of self and others and their exercise of themselves both against dehumanization and toward liberatory possibilities has meant living double lives backed up (...)
  34. added 2014-05-29
    Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction. By VIVIAN M. MAY.Cathryn Bailey - 2009 - Hypatia 24 (1):185-188.
  35. added 2014-05-29
    Identity, Knowledge, and Toni Morrison's "Beloved": Questions About Understanding Racism.Susan E. Babbitt - 1994 - Hypatia 9 (3):1 - 18.
    In discussing Drucilla Cornell's remarks about Toni Morrison's Beloved, I consider epistemological questions raised by the acquiring of understanding of racism, particularly the deep-rooted racism embodied in social norms and values. I suggest that questions about understanding racism are, in part, questions about personal and political identities and that questions about personal and political identities are often, importantly, epistemological questions.
  36. added 2014-04-08
    The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory.Anna Carastathis - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (5):304-314.
    In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege. The aim of this essay is to clarify the origins of intersectionality as a metaphor, and its theorization as a provisional concept in Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s work, followed by its uptake and mainstreaming as a paradigm by feminist theorists in a period marked by its widespread and rather unquestioned--if, (...)
  37. added 2014-04-02
    Emancipatory Affect.Michael J. Monahan - 2011 - Clr James Journal 17 (1):102-111.
    Love is a recurring theme in bell hooks' thought, where it is explicitly linked to her understanding of freedom and liberation. In this essay, I will bring together some of hooks' most important writings on love in order to clarify her account of the relationship between love and liberation. I will argue that, for hooks, the practice of love and the practice of freedom are inextricably connected, and any liberatory project must be undertaken within the context of an ethics of (...)
  38. added 2014-04-02
    Gender and Africana Phenomenology.Paget Henry - 2011 - Clr James Journal 17 (1):153-183.
    This paper examines the long dialogue between Africana phenomenology and Africana feminism. In particular, it examines the exchanges between WEB Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon and Sylvia Wynter on the one hand, and a number of black feminists on the other, including bell hooks, Natasha Barnes, Farrah Griffin, and Joy James. The primary outcome of the survey of these exchanges is that the pro-feminist spaces created by black male phenomenologists have all been insufficient for the full representation of the (...)
  39. added 2014-04-02
    Theorizing Transformative Revolutionary Action.Make Fitts - 2011 - Clr James Journal 17 (1):112-132.
    bell hooks is one of the seminal feminist theoreticians whose body of work not only provides discursive understandings of intersectional modes of oppression, but also a conceptual roadmap for creating the material conditions that lead to social transformation. In this essay, I posit the formulation of a theory of transformative revolutionary action that comes out of hoolis' ruminations on the following concepts: marginality as a position and place of resistance, killing rage, revolutionary interdependency and the politics of sisterhood, and the (...)
  40. added 2014-04-02
    Understanding Aesthetic Judgments Across Cultural Borders: Bell Hooks, Kant, and Cornel West and the Understanding of Aesthetic Judgments of Others.James Winchester - 2000 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):499-525.
  41. added 2014-03-29
    The Oppositional Gaze : Black Female Spectators.Bell Hooks - 2010 - In Marc Furstenau (ed.), The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments. Routledge.
  42. added 2014-03-29
    “Mama's Got a Brand-New Bag”: Angela Davis's Blues Legacies.Renea Henry - 1998 - Radical Philosophy Review 1 (2):146-149.
  43. added 2014-03-29
    Dialogue on Radicalism and the Left: Radicalism Today.Angela Y. Davis, Joy Ann James & Richard Curtis - 1998 - Radical Philosophy Review 1 (1):1-16.
  44. added 2014-03-27
    The Personal, the Political, and Others: Audre Lorde Denouncing "The Second Sex Conference".Lester C. Olson - 2000 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (3):259 - 285.
  45. added 2014-03-26
    It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation.Patricia Hill Collins - 1998 - Hypatia 13 (3):62 - 82.
    Intersectionality has attracted substantial scholarly attention in the 1990s. Rather than examining gender, race, class, and nation as distinctive social hierarchies, intersectionality examines how they mutually construct one another. I explore how the traditional family ideal functions as a privileged exemplar of intersectionality in the United States. Each of its six dimensions demonstrates specific connections between family as a gendered system of social organization, racial ideas and practices, and constructions of U.S. national identity.
  46. added 2014-03-18
    Anna Julia Cooper: "Dedicated in the Name of My Slave Mother to the Education of Colored Working People".Cathryn Bailey - 2004 - Hypatia 19 (2):56-73.
    : The achievements of Anna Julia Cooper are extraordinary given her life circumstances. Driven by a desire Cooper called "a thumping within," she became a prominent educator, earned her Ph.D., and influenced the thought of W.E.B. DuBois and others. Cooper fought for her educational philosophy, but despite her contributions, her apparent elitism has shaped contemporary assessments of her work. I argue that her views must be considered in social and historical context.
  47. added 2014-03-18
    Thinking From the Margins, Acting at the Intersections: Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice From the South.Vivian M. May - 2004 - Hypatia 19 (2):74 - 91.
    Anna Julia Cooper's 1892 A Voice from the South is a hybrid text that speaks provocatively to contemporary feminist philosophy. Negotiating exclusionary categories of being and knowing and writing herself into intellectual traditions meant to exclude her, Cooper's narrative methods are politically tactical and epistemologically significant. Cooper inserts subjectivity into objective analysis and underscores knowledge as located and embodied. By speaking from spaces of exclusion, Cooper fully articulates the promise of intersectional approaches to liberation.
  48. added 2014-03-18
    Barbara Jordan: The Politics of Insertion and Accommodation.Mary Ellen Curtin - 2004 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7 (4):279-303.
    Barbara Jordan (1936?1996), a formidable politician, won election to the Texas Senate (1966) and to the US Congress (1972). She became one of the most celebrated African?American politicians of the twentieth century, acclaimed both by white and black. Jordan was a voluntarist, viewing individuals as able to change the world through their own actions. She was committed to the American dream of inclusion, and also to the importance of positive ties to elites; to coping with the ?world as it is?, (...)
  49. added 2014-03-17
    Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition.Angela Y. Davis - 2003 - In Tommy Lee Lott & John P. Pittman (eds.), A Companion to African-American Philosophy. Blackwell.
  50. added 2014-03-17
    Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought.Patricia Hill Collins - 2003 - In Tommy Lee Lott & John P. Pittman (eds.), A Companion to African-American Philosophy. Blackwell.
1 — 50 / 98
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