“Fearfully and wonderfully made”: Black Caribbean women and the decolonization of thick Black female bodies

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamille Gentles-Peart
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Caribbean Women ◽  
Black Caribbean ◽  
Female Bodies

Black feminists promote decolonization as a strategy to recuperate Black women’s dignity and humanity from racist colonialist ideologies. In order to fully explore Black women’s emancipation, Black feminists have to explicitly consider how Black women break away from the ways in which thick Black female bodies have been defined by dominant white colonial cultures, and how Black women of different ethnicities engage in their own recovery of voluptuous Black female bodies. In this paper, I use a Black feminist intersectional lens to explore the ways in which Black Caribbean women recuperate thick Black female bodies from colonialist and racist ideologies. Specifically, using focus groups, I examine how these women participate in what I refer to as emancipatory thick body politics, discourses that challenge and resist the dehumanization of thick Black female bodies. Findings indicate that Black Caribbean women actively participate in decolonizing thick Black female bodies by forming sisterhood communities with other Black Caribbean women, re-defining womanhood, and engaging in transgressive interpretations of Christian doctrine.

The Kinkiness of Turquoise

Groove Theory ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 182-223
Author(s):  
Tony Bolden
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
American Poetry ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Vocal Technique ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Bessie Smith ◽  
Critical Methods

This chapter showcases Betty Davis’s transposition of women’s blues into rock-inflected version of funk. Bolden advances two key arguments. First, Davis reprised the sexual politics and rebellious spirit exemplified by singers Bessie Smith and Ida Cox, for instance, and reinterpreted those principles in modern America. Second, Davis’s eroticism and sui generis style of funk, which she expressed in her recordings and onstage, reflected a sexual politics that served as a counterpart to those of black feminists writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and many others who were publishing coextensively. But whereas black feminist writers often wrote about black women in previous generations, Davis not only addressed contradictions that black women encountered in contemporary street culture; she also represented such X-rated sexual desires as sadomasochism in her songwriting. In addition, the chapter provides biographical information that contextualizes Davis’s route to the music industry, and Bolden uses critical methods from scholarship on African American poetry to illuminate Davis’s vocal technique. 

The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Hypatia ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Janell Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory

I assess representations of black women's derrieres, which are often depicted as grotesque, despite attempts by some black women artists to create a black feminist aesthetic that recognizes the black female body as beautiful and desirable. Utilizing a black feminist disability theory, I revisit the history of the Hottentot Venus, which contributed to the shaping of this representational trope, and I identify a recurring struggle among these artists to recover the “unmirrored” black female body.

Incorporating intersectional musicality within the classroom: Black feminism through Nina Simone and Janelle Monáe

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Hines
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Social Justice Advocacy ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Dominant Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Education And Society ◽  
Nina Simone

In an age of social justice advocacy within education, the work of Black women continues to be excluded from the hegemonic educational canon despite the long history of Black feminists advocating for the eradication of systemic oppressive systems in education. By examining the livelihoods and music created by Black feminist musicians, music educators may begin to reflect on how Black women’s positionality within society has had a direct influence on the music they created within a White culturally dominant society. The purpose of this article is to conceptualize how the intersectional musicality of Nina Simone and Janelle Monáe – informed by the conceptual framework of Black Feminist Thought – can speak to the experiences that Black girls and women face within music education and society.

scholarly journals Rebellious and Strong Black Women in Paradise

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 122-132
Author(s):  
Zadmehr Torabi ◽  
Parvin Ghasemi
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
Strong Black Women ◽  
And Gender

The main aim of this paper is to apply black feminist tenets especially those of Bell Hooks and Alice Walker to demonstrate that unlike the passive black female characters of The Bluest Eye, and the resisting but finally victimized black women of Beloved, the wise and strong black women of Paradise who live in the Convent, are strong enough to recreate themselves as subjects, and to cultivate their own unique identity in a hegemonic environment which is replete with racial and gender discrimination. Black feminist actions and womanistic rituals help them accomplish this improvement. Consolata, and Mavis are two of such strong women of the Convent who not only succeed in healing themselves, but also in healing other black women as well. Black feminists claim in order to place black women at the center of stories about the American past, they must be depicted as subjects, that is, as creative change-agents, rather than as objects, or victims of hegemonic agency. In Paradise black women are depicted thus, have their own voices, and completely reject the patriarchal ideology.

scholarly journals Triple Consciousness: The Reimagination of Black Female Identities in Contemporary American Culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-306
Author(s):  
Nahum Welang
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Black Womanhood ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Black American Women ◽  
And Gender

Abstract My article underscores the intermediate existence of black American women between race and gender by stressing the role white patriarchy and black hypermasculinity play in the marginalisation of black female voices and the prioritisation of white women’s interests within and beyond mainstream feminist spaces. In order to legitimise this intermediate existence of black women, my article develops the triple consciousness theory (TCT). Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness, TCT argues that black women view themselves through three lenses and not two: America, blackness and womanhood. Black feminists, TCT affirms, are able to reimagine misguided narratives of black womanhood in contemporary American culture by unpacking the complexity of this threefold consciousness. In Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay strives for the inclusion of pluralist voices in the mainstream feminist movement and in Lemonade, Beyonce uses Afrofuturist tropes, reappropriation and gothic imagery to exorcise the generational pain of betrayal by black men and white women. With Insecure, Issa Rae radicalises feminist theory by critiquing archetypes attached to black womanhood and in Marvel’s Black Panther, not only do black women possess the unprecedented agency to shape their own identities on their own terms, there is also an existential reconnection with their past.

Women out of Place? A Micro-historical Perspective on the Black Feminist Movement in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
CECILIA MCCALLUM
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Salvador Da Bahia ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The City

In Brazil, black women are symbolically and practically associated with domestic work. The article examines feminist responses to black women's place in the socio-economic hierarchy of the city of Salvador, Bahia. These include proposals to introduce affirmative action and a ‘politics of presence’, involving the election of black women to represent the city's black female constituency. It describes the racial dynamics at work between black and white feminists in Bahia, signalling the contradictory tendencies that structure their relationship. Arguing against the view that a ‘politics of identity’ necessarily supports a new essentialism of race or culture, the article describes the diverse ideological and political influences upon the ideas and proposals of Bahian feminists. Black feminists construct racial difference as experiential and structural in origin. They adapt academic concepts and language in order to discuss their own lives and the specific social and cultural context of Salvador. The ethnographic and micro-historical perspective adopted here provides insight into ‘native’ understandings of affirmative action and a ‘politics of presence’ and suggests that criticisms of these measures on the grounds that they represent imported, non-Brazilian views of race are misplaced.

scholarly journals Living at the Margins: Black Feminist Pedagogy as Transformative Praxis During the 1980s-1990s and Epistemic Exclusion in the 21st Century—Where Do We Go Now?

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolana Mogadime
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
White Male ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
Institutional Challenges ◽  
University Settings ◽  
Black Feminist Pedagogy

In this essay I argue that Black women who teach Black feminist pedagogy experience “epistemic exclusion” (Buchanan, 2020) while advocating for the intersections between three disparate contexts: their activism in their communities, the women’s movement, and their work as educators in postsecondary settings. The period examined is the 1980s–1990s. I consider the institutional challenges and limitations Black women have undergone as knowledge producers and teachers. While pushing the boundaries erected between university settings and the Black liberation movement taking place in their communities (Joseph, 2003), they were limited to a precarious status as Black women teaching within White-male dominated institutions. The trailblazing theoretical pedagogical insights Black feminists have advanced in their work as educators in postsecondary settings is discussed at length. Additionally, connections are made to the present-day struggle among Black feminists for inclusion within contemporary educational contexts (Evans-Winters & Piest, 2014; Mogadime, 2002, 2003; Wane, 2009, 2011).

Prologue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittney C. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Women Intellectuals ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Embodied Discourse

Beyond Respectability employs an Anna Julia Cooperian approach to reading and interrogating the theoretical work and lived experiences of Black women intellectuals. To understand this methodological approach, one needs to first become acquainted with two of Cooper’s cardinal commitments. They include: 1) a commitment to seeing the Black female body as a form of possibility and not a burden, and 2) a commitment to centering the Black female body as a means to cathect Black social thought. In Voice, Cooper places the Black female body and all that it knows squarely in the center of the text’s methodology. She fundamentally believed that we cannot divorce Black women’s bodies from the theory they produce. The author recognizes these forms as an embodied discourse, which predominates in Cooper’s work. Embodied discourse refers to a form of Black female textual activism wherein race women assertively demand the inclusion of their bodies and, in particular, working class bodies and Black female bodies by placing them in the texts they write and speak. By pointing to all the ways Black women’s bodies emerge in formal and informal autobiographical accounts, archival materials, and advocacy work, this work disrupts the smooth function of the culture of dissemblance and the politics of respectability as the paradigmatic frames through which to engage Black women’s ideas and their politics.

“Written, published, … cross-indexed, and footnoted”: Producing Black Female Ph.D.s and Black Women's and Gender Studies Scholarship in Political Science

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 819-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
And Gender

In an essay entitled “Variations on Negations and the Heresy of Black Feminist Creativity,” Black feminist Michele Wallace explores the difficulties of producing and presenting a “black female cultural perspective, which for the most part is not allowed to become written in a society in which writing is the primary currency of knowledge” (Wallace 1990, 54). Although she anticipates that some might find a defense of Black female cultural and political criticism “elitist,” she nevertheless remains, “convinced that the major battle for the ‘other’ of the ‘other’ [i.e., Black women] will be to achieve a voice, or voices, thus inevitably transforming the basic relations of dominant discourse. Only with these voices—written, published, televised, taped, filmed, staged, cross-indexed, and footnoted—will [Black women] approach control over [their] own lives” (66).

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