On the Uses of Black Feminism: Notes on Black Feminism as Sexuality Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-188
Author(s):  
Shoniqua Roach
Author(s):  
Aisha A. Upton ◽  
Joyce M. Bell

This chapter examines women’s activism in the modern movement for Black liberation. It examines women’s roles across three phases of mobilization. Starting with an exploration of women’s participation in the direct action phase of the U.S. civil rights movement (1954–1966), the chapter discusses the key roles that women played in the fight for legal equality for African Americans. Next it examines women’s central role in the Black Power movement of 1966–1974. The authors argue that Black women found new roles in new struggles during this period. The chapter ends with a look at the rise of radical Black feminism between 1974 and 1980, examining the codification of intersectional politics and discussing the continuation of issues of race, privilege, and diversity in contemporary feminism.


Author(s):  
Joseph Winters

This chapter engages humanism and its fundamental assumptions by working through critical theory, black feminism, and black studies. It contends that there is a tension at the heart of humanism—while the ideal human appears to be the most widespread and available category, it has been constructed over and against certain qualities, beings, and threats. To elaborate on this tension, this chapter revisits the work of authors like Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Marx acknowledges that the human is a site of conflict and antagonism even as his thought betrays a lingering commitment to progress and humanism. Foucault goes further than Marx by underscoring the fabricated quality of man and the ways in which racism functions to draw lines between those who must live and those who must die. In response to Marx and Foucault’s tendency to privilege Europe, this chapter engages black feminism and Afro-pessimism—Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Frank Wilderson—who show how the figure of the human within humanism is defined in opposition to blackness.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199776
Author(s):  
Suryia Nayak

This is the transcript of a speech I gave at an Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) event on the 28th November 2020 about intersectionality and groups analysis. This was momentous for group analysis because it was the first IGA event to focus on black feminist intersectionality. Noteworthy, because it is so rare, the large group was convened by two black women, qualified members of the IGA—a deliberate intervention in keeping with my questioning of the relationship between group analysis and power, privilege, and position. This event took place during the Covid-19 pandemic via an online platform called ‘Zoom’. Whilst holding the event online had implications for the embodied visceral experience of the audience, it enabled an international attendance, including members of Group Analysis India. Invitation to the event: ‘Why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis’ Using black feminist intersectionality, this workshop explores two interconnected issues: • Group analysis is about integration of parts, but how do we do this across difference in power, privilege, and position? • Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? This question goes to the heart of who/ what we include in group analytic practice—what about black feminism? If there ‘cannot possibly be one single version of the truth so we need to hear as many different versions of it as we can’ (Blackwell, 2003: 462), we need to include as many different situated standpoints as possible. Here is where and why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis. On equality, diversity and inclusion, intersectionality says that the ‘problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including black [people] within an already established analytical structure’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 140). Can group analysis allow the outsider idea of intersectionality in?


2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-140
Author(s):  
Phyllisa Smith Deroze
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Denise Lawrence

People migrate globally in search of better lives, and migration often produces political, sociocultural, and economic turbulence. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of two Caribbean barrel children, whose mothers sought employment in Canada and abandoned or left their children in the care of family members. Data consisted of two daughters’ stories daughters, which illustrate the complexities of the barrel-children phenomena. A narrative approach was used to collect the data, and theoretical frameworks guiding the study included Bowlby’s attachment theory, Black feminism, and the intersectionality of race, class, and gender. Data analysis involved structural and narrative analysis. The study found that, in contrast to the literature, the two participants had positive experiences as barrel children and in reuniting with their parents in Toronto. The study highlights the importance of grandmothers in caring for children left behind and even after reunification with parents in Canada. The Black community, along with Black teachers, also play key roles in helping barrel children integrate into Canadian society and face challenges such as racism. Keywords: Barrel children, Canada, Caribbean immigrants, Children left behind, Parental separation.


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