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Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Patricia Hill Collins
34 books478 followersPatricia Hill Collins (born May 1, 1948) is currently a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and the past President of the American Sociological Association Council.
Collins' work primarily concerns issues involving feminism and gender within the African-American community. She first came to national attention for her book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, originally published in 1990.
Collins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1948. The only daughter of a factory worker and a secretary, Collins attended the Philadelphia public schools.
After obtaining her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1969, she continued on to earn a Master of Arts Degree in Teaching from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St Joseph Community School, among two others, in Boston. She continued on to become the Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University until 1980, after which she completed her doctorate in sociology back at Brandeis in 1984.
While earning her PhD, Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982. In 1990, Collins published her first book, "Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment". A revised tenth anniversary edition of the book was published in 2000, and subsequently translated into Korean in 2009.
While working at Tufts, she married Roger L. Collins in the year 1977, a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati, with whom she has one daughter, Valerie L. Collins.
In 1990, Collins was the recipient of the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award. She was later awarded the Jessie Bernard Award by the American Sociological Association in 1993. For her book Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005), she was presented the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award in 2007.
Collins is recognized as a social theorist, drawing from many intellectual traditions; her more than 40 articles and essays have been published in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, history, psychology, and most notably sociology. Moreover, Collins was the recipient of a Sydney Spivack Dissertation Support Award.
The University of Cincinnati named Collins The Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology in 1996, making her the first ever African-American, and only the second woman, to hold this position. She received emeritus status in the Spring of 2005, and became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. The University of Maryland named Collins a Distinguished University Professor in 2006.
(from Wikipedia)
Collins' work primarily concerns issues involving feminism and gender within the African-American community. She first came to national attention for her book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, originally published in 1990.
Collins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1948. The only daughter of a factory worker and a secretary, Collins attended the Philadelphia public schools.
After obtaining her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1969, she continued on to earn a Master of Arts Degree in Teaching from Harvard University in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St Joseph Community School, among two others, in Boston. She continued on to become the Director of the Africana Center at Tufts University until 1980, after which she completed her doctorate in sociology back at Brandeis in 1984.
While earning her PhD, Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982. In 1990, Collins published her first book, "Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment". A revised tenth anniversary edition of the book was published in 2000, and subsequently translated into Korean in 2009.
While working at Tufts, she married Roger L. Collins in the year 1977, a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati, with whom she has one daughter, Valerie L. Collins.
In 1990, Collins was the recipient of the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award. She was later awarded the Jessie Bernard Award by the American Sociological Association in 1993. For her book Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005), she was presented the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award in 2007.
Collins is recognized as a social theorist, drawing from many intellectual traditions; her more than 40 articles and essays have been published in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, history, psychology, and most notably sociology. Moreover, Collins was the recipient of a Sydney Spivack Dissertation Support Award.
The University of Cincinnati named Collins The Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology in 1996, making her the first ever African-American, and only the second woman, to hold this position. She received emeritus status in the Spring of 2005, and became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. The University of Maryland named Collins a Distinguished University Professor in 2006.
(from Wikipedia)
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February 18, 2015
"Race and gender may be analytically distinct, but in Black women’s everyday lives, they work together.” - Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
I find it difficult to summarize books like this, ones which contain such comprehensive content. Although focusing on African-American feminist theory, Collins says the theory can be applied to any black diasporic woman because, “Women of African descent are dispersed globally, yet the issues we face may be similar.”
And reading the content I believe the issues we face are indeed similar. It was a very thorough documentation, history of slavery, the change in family structure, racial tropes, and so on.
I liked how it was stated that although black women have never been seen as academics, they still managed to have a rich feminist history, for example in blues music (Billie Holliday), oral tradition (Sojourner Truth) and literature (Alice Walker). This was just the book I needed to read, I encountered lots of names I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise.
The line which stated that black women were "de mule uh de world," (Hurston) and also being seen as nurturers rang true to me from what I've seen and discussions I've had with people. And the section on the main stereotypes of black women (sapphire, mammy, matriarch, welfare mother etc) was very telling especially as almost every black woman I see on television has been made to fit into these stereotypes, in fact I could tell you all stories related to me by black women I've talked to about how people obviously interact with them based on one of those four stereotypes.Despite these stereotypes, the book was promising and suggested that Black women should redefine ourselves, which is what so many of us are doing:
"It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment.”- Audre Lorde
The literary criticism that weaved in the book was interesting, pointed to another way black women can define themselves: by writing. Some books mentioned in the book:
The Colour Purple- Alice Walker
The Living is Easy- Dorothy West
A Measure of Time- Rosa Guy
Dessa Rose- Sherley Anne Williams
The Chosen People, The Timeless People- Paule Marshall
Eva’s Man- Gayl Jones
The book shows how black women were positioned to fail. Yet we are not doing so, so in that way it was a very hopeful book. I think about how difficult it has historically been for black women to get their words out there and I appreciate this book even more. The content was a reiteration of what I already know about black womanhood, while at the same time educating me more and allowing me to see more profoundly, and from a historical perspective, the issues we face in society. I don't think I've ever come across a book that details black feminist theory so thoroughly. I loved it, and was reminded that black feminist theory is supposed to be inclusive, not exclusionary, by the accessible language.
I find it difficult to summarize books like this, ones which contain such comprehensive content. Although focusing on African-American feminist theory, Collins says the theory can be applied to any black diasporic woman because, “Women of African descent are dispersed globally, yet the issues we face may be similar.”
And reading the content I believe the issues we face are indeed similar. It was a very thorough documentation, history of slavery, the change in family structure, racial tropes, and so on.
I liked how it was stated that although black women have never been seen as academics, they still managed to have a rich feminist history, for example in blues music (Billie Holliday), oral tradition (Sojourner Truth) and literature (Alice Walker). This was just the book I needed to read, I encountered lots of names I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise.
The line which stated that black women were "de mule uh de world," (Hurston) and also being seen as nurturers rang true to me from what I've seen and discussions I've had with people. And the section on the main stereotypes of black women (sapphire, mammy, matriarch, welfare mother etc) was very telling especially as almost every black woman I see on television has been made to fit into these stereotypes, in fact I could tell you all stories related to me by black women I've talked to about how people obviously interact with them based on one of those four stereotypes.Despite these stereotypes, the book was promising and suggested that Black women should redefine ourselves, which is what so many of us are doing:
"It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment.”- Audre Lorde
The literary criticism that weaved in the book was interesting, pointed to another way black women can define themselves: by writing. Some books mentioned in the book:
The Colour Purple- Alice Walker
The Living is Easy- Dorothy West
A Measure of Time- Rosa Guy
Dessa Rose- Sherley Anne Williams
The Chosen People, The Timeless People- Paule Marshall
Eva’s Man- Gayl Jones
The book shows how black women were positioned to fail. Yet we are not doing so, so in that way it was a very hopeful book. I think about how difficult it has historically been for black women to get their words out there and I appreciate this book even more. The content was a reiteration of what I already know about black womanhood, while at the same time educating me more and allowing me to see more profoundly, and from a historical perspective, the issues we face in society. I don't think I've ever come across a book that details black feminist theory so thoroughly. I loved it, and was reminded that black feminist theory is supposed to be inclusive, not exclusionary, by the accessible language.
August 25, 2014
Not really a review, more a butterfly-view.
I had a rare flash of brilliance and decided to read the glossary first. This kind of sensible idea rarely occurs to me. I was immediately struck by Collins' definition of
intersectionality: analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organisation, which shape Black women's experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women
In other words, intersectional analysis, first articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1991, is explicitly and inseparably about Black women. Re-reading 'Mapping the Margins', Crenshaw's original article, I see Collins' framing there, except the centred specificity of Blackness is extended to all women of colour. Anyway, let it not be forgot.
The first chapter, The Politics of Black Feminist Thought explains in detail how Black women's ideas and existence have been suppressed, erased and excluded from the academy, and why much Black feminist work has sought to excavate and reclaim the work of earlier Black women intellectuals. It's important to note that Collins defines such intellectuals not by education or academic output: Sojourner Truth is one example who could not read or write, yet contributed to Black feminist oppositional knowledges. She identifies two historical factors that helped foster the critical social theory of Black US women: ghettoisation, which was designed for political control, but had the effect of enabling community structures and spaces for Black people to use African-derived ideas to craft resistance to racial oppression, and Black women's positions in the labour market as domestic workers, in close proximity to Whites, giving them a perspective that Collins terms outsider-within, also applicable to Black women in many institutions.
She asks how do Black women in the academy 'find ways of doing intellectual work that challenge injustice'? Collins shares her own experience of being tokenised and suppressed by her very scarcity. Her work must involve disrupting academic norms that are hostile to emotion and subjectivity: the subject position is precisely what has been denied to Black women. The concept here that most provoked my own thought and self-reflection was the orientation of both/and, reflecting Black feminists' rejection of or resistance to the binarism of Eurocentric tradition. One aspect is a BOTH scholar AND activist tradition, another manifests in Collins' approach to fellow intellectuals. She mentions that Sister Souljah is often dismissed as antifeminist for her acceptance of patriarchal masculinity, but her work has still contributed to Black feminist thought. Both/and reading makes space for celebration, solidarity, critique, acceptance and complexity.
Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought firmly asserts that this thought exists because the oppression of Black women remains, and thus requires an activist response. Since this oppression is intersectional, Black feminists have always recognised that their liberation requires the dismantling of multiple structures of domination, and thus their work 'supports broad principles of social justice that transcend US Black women's particular needs' Collins uses a technique throughout the book of quoting ordinary African-American woman of varying ages and social positions, here to note how daily experience stimulates the creation of oppositional knowledge. She also constantly refers to Black women intellectuals and studies; the book is superbly, lovingly researched. What emerges is a contrast with White feminist's 'consciousness raising' - Black feminism publicly articulates already developed, taken for granted knowledges.
Collins explains why Black women must lead and be in charge of Black feminism:
In her discussion of Work, Family and Black Women's Oppression, Collins reminds us that the heterosexual nuclear family ideal is not natural as is made to appear, but a creation of the state. For African American women it has never applied: slavery allowed no such structures, and later, most Black men never had sufficiently secure income to allow female partners, who found it easier to get jobs but were much less well paid, to work full time at home. US gender norms based on work roles thus rendered black women 'unfeminine'. Kinship structures beyond immediate family developed. While White communities increasingly followed 'market-driven, exchange-based models', Black communities had a high degree of solidarity and collective effort. She also notes that parenting passes on internalised oppression or oppositional knowledges.
In the post WWII period, Black Usians experienced both upward and downward social mobility. The introduction of cocaine and other drugs created an informal economy and enabled the rapid expansion of the criminal justice system. Housing remained segregated, but community began to erode. Black women generally moved from domestic work (immigrant women largely replaced them) into industry and clerical work (forming a working class often ignored by Black feminism and conflated with the working poor) and low paid insecure service jobs (becoming working poor) which resemble domestic service. Collins notes a contrast between a 1972 study of adolescent Black girls, who were hopeful despite living in harsh conditions, and a 1984 replication, in which girls and young women complained about unmet emotional needs as the extended family network that once supported Black girls had become overstretched due to economic shifts.
Upwardly mobile Black women who made it into the middle class have had to endure a kind of 'mammification'; they are expected to be nuturing and are disproportionately employed in caring roles:
considers how binary thinking and objectification result in the construction of Black women as the Other. Social theorist Dona Richards is referenced: she posits that the White tradition requires objectification in positing a knowing self distinct from a known object. Feminist scholarship has articulated the construction of women in proximity to nature as integral to their conquest by men, while Black scholarship has traced the parallel situation of Black (and other non-White) people are more 'natural' or 'instinctive', supporting the political economy of domination in slavery and (neo)colonialism.
Crenshaw compares the 2 Live Crew obscenity trial to the permissiveness granted to Madonna, who portrayed masturbation & insinuated group sex onstage, without interference. The court denied that 2 Live Crew's music had cultural specificity or artistic merit, which Crenshaw shows to be disingenuous and simultaneously a dismissal of the value of rap music made by Black people and a move to universalise and whitewash Black cultural expression. Obviously, like Collins, Crenshaw decries the violently misogynistic content of the work in question and mounts a strong feminist+antiracist critique of the arguments of its defenders, but she also challenges the court decisions' implication that it has no political value as a discourse of resistance. Furthermore, she points out that obscenity trials and critiques by Whites did nothing to protect the Black women objectified by the lyrics they targeted, instead furthering racial subjugation of Black men and devaluing of Black women by ignoring their specificity and viewing them as stand ins for White women, always the implicit victims of Black male sexual violence.
Collins discusses beauty standards, colorism and the feelings of inferiority that affect Black girls and women living in the midst of White supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She gives attention to the ways Black women fiction writers have worked against controlling images, by presenting oppositional images of Black women as emergent, as well as tracing the causes of their individual subjugation. Such portraits return full humanity and subjectivity to objectified women.
This leads in to (this book has flow) The Power of Self Definition which is about the myriad creative ways that African-American resist and have resisted controlling images, subordinate roles and white supremacist hegemony, in every day ways, through blues music, literature, self-reliance, activism, academic and intellectual work and research. I became very frustrated on behalf of women of colour attempting to organise safe spaces. These are often misdescribed and criticised as 'separatist' and 'essentialist', but spaces free from surveillance by more powerful groups are obviously deeply needed to develop the 'self-definitions [that] become politicised Black feminist standpoints'.
One of the striking aspects of the chapter is the idea of self that emerges: one based on accountability and rooted in connectedness in difference and individuality in community. This is one of the hardest aspects of the book for me to get a handle on, and one I want to understand much better: 'identity is not the goal but rather the point of departure in self-definition'
When it comes to The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood 'everyone has spoken for Black women, making it difficult to speak for ourselves'. Women's studies, for instance, has tended to fit Black women into frameworks developed around White women to point out how Black women 'have it worse'. But the silence around sexual politics among Black women, an important subject here, also relates to racism and the pressure to choose between gender and race, when speaking out against rape and misogyny might harm Black men. Black feminism, by treating race, gender and class as intersecting structures of domination rather than individual attributes, has made work in this area possible. One example is reproductive justice discourse, a wider framework for reproductive autonomy than the pro-choice focus often taken White feminists, (but now being claimed by them as a new discovery) that grew as a response to the various suppressions and forms of population control enacted against African-Americans, from forced sterilizations to 'welfare-queen' controlling images.
Sexism (and heterosexism) are only possible in a binary system of thought. The devalued jezebel/hoochie makes pure White womanhood possible. Collins reminds us that ideas about what is natural and normal are state sanctioned and promoted in schools, the media, religious institutions and government policies. I love this quote from Toni Cade Bambara on Eurocentric gender: "I have always, I think, opposed the stereotypical definitions of 'masculine' and 'feminine'... because I always found the either/or implicit in those definitions antithetical to what I was all about; and what revolution for the self is all about, the whole person". For me this relates to Julia Serano's critique of oppositional sexism in Whipping Girl. (I think Serano is very inaccurately portrayed as a defender of stereotypical femininity and I find her thought on this very helpful, but Bambara's/Collins' framing highlights that Serano is working, albeit critically, within a White, Eurocentric epistemology)
The exploitation and regulation of Black women's bodies under slavery, Collins argues, form the foundation of pornography today. Alice Walker pointed out that White women are objects in pornography, while Black women are 'animals'. Collins suggests that this puts White women in an intermediate position between culture and nature (an object is the work of man), while Black women, uncultured, remain available for the untrammeled exploitation meted out to the rest of nature.
The next topic is Black Women's Love Relationships which heart-hurtingly tells subjugation leaves so little space for love to flourish. One obstacle is that
Black Women and Motherhood and Rethinking Black Women's Activism deal with the problems US Black women have faced as mothers and the stategies they have used for survival and empowerment of themselves, their communities and their children. It's really disgusting to read how 'maternal politics' has been dismissed as 'immature' or inferior to feminism because it is not focussed on 'personal rights' by Julia Wells and others. A couple of key points are the whiteness of higher education and the whiteness (and maleness) of trade unions and other workers' organisations. If Black women have rarely participated strongly in these areas and other forms of organized liberation struggle, that reflects their opportunities more than their interests. Black feminists have thought about power and leadership in terms of social reproduction and decentralisation - there are acute critiques here of civil rights/black power leaders who did not teach others to lead, accepting their status as figureheads.
US Black Feminism in Transnational Context looks at issues of global solidarity, oppression by nation, commonalities and differences between African-Americans, other diasporas and women in Africa. The style of collaboration fostered by US Black feminist groups provides a good foundation for 'transversal politics' that enables different groups to learn from each other. There is a sharp observation that police are the 'foreign' occupiers for US Black women.
In Black Feminist Epistemology. Collins compares positivist ways of knowing generally used by white men and institutions , where emotion and personality must be removed, ethics are considered an encumbrance to 'objectivity', and quality is checked by testing the work against robust attack, as an example of a contrast with a set of alternative metrics used by African American women - an ethics of care, personal accountability, lived experience as creating meaning, and the use of dialogue to test and develop ideas. This chapter explains the obstacles to Black feminist ideas being heard, and the pressures on Black women in academia to support dominant ideologies
She lays to rest the binarist version of standpoint theory that leads to 'oppression olympics', where added layers of oppression somehow gift clearer vision. Collins contends that truths are validated by the fact that people speaking and knowing from many standpoints agree on them or find commonality in them
Finally in Towards a Politics of Empowerment she suggests social justice movements need a new common vocabulary to help foster a politics of empowerment. She describes four 'domains of power' that contextualise Black feminist thought. The structural domain is made up of institutions reproducing Black women's subordination over time. Legal victories have continually improved conditions, but this has led to the rhetoric of colorblindness The disciplinary domain backs up the structural domain with bureaucratic hierarchies and techniques of surveillance. I was reminded of Neil McGregor's discussion of the stability of a solid bureaucracy. It is easy to hire Black women to watch and regulate each other or force their complicity in these activities. Neither structural nor disciplinary domination could operate without the hegemonic domain, which produces and perpetuates 'common sense' white supremacist patriarchy in the form of controlling images. The interpersonal domain is the micro-level where these interlocking power relationships play out. As Collins reminds us many times, Black feminism is concerned with improving the lives of African-American women and others. Key to this is her remark that working within the epistemology of US Black women is far more powerful than creating new knowledge with the master's tools.
I had a rare flash of brilliance and decided to read the glossary first. This kind of sensible idea rarely occurs to me. I was immediately struck by Collins' definition of
intersectionality: analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organisation, which shape Black women's experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women
In other words, intersectional analysis, first articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1991, is explicitly and inseparably about Black women. Re-reading 'Mapping the Margins', Crenshaw's original article, I see Collins' framing there, except the centred specificity of Blackness is extended to all women of colour. Anyway, let it not be forgot.
The first chapter, The Politics of Black Feminist Thought explains in detail how Black women's ideas and existence have been suppressed, erased and excluded from the academy, and why much Black feminist work has sought to excavate and reclaim the work of earlier Black women intellectuals. It's important to note that Collins defines such intellectuals not by education or academic output: Sojourner Truth is one example who could not read or write, yet contributed to Black feminist oppositional knowledges. She identifies two historical factors that helped foster the critical social theory of Black US women: ghettoisation, which was designed for political control, but had the effect of enabling community structures and spaces for Black people to use African-derived ideas to craft resistance to racial oppression, and Black women's positions in the labour market as domestic workers, in close proximity to Whites, giving them a perspective that Collins terms outsider-within, also applicable to Black women in many institutions.
She asks how do Black women in the academy 'find ways of doing intellectual work that challenge injustice'? Collins shares her own experience of being tokenised and suppressed by her very scarcity. Her work must involve disrupting academic norms that are hostile to emotion and subjectivity: the subject position is precisely what has been denied to Black women. The concept here that most provoked my own thought and self-reflection was the orientation of both/and, reflecting Black feminists' rejection of or resistance to the binarism of Eurocentric tradition. One aspect is a BOTH scholar AND activist tradition, another manifests in Collins' approach to fellow intellectuals. She mentions that Sister Souljah is often dismissed as antifeminist for her acceptance of patriarchal masculinity, but her work has still contributed to Black feminist thought. Both/and reading makes space for celebration, solidarity, critique, acceptance and complexity.
Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought firmly asserts that this thought exists because the oppression of Black women remains, and thus requires an activist response. Since this oppression is intersectional, Black feminists have always recognised that their liberation requires the dismantling of multiple structures of domination, and thus their work 'supports broad principles of social justice that transcend US Black women's particular needs' Collins uses a technique throughout the book of quoting ordinary African-American woman of varying ages and social positions, here to note how daily experience stimulates the creation of oppositional knowledge. She also constantly refers to Black women intellectuals and studies; the book is superbly, lovingly researched. What emerges is a contrast with White feminist's 'consciousness raising' - Black feminism publicly articulates already developed, taken for granted knowledges.
Collins explains why Black women must lead and be in charge of Black feminism:
Black women intellectuals from all walks of life must aggressively push the theme of self-definition because speaking for oneself and crafting one's own agenda is essential for empowermentbut its work resonates widely: 'if you write from a black experience, you're writing from a universal experience as well... you don't have to whitewash yourself to be universal' says Sonia Sanchez. Other groups engaged in social justice projects can identify points of connection that forward Black feminist as well as their own agendas. Collins notes that such people may become 'traitors', to their own privilege, for example whiteness. Another key point here is the dynamism of Black feminist thought; it responds directly to changing social conditions, for example to changing relationships between African Americans as they have moved through the labour market and social classes since WWII.
In her discussion of Work, Family and Black Women's Oppression, Collins reminds us that the heterosexual nuclear family ideal is not natural as is made to appear, but a creation of the state. For African American women it has never applied: slavery allowed no such structures, and later, most Black men never had sufficiently secure income to allow female partners, who found it easier to get jobs but were much less well paid, to work full time at home. US gender norms based on work roles thus rendered black women 'unfeminine'. Kinship structures beyond immediate family developed. While White communities increasingly followed 'market-driven, exchange-based models', Black communities had a high degree of solidarity and collective effort. She also notes that parenting passes on internalised oppression or oppositional knowledges.
In the post WWII period, Black Usians experienced both upward and downward social mobility. The introduction of cocaine and other drugs created an informal economy and enabled the rapid expansion of the criminal justice system. Housing remained segregated, but community began to erode. Black women generally moved from domestic work (immigrant women largely replaced them) into industry and clerical work (forming a working class often ignored by Black feminism and conflated with the working poor) and low paid insecure service jobs (becoming working poor) which resemble domestic service. Collins notes a contrast between a 1972 study of adolescent Black girls, who were hopeful despite living in harsh conditions, and a 1984 replication, in which girls and young women complained about unmet emotional needs as the extended family network that once supported Black girls had become overstretched due to economic shifts.
Upwardly mobile Black women who made it into the middle class have had to endure a kind of 'mammification'; they are expected to be nuturing and are disproportionately employed in caring roles:
Black women are expected to fix systems which are in crisis due to underfunding, infrastructure deterioration, and demoralized staffsor as Barbara Omolade puts it:
Black professional women are often in high-visibility positions which require them to serve white superiors while quieting the natives. Collins emphasises the need for Black feminist thought to work through these modern class relations to prevent Black women from becoming oppressors of each other.
considers how binary thinking and objectification result in the construction of Black women as the Other. Social theorist Dona Richards is referenced: she posits that the White tradition requires objectification in positing a knowing self distinct from a known object. Feminist scholarship has articulated the construction of women in proximity to nature as integral to their conquest by men, while Black scholarship has traced the parallel situation of Black (and other non-White) people are more 'natural' or 'instinctive', supporting the political economy of domination in slavery and (neo)colonialism.
As the "Others" of society who can never really belong, strangers threaten the moral and social order. But they are simultaneously essential for its survival because those individuals who stand at the margins of society clarify its boundaries. African-American women, by not belonging, emphasize the significance of belonging.The 'mammy' image of the faithful and obedient domestic servant who cares for everyone and makes no demands is the oldest image, while the 'bad black mother', the matriarch is contrasted with her. This aggressive, unfeminine woman is the counter-ideal on which the cult of true womanhood stands in all its Whiteness. This image means that assertiveness is penalised in various ways in all women, but especially Black women. The 'absence of a Black patriarchy' has been said to indicate cultural inferiority, so this image feeds White supremacy and pressures Black men to be more dominating. Collins explains and thoroughly exposes the oppressive functioning of other controlling images: 'welfare mother' 'black lady' 'hoochie'. All of these images, in different ways pathologise the sexuality and fertililty of Black women. Collins discusses the hoochie's deviant behaviour as both hyper-heterosexual and lesbian, 'freaky' in either case, in the words of 2 Live Crew. I would like to go back to Mapping the Margins briefly here:
Crenshaw compares the 2 Live Crew obscenity trial to the permissiveness granted to Madonna, who portrayed masturbation & insinuated group sex onstage, without interference. The court denied that 2 Live Crew's music had cultural specificity or artistic merit, which Crenshaw shows to be disingenuous and simultaneously a dismissal of the value of rap music made by Black people and a move to universalise and whitewash Black cultural expression. Obviously, like Collins, Crenshaw decries the violently misogynistic content of the work in question and mounts a strong feminist+antiracist critique of the arguments of its defenders, but she also challenges the court decisions' implication that it has no political value as a discourse of resistance. Furthermore, she points out that obscenity trials and critiques by Whites did nothing to protect the Black women objectified by the lyrics they targeted, instead furthering racial subjugation of Black men and devaluing of Black women by ignoring their specificity and viewing them as stand ins for White women, always the implicit victims of Black male sexual violence.
Collins discusses beauty standards, colorism and the feelings of inferiority that affect Black girls and women living in the midst of White supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She gives attention to the ways Black women fiction writers have worked against controlling images, by presenting oppositional images of Black women as emergent, as well as tracing the causes of their individual subjugation. Such portraits return full humanity and subjectivity to objectified women.
This leads in to (this book has flow) The Power of Self Definition which is about the myriad creative ways that African-American resist and have resisted controlling images, subordinate roles and white supremacist hegemony, in every day ways, through blues music, literature, self-reliance, activism, academic and intellectual work and research. I became very frustrated on behalf of women of colour attempting to organise safe spaces. These are often misdescribed and criticised as 'separatist' and 'essentialist', but spaces free from surveillance by more powerful groups are obviously deeply needed to develop the 'self-definitions [that] become politicised Black feminist standpoints'.
One of the striking aspects of the chapter is the idea of self that emerges: one based on accountability and rooted in connectedness in difference and individuality in community. This is one of the hardest aspects of the book for me to get a handle on, and one I want to understand much better: 'identity is not the goal but rather the point of departure in self-definition'
When it comes to The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood 'everyone has spoken for Black women, making it difficult to speak for ourselves'. Women's studies, for instance, has tended to fit Black women into frameworks developed around White women to point out how Black women 'have it worse'. But the silence around sexual politics among Black women, an important subject here, also relates to racism and the pressure to choose between gender and race, when speaking out against rape and misogyny might harm Black men. Black feminism, by treating race, gender and class as intersecting structures of domination rather than individual attributes, has made work in this area possible. One example is reproductive justice discourse, a wider framework for reproductive autonomy than the pro-choice focus often taken White feminists, (but now being claimed by them as a new discovery) that grew as a response to the various suppressions and forms of population control enacted against African-Americans, from forced sterilizations to 'welfare-queen' controlling images.
Sexism (and heterosexism) are only possible in a binary system of thought. The devalued jezebel/hoochie makes pure White womanhood possible. Collins reminds us that ideas about what is natural and normal are state sanctioned and promoted in schools, the media, religious institutions and government policies. I love this quote from Toni Cade Bambara on Eurocentric gender: "I have always, I think, opposed the stereotypical definitions of 'masculine' and 'feminine'... because I always found the either/or implicit in those definitions antithetical to what I was all about; and what revolution for the self is all about, the whole person". For me this relates to Julia Serano's critique of oppositional sexism in Whipping Girl. (I think Serano is very inaccurately portrayed as a defender of stereotypical femininity and I find her thought on this very helpful, but Bambara's/Collins' framing highlights that Serano is working, albeit critically, within a White, Eurocentric epistemology)
The exploitation and regulation of Black women's bodies under slavery, Collins argues, form the foundation of pornography today. Alice Walker pointed out that White women are objects in pornography, while Black women are 'animals'. Collins suggests that this puts White women in an intermediate position between culture and nature (an object is the work of man), while Black women, uncultured, remain available for the untrammeled exploitation meted out to the rest of nature.
The next topic is Black Women's Love Relationships which heart-hurtingly tells subjugation leaves so little space for love to flourish. One obstacle is that
White men have exploited, objectified, and refused to marry African-American women and have held out the trappings of power to their poorer brothers who endorse this ideologyAnother obstacle is White women, those institutionally desirable creatures painted as 'racial innocents' yet often seeming to rub salt in the wound by boasting to Black acquaintances about their relationships with Black men, from whom Black women so often experience rejection. Briefly mentioned here is a thread of Black Feminist thought towards redefining beauty in, for example, contrast and action, making use of African-derived ideas - not replacing one ideal with another, binary style, but creating space for erotic autonomy. Love between Black women, erotic or otherwise, is also important here.
Black Women and Motherhood and Rethinking Black Women's Activism deal with the problems US Black women have faced as mothers and the stategies they have used for survival and empowerment of themselves, their communities and their children. It's really disgusting to read how 'maternal politics' has been dismissed as 'immature' or inferior to feminism because it is not focussed on 'personal rights' by Julia Wells and others. A couple of key points are the whiteness of higher education and the whiteness (and maleness) of trade unions and other workers' organisations. If Black women have rarely participated strongly in these areas and other forms of organized liberation struggle, that reflects their opportunities more than their interests. Black feminists have thought about power and leadership in terms of social reproduction and decentralisation - there are acute critiques here of civil rights/black power leaders who did not teach others to lead, accepting their status as figureheads.
US Black Feminism in Transnational Context looks at issues of global solidarity, oppression by nation, commonalities and differences between African-Americans, other diasporas and women in Africa. The style of collaboration fostered by US Black feminist groups provides a good foundation for 'transversal politics' that enables different groups to learn from each other. There is a sharp observation that police are the 'foreign' occupiers for US Black women.
In Black Feminist Epistemology. Collins compares positivist ways of knowing generally used by white men and institutions , where emotion and personality must be removed, ethics are considered an encumbrance to 'objectivity', and quality is checked by testing the work against robust attack, as an example of a contrast with a set of alternative metrics used by African American women - an ethics of care, personal accountability, lived experience as creating meaning, and the use of dialogue to test and develop ideas. This chapter explains the obstacles to Black feminist ideas being heard, and the pressures on Black women in academia to support dominant ideologies
She lays to rest the binarist version of standpoint theory that leads to 'oppression olympics', where added layers of oppression somehow gift clearer vision. Collins contends that truths are validated by the fact that people speaking and knowing from many standpoints agree on them or find commonality in them
Each group perceives its own knowledge as... unfinished [and] becomes better able to consider other group's standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own or suppressing other groups' partial perspectivesbell hooks calls this dialogic method humanising speech 'one that challenges and resists domination'. I will continue to struggle away from binary thinking, positivist ways of deciding who is right and that everyone else must be wrong, away from domination and epistemic violence, towards both/and.
Finally in Towards a Politics of Empowerment she suggests social justice movements need a new common vocabulary to help foster a politics of empowerment. She describes four 'domains of power' that contextualise Black feminist thought. The structural domain is made up of institutions reproducing Black women's subordination over time. Legal victories have continually improved conditions, but this has led to the rhetoric of colorblindness The disciplinary domain backs up the structural domain with bureaucratic hierarchies and techniques of surveillance. I was reminded of Neil McGregor's discussion of the stability of a solid bureaucracy. It is easy to hire Black women to watch and regulate each other or force their complicity in these activities. Neither structural nor disciplinary domination could operate without the hegemonic domain, which produces and perpetuates 'common sense' white supremacist patriarchy in the form of controlling images. The interpersonal domain is the micro-level where these interlocking power relationships play out. As Collins reminds us many times, Black feminism is concerned with improving the lives of African-American women and others. Key to this is her remark that working within the epistemology of US Black women is far more powerful than creating new knowledge with the master's tools.
July 27, 2011
Everyone should read this book. I read this for the first time during a women's studies course as an undergrad, but it works so well, as she states, outside of academia. I find her analysis of Black female blues singers as a source of feminist thought especially interesting. Anyone and everyone interested in social justice should read this book. And then read it again.
March 15, 2021
4.5 - some outdated bits, but overall this book means a lot to general feminist theory. it's really well-written and more accessible than a lot of baseline feminist theory, which is done intentionally. I'm glad I read the second edition - the preface alone was really meaningful, and it's lovely to see Collins actively expanding her past work to be more and more applicable to contemporary structures and ideas. will probably reference in essays/videos in the future, it's definitely a wonderful background for Black and intersectional feminism, and would recommend to anyone.
Read
January 6, 2023what sets this text apart is that collins draws from a wide-ranging sample of women as experts; rather than exclusively calling on figures within the institution (i.e., academics), she also draws from singers (primarily of the blues tradition), writers of fiction and poetry (from zora neale hurston to june jordan), quilters, and, most significantly, women who neither are famous nor produce works of publicly recognized creative genius: domestic workers, mothers, everyday women whose lived experience is held up as valuable. this interweaving makes for powerful reading, and at one point she explicitly expounds on this, noting that "some feminist scholars claim that women as a group are more likely than men to use lived experiences in assessing knowledge claims."
collins is not, as far as I can tell, a lesbian, but intentionally and repeatedly acknowledges the scholarship of black lesbians as well as the ways in which they have been marginalized, excluded, and oppressed even within black women's spaces and spheres—
indeed, she turns a critically eye to the ways in which, in a number of ways from orientation to class to nationality, "some u.s. black women may become instrumental in fostering other black women's oppression."
more on the positionality of black lesbians and how they are viewed:
she also makes (usually but not always indirect) critique of capitalism, such as in her analysis of the following:
on the stereotype of the "welfare mother" or "welfare queen":
on a key difference between white and black women's responses to sexism and misogyny:
(collins also notes that "one manifestation of white women’s privilege is the seeming naiveté many heterosexual white women have concerning how black women perceive white women’s sexualized love relationships with black men.")
on the paradox of taught/learned/internalized "strength" and one of many reasons for which the pervasive image of the "strong black woman" can be harmful:
the observation that "malcolm x wasn’t just a role model but had become the 'ultimate pornographic object,'" in keeping with the idea of pornography as "a way of thinking that[...] has no necessary connection to sex" (an idea that is, naturally, explored further in the text), really struck a chord for me.
collins describes more than she prescribes, but it isn't difficult to reach the logical conclusion of ideas along the lines of her assertion that "african-american women’s rights have not been gained solely by gradual reformism." with the first edition published in 1990 and at least two updated revisions since then, one can only hope that the u.s. undergoes radical systemic change in time for collins, now 74, to see it.
collins is not, as far as I can tell, a lesbian, but intentionally and repeatedly acknowledges the scholarship of black lesbians as well as the ways in which they have been marginalized, excluded, and oppressed even within black women's spaces and spheres—
black lesbian theorizing about sexuality has been marginalized, albeit in different ways, both within Black intellectual communities and women’s studies scholarship. as a result, black feminist thought has not yet taken full advantage of this important source of Black feminist theory. as a group, heterosexual african-american women have been strangely silent on the issue of Black lesbianism. barbara smith suggests one compelling reason: "heterosexual privilege is usually the only privilege that black women have. none of us have racial or sexual privilege, almost none of us have class privilege, maintaining 'straightness' is our last resort."
indeed, she turns a critically eye to the ways in which, in a number of ways from orientation to class to nationality, "some u.s. black women may become instrumental in fostering other black women's oppression."
more on the positionality of black lesbians and how they are viewed:
black heterosexual women’s treatment of black lesbians reflects fears that all african-american women are essentially the same. yet, as audre lorde points out, “[...]the black lesbian is an emotional threat only to those black women whose feelings of kinship and love for other black women are problematic in some way.” black lesbian relationships pose little threat to “self-defined” black men and women secure in their sexualities. but loving relationships among black women do pose a tremendous threat to systems of intersecting oppressions. how dare these women love one another in a context that deems black women as a collectivity so unlovable and devalued? [...] as a specific site of intersectionality, black lesbian relationships constitute relationships among the ultimate other. black lesbians are not white, male, or heterosexual and generally are not affluent. as such they represent the antithesis of audre lorde’s “mythical norm”[...] visible black lesbians challenge the mythical norm that the best people are white, male, rich, and heterosexual. in doing so lesbians generate anxiety, discomfort, and a challenge to the dominant group’s control of power and sexuality on the interpersonal level. for african-american women, taking seriously the idea of generating loving “mirrors” for one another requires taking on all of the “isms” that keep black women down, including heterosexism.
she also makes (usually but not always indirect) critique of capitalism, such as in her analysis of the following:
may madison [...] alludes to the difference between work as an instrumental activity and work as something for self: "one very important difference between white people and black people is that white people think you are your work. now, a black person has more sense than that, because he knows that what I am doing doesn't have anything to do with what I want to do, or what I do when I am doing for myself. now, black people think that my work is just what I have to do to get what I want." ms. madison's perspective [...] recognizes that work is a contested construct[...]
on the stereotype of the "welfare mother" or "welfare queen":
at its core, the image of the welfare mother constitutes a class-specific controlling image developed for poor/working-class black women who make use of social welfare benefits to which they are entitled by law. as long as poor black women were denied social welfare benefits, there was no need for this stereotype. but when u.s. black women gained more political power and demanded equity and access to state services, the need arose for this controlling image. essentially an updated version of the breeder woman image created during slavery, this image provides an ideological justification for efforts to harness black women's fertility to the needs of a changing political economy. [...] with the election of the Reagan administration in 1980, the stigmatized welfare mother evolved into the more pernicious image of the welfare queen (Lubiano 1992). To mask the effects of cuts in government spending on social welfare programs[...], media images increasingly identified and blamed black women for the deterioration of u.s. interests. thus, poor black women simultaneously become symbols of what was deemed wrong with america and targets of social policies designed to shrink the government sector. wahneema lubiano describes how the image of the welfare queen links Black women with seeming declines in the quality of life:
“welfare queen” is a phrase that describes economic dependency—the lack of a job and/or income (which equal degeneracy in the calvinist united states); the presence of a child or children with no father and/or husband (moral deviance); and, finally, a charge on the collective U.S. treasury—a human debit. [...]
the welfare queen represents moral aberration and an economic drain, but the figure’s problematic status becomes all the more threatening once responsibility for the destruction of the american way of life is attributed to it.
on a key difference between white and black women's responses to sexism and misogyny:
given the ubiquitous nature of controlling images [i.e., stereotypes of black women], it should not be surprising that exploring how black women construct social realities is a recurring theme in black feminist thought. overall, despite the pervasiveness of controlling images, african-american women as a group have resisted these ideological justifications for our oppression. unlike white women who “face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power,” and for whom “there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools,” black women are offered fewer possibilities.
(collins also notes that "one manifestation of white women’s privilege is the seeming naiveté many heterosexual white women have concerning how black women perceive white women’s sexualized love relationships with black men.")
on the paradox of taught/learned/internalized "strength" and one of many reasons for which the pervasive image of the "strong black woman" can be harmful:
through interviews with women who were being detained in jail, richie advances the innovative thesis that those black women who had been self-reliant and independent as children and thus imagined themselves as strong black women were more likely to be battered than those who did not. upon first glance, this is a curious combination—the more self-reliant simultaneously value themselves less. richie’s explanation is revealing. the strong black women saw themselves as personal failures if they sought help. in contrast, those women who did not carry the burden of this seemingly positive image of black womanhood found it easier to ask for help.
the observation that "malcolm x wasn’t just a role model but had become the 'ultimate pornographic object,'" in keeping with the idea of pornography as "a way of thinking that[...] has no necessary connection to sex" (an idea that is, naturally, explored further in the text), really struck a chord for me.
collins describes more than she prescribes, but it isn't difficult to reach the logical conclusion of ideas along the lines of her assertion that "african-american women’s rights have not been gained solely by gradual reformism." with the first edition published in 1990 and at least two updated revisions since then, one can only hope that the u.s. undergoes radical systemic change in time for collins, now 74, to see it.
February 11, 2011
What I loved the most about this book is that it is an academic text, but PCH doesn't waste time with jargon. If she uses it, she defines it almost immediately. There is also a glossary in the back of the book. A book that I will use a lot. So happy I was pushed to revisit this text.
June 5, 2018
4.5/5
In my own work I write no only what I want to read—understanding fully and indelibly that if I don't do it no one else is so vitally interested, or capable of doing it to my satisfaction—I write all the things I should have been able to read[.]It's been good to get back into theory after so long a drought. My eagerness to rid my shelves of some of the longer staying residents meant going back in time to when nonfiction was was in the realm of meaningless foibles and the effort of thinking was not considered something one should do "for fun", and I feel, once the challenges are over, I'll be doing work more intensive and less led by the carrot. Collins' work has its flaws and lack of comprehensiveness, but certain definitions and ideas she establishes have value in any academic realm intrinsically tied up with conversations about social justice. It was also exciting to recognize a number of referenced works as either read or in my future reading, and made for a feeling of, after much lackadaisical trash and inconsequential meanderings, finally coming back to the bedrock of my way of life. I am no black woman, but that doesn't forbid me from critically evaluating spaces in terms of, would a black (lesbian) woman be welcome here? If she wouldn't be, neither am I.
-Alice Walker
[I]t is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment[.]
-Audre Lorde
Autonomy and separatism are fundamentally different. Whereas autonomy comes from a position of strength, separatism comes from a position of fear. When we're truly autonomous we can deal with other kinds of people, a multiplicity of issues, and with difference, because we have formed a solid base of strength[s.]As much reading as I've done in my life, I hadn't come across a text deemed academically credible that touched upon the cornerstone of my evaluating procedure, which takes into account the natural tendency of writing of any form to indoctrinate and, as a result, expects that authors give evidence that they know what they're doing and don't consider the trajectory of a fiction scribbler a free ride to spewing hatred and being congratulated for it. Collins' words in certain sectors were a veritable balm to my soul, as here we have a text that has been around for a tad longer than I've been alive, and it's saying exactly how I've been thinking and acting and writing for the past few years. The text was a give and take of this sort throughout, as while I certainly learned a great deal about how to avoid misogynoir of all sorts, I also took away principles that that served well in contexts outside those that the texts touched upon, namely mental illness and queerness beyond the realm of lesbianism. The fact that this didn't prove a five star and favorite is due to how inflexible the text was at parts, especially with the burden, despite all overt comments that denied such, put upon every single black woman to be responsible for both herself and all others of her race. Again, I'm not black, so I'm not reading this correctly, but the text did end on a rather pull yourself up by your bootstraps tone that got increasingly more jargon filled as time went on. Not as accessible as it claims to be, but not to the point of meriting passing by.
-Barbara Smith
Firmly rooted in an exchange-based marketplace with its accompanying assumptions of rational economic decision making and white male control of the marketplace, this model of community stresses the rights of individuals to make decisions in their own self-interest, regardless of the impact on the larger society. Composed of a collection of unequal individuals who compete for greater shares of money as the medium of exchange, this model of community legitimates relations of domination either by denying they exist or by treating them as inevitable but unimportant[.]
Hair type quality rapidly became the real symbolic badge of slavery, although like many powerful symbols, it was disguised...by the linguistic device of using the term 'black,' which nominally threw the emphasis to color[.]This is the first book in a long time that's made me excited about all the other books I have left to read. Part of this is the sheer number of references to theoretical texts I have on hand. The other part is recognizing how few and far between the works are that encompass my moral compass style of academia, and thus how much I need to relish them while the rare experience is ongoing. Collins wears a bevy of hats throughout this, and when considering such, it's amazing, despite my quibbles, how holistic a paradigm she is able to offer in the face of a mainstream that would do anything to segregate and isolate and ultimately destroy such a full faithed comradery. A prime example of this is the number of quotes I gained that weren't Collins' words, indicating the wealth of a community of black women writers I've yet to experience, whether for the first time in the vein of Fannie Lou Hamer or in the next time in the form of Alice Walker. In either case, I have a long, fruitful, if difficult journey ahead of me, and that feeling is the most I can ask of any written work to provide.
Rather than emphasizing how a Black women's standpoint and its accompanying epistemology are different from those in Afrocentric and feminist analyses, I use Black women's experiences to examine points of contact between the two. Viewing an Afrocentric feminist epistemology in this way challenges additive analyses of oppression claiming that Black women have a more accurate view of oppression than do other groups. Such approaches suggest that oppression can be quantified and compared and that adding layers of oppression produces a potentially clearer standpoint...One implication of standpoint approaches is that the more subordinated the group, the purer the vision of the oppressed group. This is an outcome of the origins of standpoint approaches in Marxist social theory, itself an analysis of social structure rooted in [European] either/or dichotomous thinking. Ironically, by quantifying and ranking human oppressions, standpoint theorists invoke criteria for methodological adequacy characteristic of positivism. Although it is tempting to claim that Black women are more oppressed than everyone else and therefore have the best standpoint from which to understand the mechanisms, processes, and effects of oppression, this simply may not be the case.
An ethic of personal accountability is the final dimension of an alternative epistemology. Not only must individuals develop their knowledge claims through dialogue and present them in a style proving their concern for their ideas, but people are expected to be accountable for their knowledge claims.
You can but die if you make the attempt; and we shall certainly die if you do not.
-Maria W. Stewart
March 15, 2024
Wow, this book was like therapy for me and I think reading this is so incredibly important. I highly recommend reading this to anyone, but especially if you are a black woman or are someone who loves a black woman. It really helps to clarify the experiences of black women in America and it really helped me to intellectualize my own experience as a black woman so that I could understand shared experiences that I have with other women and where them stem from and the effects that they take. It is very dense and covers a lot but it is incredibly thought provoking, so take your time reading it, really think throughout it, and take some time to research things that Collins talks about in the book that stick out to you or other readings or authors that she references.
July 15, 2023
Definitely on the general/broad end of things, probably geared best toward undergrads as a very basic intro. Also there is a lot of repetition if you read the whole book, so maybe it’s designed moreso to be assigned by individual chapters.
July 28, 2019
Another book where I am not the same person at the end that I was at the beginning.
This book was healing to read. I feel seen. This book is another thank you to black women who give me expansive language to articulate my lived experiences under multiple forms of oppression.
I am thankful for now revisiting this book 3 years later with a different lens of being a community organizer.
The best part about this book 📖 is that it joins the league of books written by other black feminist scholars that is also a call to action. Doing the work of liberation is taxing, this book is an affirmation and a cheerleader to keep going but while engaging in self-preservation at the same time.
I’m ready for my next read!
This book was healing to read. I feel seen. This book is another thank you to black women who give me expansive language to articulate my lived experiences under multiple forms of oppression.
I am thankful for now revisiting this book 3 years later with a different lens of being a community organizer.
The best part about this book 📖 is that it joins the league of books written by other black feminist scholars that is also a call to action. Doing the work of liberation is taxing, this book is an affirmation and a cheerleader to keep going but while engaging in self-preservation at the same time.
I’m ready for my next read!
March 26, 2017
Took a long time for me to finish this book, as it is very much a textbook...and I've been out of grad school for a few years now. The most recent edition isn't available at my library, so I read this 2nd Ed. I may still seek out the newer edition.
Recommended for anyone interested in feminist theories, political thought, and human rights
Recommended for anyone interested in feminist theories, political thought, and human rights
December 3, 2015
This book creates an argument about the particular experiences of groups of people and overarching theories of knowledge. It says that if a group of people, in this case US Black women, is consistently ruled untrustworthy or unknowledgeable, a major epistemological shift is required to get other groups of people to hear their testimony and expertise. This is something I've been thinking about a lot. I felt validated seeing this idea spelled out so beautifully and clearly by an African American scholar. I think I have already undergone that epistemological shift. I was already thinking about social knowledge as something that has to be collected through attention to multiple perspectives. Because this book has been around for awhile, I don't know how much of that insight actually came to me through other people who read it. I only wish I'd read the first edition of this book when it first came out! I think it ties together a lot of my other reading from that time.
April 11, 2017
This book is the comprehensive, engaging handbook on black feminism that I'd always hoped to find. PHC harbors a deep disdain for the predominance of the kind of scholarship that is impersonal and abstract, and in Black Feminist Thought, she broadly explores and theorizes while peppering her essays with personal anecdotes and extracts from the literary, artistic and academic works of other black women.
The result is a well-organized, deeply insightful collection of essays with plenty of new arguments and some old ones that have been analyzed in a light that is both refreshingly intimate and scholarly at the same time.
The result is a well-organized, deeply insightful collection of essays with plenty of new arguments and some old ones that have been analyzed in a light that is both refreshingly intimate and scholarly at the same time.
March 7, 2008
She offers an explored analysis of the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class as well as its practical applications. She discuss self-identification, the politics of self empowerment, how woman are essential elements in nationalist thinking and etc. I do wish she discussed the politics of sexuality a bit more.
October 9, 2011
This book blew my mind. One of the most impressive parts of it is P.H.C.'s command of black women's history in the U.S. It's so exciting to read about women who have produced "black feminist thought" in the U.S. through writing, music, and oral history since early 1800s, and before.
November 15, 2009
While I enjoyed her theories, her writing style is unnecessarily obtuse and repetitive.
October 13, 2010
if u claim that u're an ally/progressive advocate of feminism, then do urself a favor & read this
June 11, 2018
Après beaucoup trop de temps, j'ai finalement lu, au complet, cet ouvrage de Collins. La traduction de Remue-Ménage se base sur la deuxième édition du texte (2009) qui a été revu, modifié et augmenté plusieurs années après son écriture (1990) et inclut les deux préfaces de l'ouvrage (merci Remue-Ménage!) en plus des notes sur la traduction de Diane Lamoureux quant aux choix effectués.
Résumer cet essai en quelques phrases serait un peu comme résumer le Deuxième Sexe, c'est certainement la lecture que j'en ai eu. J'ai lu bien tardivement le Deuxième Sexe et, à sa lecture, bien que j'apprenais un peu à droite à gauche, je ne faisais que comprendre d'où venait une grande partie de la théorie féministe française (et occidentale incidemment) et la trouvait, peut-être, un peu trop de base par moment, même s'il s'agissait d'un texte, à l'époque excessivement radical, qui aura profondément influencé la pensée féministe internationale et aura éveillé d'innombrables consciences, encore aujourd'hui. La pensée féministe noire m'a aussi fait cet essai, après avoir lu bell hooks, Elsa Dorlin, Kimberlé Crenshaw, le livre de Bilge et Collins sur l'intersecitonnalité et de très nombreux autres textes, j'apprends peu de nouveaux concepts, bien que le caractère très académique de l'essai me permet de solidifier ma compréhension de ceux-ci (et le fait que l'ouvrage a été retravaillé récemment me laisse croire au peu de changement qu'ils auront subis et de sa compréhension).
Collins parle tout autant des oppressions enchevêtrées des femmes noires qui, exclues des réflexions féministes ou de l'activisme afro-américain à l'époque des black panthers et cie, avaient à prendre leur propre place et à affronter les multiples oppressions qui se dressaient. Collins n'hésite pas à parler d'emploi, de pauvreté, du regard sur la femme noire à travers des lieux communs (archétypes) ou la pornographie, le travail de maternité et communautaire, le travail de care, etc. etc. Bref, un programme assez vaste et profond qui se termine avec l'élaboration d'une pensée féministe noire non pas seulement afro-américaine, mais aussi transnationale; en quoi le combat des femmes noires à l'international et aux États-Unis, à défaut d'être identique ou même similaire, peut recouper plusieurs angles (pauvreté, emploi, maternité, pouvoir décisionnel, etc.).
Je ne sais pas si c'est la réécriture et la réorganisation des chapitres qui peut donner cet effet là, ou s'il s'agit d'une stratégie volontaire, mais je me suis surpris· à trouver énormément de répétition dans les idées ou même des phrases et tournures de phrases identiques d'un chapitre à l'autre («la nounou, la matriarche ou la Jézabel» doit revenir beaucoup plus d'une dizaine de fois dans l'essai!). Aussi, le style n'est pas nécessairement très accessible, bien qu'il y a présence d'un glossaire à la fin et l'explication des concepts lorsque introduits. On est loin de bell hooks, mais l'essai reste quand même abordable pour qui est capable d'y mettre le temps et se sera un peu familiarisé avec les concepts.
De par l'énorme couverture de sujets que l'essai tente de couvrir que par la précision et l'efficacité de l'analyse, certainement un des essais féministes les plus importants du dernier siècle.
Résumer cet essai en quelques phrases serait un peu comme résumer le Deuxième Sexe, c'est certainement la lecture que j'en ai eu. J'ai lu bien tardivement le Deuxième Sexe et, à sa lecture, bien que j'apprenais un peu à droite à gauche, je ne faisais que comprendre d'où venait une grande partie de la théorie féministe française (et occidentale incidemment) et la trouvait, peut-être, un peu trop de base par moment, même s'il s'agissait d'un texte, à l'époque excessivement radical, qui aura profondément influencé la pensée féministe internationale et aura éveillé d'innombrables consciences, encore aujourd'hui. La pensée féministe noire m'a aussi fait cet essai, après avoir lu bell hooks, Elsa Dorlin, Kimberlé Crenshaw, le livre de Bilge et Collins sur l'intersecitonnalité et de très nombreux autres textes, j'apprends peu de nouveaux concepts, bien que le caractère très académique de l'essai me permet de solidifier ma compréhension de ceux-ci (et le fait que l'ouvrage a été retravaillé récemment me laisse croire au peu de changement qu'ils auront subis et de sa compréhension).
Collins parle tout autant des oppressions enchevêtrées des femmes noires qui, exclues des réflexions féministes ou de l'activisme afro-américain à l'époque des black panthers et cie, avaient à prendre leur propre place et à affronter les multiples oppressions qui se dressaient. Collins n'hésite pas à parler d'emploi, de pauvreté, du regard sur la femme noire à travers des lieux communs (archétypes) ou la pornographie, le travail de maternité et communautaire, le travail de care, etc. etc. Bref, un programme assez vaste et profond qui se termine avec l'élaboration d'une pensée féministe noire non pas seulement afro-américaine, mais aussi transnationale; en quoi le combat des femmes noires à l'international et aux États-Unis, à défaut d'être identique ou même similaire, peut recouper plusieurs angles (pauvreté, emploi, maternité, pouvoir décisionnel, etc.).
Je ne sais pas si c'est la réécriture et la réorganisation des chapitres qui peut donner cet effet là, ou s'il s'agit d'une stratégie volontaire, mais je me suis surpris· à trouver énormément de répétition dans les idées ou même des phrases et tournures de phrases identiques d'un chapitre à l'autre («la nounou, la matriarche ou la Jézabel» doit revenir beaucoup plus d'une dizaine de fois dans l'essai!). Aussi, le style n'est pas nécessairement très accessible, bien qu'il y a présence d'un glossaire à la fin et l'explication des concepts lorsque introduits. On est loin de bell hooks, mais l'essai reste quand même abordable pour qui est capable d'y mettre le temps et se sera un peu familiarisé avec les concepts.
De par l'énorme couverture de sujets que l'essai tente de couvrir que par la précision et l'efficacité de l'analyse, certainement un des essais féministes les plus importants du dernier siècle.
January 24, 2021
How different the world might be if everyone’s introduction to feminism was this book! After reading countless references to Collins’ work, I finally picked this up. Its scope alone is profound, as is the interweaving of sources. For those reasons, I found the book relatively accessible as far as Routledge publications go. The references to pop culture and recent history and some of the stirring conclusions Collins makes on finer points made this a compelling, contemporary read. I hope that because of Collins whenever I think about feminism from now on I will ask: Which women (or womyn) are we talking about? Who’s being left out? Who’s doing the talking? And how are we defining knowledge and its makers?
February 16, 2021
It's not exactly my place to comment extensively on the merits of this book, but I will say it is quite possibly the most considered, well put-together work I've ever read. I would strongly recommend giving it a read.
April 18, 2022
"Lacking grants, fellowships, release time, or other benefits that allow scholars to remove themselves from everyday life and contemplate its contours and meaning, I wrote this book while fully immersed in ordinary activities that brought me into contact with a variety of African-American women."
Collins draws on references that range from blues composers to academics in order to delineate an epistemology of Black Feminism. The use of the "both/and" exercise is noteworthy all through the book. It is significant in many ambits, among which: the presentation of black women intellectuals out of the academic sphere, the idea that a group of people that has been victimized still has human dignity and can reclaim their rights and the understanding that opression isn't a one-size-fits-all model. Such firm stance is the structure of her work, making it an indispensable read for anyone who wants to understand black feminist thought in the USA and also a very insightful one for the understanding of black feminist thought accross the world.
Collins draws on references that range from blues composers to academics in order to delineate an epistemology of Black Feminism. The use of the "both/and" exercise is noteworthy all through the book. It is significant in many ambits, among which: the presentation of black women intellectuals out of the academic sphere, the idea that a group of people that has been victimized still has human dignity and can reclaim their rights and the understanding that opression isn't a one-size-fits-all model. Such firm stance is the structure of her work, making it an indispensable read for anyone who wants to understand black feminist thought in the USA and also a very insightful one for the understanding of black feminist thought accross the world.
April 25, 2017
This author says in the intro "I'm going to say this in the most basic language possible so it's very accessible." This was not true lol. But it was still good and thought-provoking and a great synthesis of a lot of seemingly disparate work into one big thing. Pretty cool.
Read
February 6, 2022my brain slowed down a lot towards the end, so will probably have to re-visit the last couple of chapters once i am Renewed & Refreshed ? other than that, i got a lot out of this -- i found the style a bit headachey in terms of repetition & looping sometimes, but i think it's a really solid introduction to the breadth of us black feminist thought, family structures, forms of resistance & activism, & i liked how Peopled it felt with voices, from life, from memory, from literature, from music.
May 22, 2009
This book was my guiding light while working on my thesis, "Deconstructing Auth Jemima." Patricia Hill Collins is underread and underrated. I want to sit at her feet. It remains an important reference book.
June 6, 2018
This is an incredibly helpful book. Collins makes a few constructive arguments, but for the most part offers an overview of the major themes in black feminist thought, offering a repository and guidebook to those new to the discipline.
September 10, 2012
Finally got around to reading this all the way through. It is awesome. Duh.
June 9, 2020
I read a few chapters of this book last semester for a class on quantitative and qualitative research methods, but just finishing reading it among calls to commit to anti-racist research practices. If you are working in academia at all, I think this is an essential work. If you are doing research with human subjects, I think this is an essential work. And if you are in the practice of knowledge production or translation, I think this is an essential work. As a white researcher and student, it is my responsibility to acknowledge the ways in which research has been a tool of colonial extraction and a way to suppress the lived experiences of the marginalized. Below are some of the key quotes and ideas I’m taking away from Hill Collins.
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* As social conditions change, so must the knowledge and practices designed to resist them
* Theory of all types is often presented as being so abstract that it can be appreciated only by a select few. Though often highly satisfying to academics, this definition excludes those who do not speak the language of elites and thus reinforces social relations of domination. Educated elites typically claim that only they are qualified to produce theory and believe that only they can interpret not only their own but everyone else's experiences. moreover, educated elites often use this belief to uphold their own privilege.
* One key reason that standpoints of oppressed groups are suppressed is that self-defined standpoints can stimulate resistance.
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* As social conditions change, so must the knowledge and practices designed to resist them
* Theory of all types is often presented as being so abstract that it can be appreciated only by a select few. Though often highly satisfying to academics, this definition excludes those who do not speak the language of elites and thus reinforces social relations of domination. Educated elites typically claim that only they are qualified to produce theory and believe that only they can interpret not only their own but everyone else's experiences. moreover, educated elites often use this belief to uphold their own privilege.
* One key reason that standpoints of oppressed groups are suppressed is that self-defined standpoints can stimulate resistance.
April 4, 2017
I especially like when Collins uses non-academic statements from black women talking about their own direct experiences to illustrate her points. I found myself quoting some of that in my day to day conversations with people.
There were a couple of moments where I was like, "Is it weird to be a white dude reading this?" But I think, even though there are sadly very few black women in my environment right now, that it is all somehow extremely relevant. Collins makes the point a few times that Black Feminism isn't just about combining antiracism with antisexism or just about the struggles of African(-American) women but it's about a broader social justice for everyone. Certainly anyone who is working for justice in any way would benefit from this book, and really anyone who doesn't want to be working for injustice...
When I read a book as dense as this, I don't try to get everything and 'unpack' everything. I figure, it'll make sense if I read further or one day I will read another book, or have some other kind of experience and then it'll make more sense. This edition has a glossary but I never checked it. Some reviewers talk about how academic it is, or note that it is a textbook, and there is the story in here of one of Collins' students who asked her to write a version of the book "for teenagers." I didn't think it was all that heavy. I think it all made sense to me. There are probably some things that will make more sense later, and I probably have forgotten more than I remember, but it's in there somewhere, like seeds beneath the snow to use a lovely cliche.
There were a couple of moments where I was like, "Is it weird to be a white dude reading this?" But I think, even though there are sadly very few black women in my environment right now, that it is all somehow extremely relevant. Collins makes the point a few times that Black Feminism isn't just about combining antiracism with antisexism or just about the struggles of African(-American) women but it's about a broader social justice for everyone. Certainly anyone who is working for justice in any way would benefit from this book, and really anyone who doesn't want to be working for injustice...
When I read a book as dense as this, I don't try to get everything and 'unpack' everything. I figure, it'll make sense if I read further or one day I will read another book, or have some other kind of experience and then it'll make more sense. This edition has a glossary but I never checked it. Some reviewers talk about how academic it is, or note that it is a textbook, and there is the story in here of one of Collins' students who asked her to write a version of the book "for teenagers." I didn't think it was all that heavy. I think it all made sense to me. There are probably some things that will make more sense later, and I probably have forgotten more than I remember, but it's in there somewhere, like seeds beneath the snow to use a lovely cliche.
January 17, 2021
**Read for my 2021 gender and sexuality comprehensive exams**
This was a really informative and all-encompassing book on the struggles and experiences of Black women and feminists in the US. I appreciated the accessible way it was written even as discussing theories of intersectionality, the matrix of domination and oppression. I particularly appreciated the discussion surrounding the social construction of normative womanhood and its contradictions for Black women. The need to include discussions/acknowledgement of race in (mostly) white/mainstream feminism and the need to include discussions/acknowledgement of gender in anti-racist movements is still an issue that Black women and other women of colour likely face. Though this book is from 2000 it does not come off as dated and is a great introduction to the specific issues of racism, sexism and classism that Black women have and continue to face.
This was a really informative and all-encompassing book on the struggles and experiences of Black women and feminists in the US. I appreciated the accessible way it was written even as discussing theories of intersectionality, the matrix of domination and oppression. I particularly appreciated the discussion surrounding the social construction of normative womanhood and its contradictions for Black women. The need to include discussions/acknowledgement of race in (mostly) white/mainstream feminism and the need to include discussions/acknowledgement of gender in anti-racist movements is still an issue that Black women and other women of colour likely face. Though this book is from 2000 it does not come off as dated and is a great introduction to the specific issues of racism, sexism and classism that Black women have and continue to face.
July 1, 2017
Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the book yet (due back at the library) but I can speak to what I read so far. This is an important read for feminist theorists, and feminists in general. As a white woman, this book was especially enlightening, though I want to stress that I am not the target audience, either. My main criticism is the redundancy and length; I think this work would have benefited from some word trimming and condensing, as I often struggled to remain focused and/or found myself often thinking "okay, cmon, you've already said this. Support your point with some new information."
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