Contextualizing Gender
2.2 Gender and Race Consciousness II
Prof. Rashmi Gaur
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee
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Black Feminism and Womanism
• Black feminist consciousness, as Evelyn M. Simien remarks, is the recognition that
African American women are “status deprived because they face discrimination
on the basis of race and gender. Having to bear the burdens of prejudice that
challenge people of color, in addition to the various forms of subjugation that
hinder women, African American women are disadvantaged doubly in the social,
economic, and political structure of the United States”.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1300/J014v26n02_04
• Black feminists have articulated interlocking systems of oppression: sexism,
racism, and class-discrimination within the
all-encompassing structures of “imperialist white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks).
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• Black women were involved earlier in suffrage and anti‐slavery societies which gave
rise to the first wave of the feminist movement in the US.
– Anna J. Cooper’s work, A Voice from the South By a Black Woman of the South (1892) can be cited here.
Cooper often spoke and wrote of the double enslavement of Black women -- of race and gender.
– Later they would put a great deal of energy into the Black Women’s Club Movement within African American
communities.
– In 1920, when the women’s suffrage was finally enacted, white women gave up on supporting anti‐lynching
positions to gain the South’s political allegiance. The traditional norms of racism superseded sisterhood.
• By the mid‐20th century the struggle for social justice in the form of the Civil Rights
Movement, gave primacy to race.
• Black women continued the double struggle against race and gender
oppression.
• A Black feminist lens was adopted primarily in 1960s, when
women were excluded from the leadership roles in Civil Rights
Movement; and mainstream feminism focused on issues
which largely accommodated middle-class White women.
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• Alice Walker coined the term "Womanism" to describe the
requirements of a Black Feminist Movement.
• First used in her short story, "Coming Apart "(1979), and
later in In Search of our Mothers' Gardens : Womanist
Prose (1983), the term refers to "African- American
feminism or the feminism of women of color."
• Walker explains, "I just like to have words that describe
things correctly. Now to me' black feminist' does not do
that. I need a word that is organic that really comes out of
the culture that really expresses the spirit that we see in
black women.”
• The term has expanded in meaning since then.
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• Womanism is not a surrogate for Black feminism, though the two are
related. Holism, the whole sense of being a woman, is central to
Womanism. A Womanist is aware of her own value.
• Blackness is implicit in the term. There is no need to preface it with
Black as in Black feminism.
• To Walker, one is "womanist" when one is committed to the survival
and wholeness of entire people, male and female .The term includes
the survival of both men and women with their distinctiveness.
-- Walker's preference for the term womanist addresses the notion of
the solidarity of humanity.“ This inclusion of men provides black
women with an opportunity to address gender oppression without
directly attacking men.
• Walker's much cited phrase suggests
that feminism is a component
beneath the much larger ideological
umbrella of womanism.
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• Pertinent to quote Laura Gilman, who comments that
universal understandings about women’s physical or
metaphysical nature are incorrect:
• There is no fixed, universalizing biological essence Gillman refutes postmodern
feminist approaches that
• Similarly, there are no sociocultural patterns of dismantle identity while
conduct/activities/structures of feeling that bind all women advancing a material account
of social identity, emerging
together as a group. from within spatial-temporal
• Whether celebrating women’s biological traits or social relations
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta
attributes in order to compensate for racist and patriarchal il/9780230623163?shipto=US&curcode=USD
representations, or simply deconstructing the mind/nature
dichotomy in order to dismantle Western binary thought that
marginalized women in the first place, feminists had
mistakenly reproduced stereotypical femininity.
<https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230109926_1>
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• Womanist theory/womanism considers that femininity and culture are equally
significant in women’s lives. Femininity can not be separated from culture, of
which it is a part.
• Womanism supports the idea that culture of a woman is the lens through which
femininity exists. Culture is not an element of her femininity
• It is the focal point of intersection as opposed to class or some other
characteristic.
• As such, a woman's blackness is not a component of her feminism. Instead, her
blackness is the lens through which she understands her
femininity.
• Audre Lorde, "Black feminism is not white feminism
in blackface."
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• Ula Y. Taylor in her essay “Making Waves: The Theory and Practice of Black
Feminism,”* summarizes the four elements of womanism, as Walker has pointed out,
as following :
• Firstly, it includes "a Black feminist or a feminist of color."
– The womanish girl exhibits willful, courageous, and outrageous behavior that is considered to be beyond
the scope of societal norms.
– In black folk expression when mothers say to daughters “you acting womanish,” they mean that
their (daughter’s) behaviour is audacious, courageous, responsible or wilful and acting grownups.
This expression is the same as “you trying to be grown.”
• Secondly, it is one who "appreciates and prefers women's culture."
– A woman who loves other women sexually/non- sexually. She appreciates
and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility and women’s
strength. She is not a separatist, but traditionally Universalist.
– This aspect later on led to contestations over lesbianism, especially
critics like Emilie Townes who supported a spiritual angle to womanism.
* <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00064246.1998.1143091 >
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• Thirdly, it is "love" of culture and "self."
• A woman who loves music, loves dance, loves the moon, loves the spirit, loves love, loves struggle, loves the folk
and loves herself. Regardless.
• Finally, Walker's the most routinized section of this quadruple expression and the color-
coded theoretical parallel -- "womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.“-- is simply
useful as a literary device in Taylor’s opinion.
• However, this also means that womanism denotes different things. Both purple and
lavender have many things in common but even then they are different.
• Purple as a colour could also be regarded as a multifaceted erotic symbol, a sign of
indomitable female spirit and an encoding of joyous vitality of the female spirit.
• The dominant motif of womanism is sisterhood, inherent in
advancement. Walker’s concept of womanism stresses the
sense of solidarity and sharing, the sense of community
that brings about a blossoming in self and society.
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What is
Womanism
• This video explains
the concept of
Womanism and the
circumstances under
which the term came
into existence.
Source: Kat Blaque. <https://youtu.be/xWgOpOkSCOI>
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• Nonetheless, Walker provides a basis for other scholars to shape the concept for
analysis by implying that womanism has a greater scope and intensity than black
feminism. She has given literary, critical and philosophical recognition to black
women's intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness.
• She also stresses the need to create a global community where all members of
society are encouraged to survive.
• The quality of being ‘Universalist’ gives black women more strength and the power
to prove that they are worthwhile.
• Womanist theory fuses "race, sex, and class oppression as forming one struggle.
• It flows from a “both/and worldview, a consciousness that
allows for the resolution of seeming contradictions not
through an either/or negation but through the interaction
and wholeness” (Elsa B.Brown, “Womanist Consciousness”).
• This factor attracted several African-American women.
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• However, Womanism may not be as relational to feminism as Alice Walker implies.
Rose Brewer in her article “Black Feminism and Womanism” cites Maparyan (2012), a
scholar of Womanist thought, who suggests that there has been a metaphysical
architecture of Womanism, “as a form of spiritualized politics.” Its distinct logic has
often been swallowed into Black feminism.
• Maparyan argues that Womanism reemerged in 2000s on its own terms. Its first
period of usage was around 1990s when Alice Walker first termed it. However, there
is a period which predates Walker. She cites the work of Womanist critics Clenora
Hudson‐Weems and Katie Cannon.
• Hudson‐Weems coined the term “Africana Womanism” in
the late 1980s. She contends that women of African descent
have always been Africana womanists by their very nature,
dating back to Africana women in antiquity, even before the
coinage of the word itself.
*<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119314967.ch6?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_lGV4JGJwpZwLH8aJOK8dNn.
7FsNGL0yksj7jlUzxA0A-1635257877-0-gqNtZGzNAjujcnBszQrl >
•
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• Katie Cannon is credited with founding womanist
theology and ethics as a field. Her book Black Womanist
Ethics (1988) is considered as a pioneering work in this
field.
• While Womanism was pioneered by women of African
descent, Maparyan does not limit it to Africana
feminism. She calls it self‐authored, divinely inspired
knowledge. It has a distinct internal logic of black
political organizing, but challenges the unquestioned
dominance of black men in those formations.
• Taylor comments that despite the contention that
“womanism is more encompassing, black feminism and
womanism would seem to be nearly interchangeable
empowerment theories”.
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Commonalities
• They acknowledge that the activism of black women should be based on their
cultural heritage which rejects docility. It should enable Black women to resist
oppression.
• They encourage black women to value and love self, regardless of outsiders'
perceptions.
• They recognize black women's responsible commitment to creating a whole
community void of dominance.
• Despite the similarities between these paradigms, many
womanists continue to disclaim black feminism.
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• Both womanism and black feminism recognize a distinct women's culture. Perhaps
womanism allows black women a "femininity" denied under "feminism."
• Prior to the modern civil rights movement, enslaved black women were written about
by historians as if they were androgynous. Sojourner Truth's feminism acknowledged
that slavery denied black women "feminine" qualities, and in particular their right to
be mothers. By the second wave, white feminists located their oppression in "female"
roles, and several activists connected exterior "female" attire to their oppression.
• But for many black women, attire and the home were not the principal sites of their
oppression. In fact, the denial of black women's "femininity“
has been the main vehicle used to exploit their labor power
and womanhood. (Ula Y. Taylor, “ Making Waves: The Theory
and Practice of Black Feminism”*)
*https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00064246.1998.11430912
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Work, Family and Black Women’s Oppression
• One of the core themes in U.S. Black feminist thought is analysing Black women’s work,
especially Black women’s labour market victimization as “mules” (Hurston, Their Eyes
Were Watching God, pg 16).
• As dehumanized objects, mules are living machines and can be treated as part of the scenery. Fully
human women are less easily exploited.
• Their paid work is organized within intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender.
Their overrepresentation in less paid service work is read as a continuity of their racial
segregation and slavery.
– Within Black feminist-influenced scholarship, African-American
women are often presented as constrained but empowered figures,
even in extremely difficult labour market settings (Terborg-Penn 1985).
• Historical underpinnings of slavery and racism can be seen in
the present day status of African-American women.
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•
• They were enslaved and humbled like their men; but unlike them they were forced
into sexual roles that threated to undermine their sense of worth, also turning the
experience of motherhood into a trauma.
• African American slave mothers were put in a contradictory and irreconcilable
position, as their parental role was forcibly subordinated to the economic interest of
slaveholders. These mothers and their children were not seen as human beings.
Families were separated and destroyed.
• Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)– in which infanticide is viewed as liberation - remains
to be the most poignant fictional testimony to the despair generations of such
mothers faced.
• Similarly poignant is portrayal of women in 12 Years a Slave -
a 2013 film.
– Based on the memoir written by Solomon Northup, which reveals what
happened after Solomon – a free black man living in New York in pre-Civil
War America – was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
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Eliza and Platt
• Eliza Berry was the mother
of Randall and Emily. She
was cruelly separated from
her children when she was
sold to William Ford in
Louisiana.
• She never recovered from
the emotional devastation
of losing her children,
mourning them the rest of
her life and dying without
ever seeing them.
Source: Summit Entertainment. <https://youtu.be/iWokRnH7TAA>
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Slave Narratives: Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions
in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of
the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography,
in the history of the United States.
• From 1760 to the end of the Civil War in the United States, approximately 100
autobiographies of fugitive or former slaves appeared. After slavery was
abolished in the United States in 1865, at least 50 former slaves wrote or
dictated book-length accounts of their lives.
– The first slave narrative to become an international best-seller was the two-volume Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the
African, Written by Himself (1789), which traces Equiano’s career
from boyhood in West Africa, through the dreadful transatlantic
Middle Passage, to eventual freedom and economic success as
a British citizen.
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• With the rise of the abolition movement in the early 19th century came a demand for
hard-hitting eyewitness accounts of the harsh realities of slavery in the United States.
– The American slave narrative centres on the narrator’s rite of passage from slavery in the South to
freedom in the North.
– Slavery is documented as a condition of extreme deprivation, necessitating increasingly forceful
resistance.
– After a harrowing and suspenseful escape, the slave’s attainment of freedom is signalled not simply by
reaching the “free states” of the North but by taking a new name and dedication to antislavery
activism.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by
Himself (1845), often considered the epitome of the slave narrative, links the quest
for freedom to the pursuit of literacy, thereby creating
a lasting ideal of the African American hero committed
to intellectual as well as physical freedom.
Revising and expanding his original life story, Douglass
wrote My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, to
recount his continuing struggle for freedom against
Northern racism.
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• In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, American slave narratives contributed
to the mounting national debate over slavery.
• The most widely read and hotly disputed American novel of the 19th century,
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), was profoundly influenced by its
author’s reading of slave narratives, to which she owed many graphic incidents and
models for some of her most memorable characters.
• In 1861 Harriet Jacobs, the first African American female slave
to author her narrative, published Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl, which depicted her resistance to her
master’s sexual exploitation and her ultimate
achievement of freedom for herself and her
two children.
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• Consistent denial of essential resources to African-American women has resulted
in their exclusion and manipulation. They were exploited as economic resource
during slavery and also faced violence as women.
• Derisory or absent incomes for many blacks is the a main issue of their social life
even now. This has created many frustrations among the black community, has
repercussions on the management of their own family and results in what is
called the matriarchal poor family.
• Gloria Naylor (1950-2016), a prominent novelist has underscored the gendered
exploitation of women in her novels, underscoring the significance of economic
stability for Black women.
• The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985)
and Mama Day (1988) may be particularly mentioned in
this context.
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• African-American writers suggest a framework of feminism which opposes not only
gender hierarchies but also racial and economic hierarchies, while recognizing the
culturally specific experiences of women across cultures.
• This feminism— U.S. third world feminism or, to use Walker's term, womanism— is
articulated in the fiction of Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich etc. Their
constructions of gender identity arise from and vary with their constructions of
community.
• In several novels we also find a disruption of traditional gender roles.
– Eg., The Color Purple (1982), an epistolary novel by Alice Walker. Also adapted into a film by Steven
Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004.
• Many characters in the novel break the boundaries of
traditional male or female gender roles.
• --Sofia’s strength and sass, Shug’s sexual assertiveness, and
Harpo’s insecurity are significant examples of such disparity
between a character’s gender and the traits he or she displays.
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Bernardine Evaristo
• One of Britain's innovative contemporary writers.
• Born in London and of mixed European and African parentage,
Evaristo' s background is an essential resource for her fictional writing.
• Her writing reflects her plural, diasporic heritage, which marks her as both a British
and a post-colonial writer.
• Compared with new generation of British-born, Black writers like Andrea Levy, Jackie
Kay and Hanif Kureishi who, in the words of Caryl Phillips, feel 'both of and not of'
this country.
• For Evaristo to be 'Black' and 'British' is not a contradiction. Source: Acthom 123
• Her narratives raise crucial questions around what it means
to be 'here', producing post-national landscapes in which
Britain appears at the crossroads for a series of global
movements and migrations.
• Suggests a continuity in terms of womanism.
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Girl, Woman, Other
• The novel received the 2019 Booker Prize award alongside Margaret
Atwood’s The Testament.
• A panoramic, polyphonic novel, it follows the lives of 12 different
characters living in the UK throughout several decades.
• It tells the stories of a loosely connected group of people, including a
young girl, an elderly woman, a non-binary character -- mostly black
women in complex mother-daughter relationships -- across 120 years of
Source: Hamish
British history. Hamilton
• Every character is a descendant of black immigrants who came
to the United Kingdom a long time before.
• Experimental - written partly in prose and partly as a poem or simply a
poem in prose, without using initial capital letters in sentences and
full-stops apart from the endings of individual (sub)chapters.
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Stigma as an Agent of Change
• The female characters in the novel deal with oppression and stigma in several ways.
• They do not subscribe to the role of powerless victims but are critical to the world
around them.
• Jazz, Amma’s daughter refuses to accept subordinance: “I mean, how on earth can you be a Professor of
Modern Life when your terms of reference are all male, and actually all-white (Evaristo 2019, 61).
• In the oppressed women, there is rage and readiness to fight: “I’m not a victim, don’t ever treat me like a
victim, my mother didn’t raise me to be a victim” (Evaristo 2019, 61).
• They are aware of the need to talk about their subordinate position, name it, and
oppose it, especially when it has become a part of them as an internalized self-
oppression. Evaristo shows the intertwining of various forms
and degrees of oppression and underprivileged status:
• “…yes but I’m black, Courts, which makes me more oppressed than
anyone who isn’t, except Waris who is the most oppressed of all
…. in five categories: black, Muslim, female, poor, hijabed ….”
(Evaristo 2019, 80)
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• The continuity of such intertwining bases of oppression leads us to
intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.
• An intersectional approach shows the way that people’s social
identities can overlap, creating compounding experiences of
discrimination.
• According to her it offers a lens through which we can see the way
“various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate
each other.”
• “All inequality is not created equal,” she says. “We tend to talk about
race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender,
class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is
how some people are subject to all of these, and the
experience is not just the sum of its parts.”
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/6/explainer-intersectional-feminism
-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters
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Thank You
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References
• Blaque, Kat. (2019) What is womanism. [YouTube Video]
• Gillman L. (2010) Introduction: Reconceptualizing Identity Politics in a Post Identity Politics
Age. In: Unassimilable Feminisms. Breaking Feminist Waves. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109926_1
• Gillman, L. Unassimilable Feminisms: Reappraising Feminist, Womanist, and Mestiza
Identity Politics. Springer, 2010.https://youtu.be/xWgOpOkSCOI
• Kinobscura.(2019, Nov 4).12 Years a Slave(2013)- Sold Eliza and Platt. YouTube.
https://youtu.be/iWokRnH7TAA
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• Naples, N. A. (2020). Companion to feminist studies. John Wiley & Sons.
• Simien, E. M. (2004). Black feminist theory. Women & Politics, 26(2), 81-93.
https://doi.org/10.1300/j014v26n02_04
• Taylor, U. Y. (1998). Making waves: The theory and practice of Black feminism. The Black
Scholar, 28(2), 18-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.1998.11430912
• UN Women (2020). Intersectional feminism: What it means and why it matters right now.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/6/explainer-intersectional-feminism-
what-it-means-and-why-it-matters
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