Blogging the Theoretical

Feminism (revised) –

Patricia Hill Collins in her book Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment makes many arguments and theorizes numerous concepts surrounding feminist thought. Not only does Hill Collins suggest premise for oppression of women in the African American culture, but also the intersectionality between all feminisms.  She makes the point that oppression does not just start with the single structure of gender and then move to such areas as race, class, sexual orientation, etc. It sees these distinct systems of oppression as being part of one overarching structure of domination in which all these systems are dependent on one another. Instead of arguing about who experiences the worst oppression, intersectionality focuses attention on how these systems of oppression interrelate in different peoples’ ways of life.

“Replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones creates possibilities for new paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity.” (Collins)

Hill Collins also argues how women from a transnational perspective, in different countries, are affected by different oppressions in very diverse ways. For example, if you were to be addressing Black oppression amongst women in the Caribbean’s, their issues would not be the same of those in the United States.

Controlling images play a large part in the reinforcement of certain socially constructed molds for what feminist “should” or are scene to be. These controlling images

She states that Non-white feminist have not contributed in western feminist idea not because they were not capable of contributing with knowledge of their suppression. Today black feminists have the knowledge to contribute to feminist thought in a way no other culture could. Feminism now calls for the diversity that it hasn’t had in the past, due to the politics, knowledge, ect. Preventing this from happening.

“Confronting the controlling images forwarded by institutions external to African-American communities remains essential. But such effort should not obscure the equally important issue of examining how African-American institutions also perpetuate these same controlling images.”(Collins, 86)