Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:32:59.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anancyism and the Dialectics of an Africana Feminist Ethnophilosophy: Sandra Jackson‐Opoku's The River Where Blood Is Born

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Laura Gillman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although intersectionality has been widely disseminated across the disciplines as a tool to center women of color's developed perspectives on social reality, it has been notably absent in the scholarship of feminist philosophy and philosophy of race. I first examine the causes and processes of the exclusions of women of color feminist thought more generally, and of intersectionality in particular. Then, focusing attention on Black feminisms, I read Sandra Jackson‐Opoku's 1997 novel, The River Where Blood Is Born, with and against Paget Henry's Africana ethnophilosophy. I model an interdisciplinary, intersectional approach to Henry's ethnophilosophy, broadening its philosophical scope by historicizing the liminality that characterizes the realities of many diasporic Black women. I also develop an interpretation of the female protagonists to suggest how many Black women within different historical contexts develop practices to recover African symbolic and discursive registers as a means to claim their subjectivities. Additionally, I challenge Henry's teleological explanation for an increasingly secular Africana philosophical identity.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Interstices: Inheriting Women of Color Feminist Philosophy , Winter 2014 , pp. 164 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander‐Floyd, Nikol. 2012. Disappearing acts: Reclaiming intersectionality in the social sciences in a post‐black feminist era. Feminist Formations 24 (1): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Alison. 2010. On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy. In The center must not hold: White women philosophers on the whiteness of philosophy, ed. Yancy, George. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.Google ScholarPubMed
Carby, Hazel. 1998. Race men. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2003. Some group matters: Intersectionality, situated standpoints, and black feminist thought. In A companion to African‐American philosophy, ed. Lott, Tommy L. and Pittman, John P.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crump, Helen J. 2010. Bodied knowledges (where our blood is born): Maternal narratives and articulations of Black women's diaspora identity. PhD diss.,University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Egglestone, Ruth Minott. 2001. A philosophy of survival: Anancyism in Jamaican pantomime. In The society for Caribbean studies annual conference papers, ed. Courtman, Sandra. Vol. 2. http://www.scsonline.freeserve.co.uk/olvol2.html (accessed February 28, 2012).Google Scholar
Gordon, Lewis R. 2003. African‐American existential philosophy. In A companion to African‐American philosophy, ed. Lott, Tommy L. and Pittman, John P.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Henry, Paget. 2003. African‐American philosophy: A Caribbean perspective. In A companion to African‐American philosophy, ed. Lott, Tommy L. and Pittman, John P.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Jackson‐Opoku, Sandra. 1998. The river where blood is born. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group.Google Scholar
James, Joy. 1997. Transcending the talented tenth: Black leaders and American intellectuals. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mann, Anika Maaza. 2010. Race and feminist standpoint theory. In Convergences: Black feminism and continental philosophy, ed. del Guadalupe Davidson, Maria, Gines, Kathryn T. and Marcano, Donna‐Dale L.Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Marcano, Donna‐Dale L. 2010. The difference that difference makes: Black feminism and philosophy. In Convergences: Black feminism and continental philosophy, ed. del Guadalupe Davidson, Maria, Gines, Kathryn T. and Marcano, Donna‐Dale L.Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, Emily Zobel. 2012. Anansi's journey: A story of Jamaican cultural resistance. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press.Google Scholar
Nye, Andrea. 2000. It's not philosophy. In Decentering the center: Philosophy for a multicultural, postcolonial, and feminist world, ed. Narayan, Uma and Harding, Sandra. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Valerie. 2007. Neo‐slave narratives. In The Cambridge companion to the African American slave narrative, ed. Fisch, Audrey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Warren, Karen J. 2000. Ecofeminist philosophy: A western perspective on what it is and why it matters. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
West, Traci C. 2010. Extending black feminist sisterhood in the face of violence: Fanon, white women, and veiled Muslim women. In Convergences: Black feminism and continental philosophy, ed. del Guadalupe Davidson, Maria, Gines, Kathryn T. and Marcano, Donna‐Dale L.Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Zack, Naomi. 1993. Race, life, death, identity, tragedy, and good faith. In Existence in black: An anthology of black existential philosophy, ed. Gordon, Lewis. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zack, Naomi. 2000. Introduction. Women of color and philosophy, ed. Zack, Naomi. Malden, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar