{"id":2414,"date":"2019-10-29T13:42:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2414"},"modified":"2019-10-29T13:42:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:42:32","slug":"the-dissension-that-expands-the-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2414","title":{"rendered":"The dissension that expands the base"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readings
\n<\/strong>\u2022 Kimberly Springer, Chs. 1, 2, 4, Living for the revolution: Black feminist organizations, 1968-1980<\/a>
\n<\/em>\u2022 Ntozake Shange, A Daughter’s Geography<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

After discussing how Black women created their own organizations after finding their needs often sidelined in both white feminist and masculinist Black civil rights movements, Springer engages with fissures within Black feminist movements that mirrored the fault lines of power in society at large. At first glance, Black feminism suggests a reprieve from monolithic and hierarchical social organizing. Because \u201cBlack feminists\u2019 voices and visions fell between the cracks of the civil rights and women\u2019s movements,\u201d Springer argues that they \u201cconducted their \u2018politics in the cracks\u2019\u201d (Springer, 1). These \u201ccracks,\u201d negative spaces breaking away from the establishment, offer a space to experiment with radical agendas and bottom-up change, to chip away at the foundations of the dominant political structure.<\/p>\n

On closer examination, however, these \u201ccracks\u201d are not void of power relations, but are themselves constituted by power relations that need to be grappled with. \u201cThough united through a collective racial and gender identity,\u201d Springer reveals that Black feminists \u201cdiscovered cleavages based on\u201d various additional intersections<\/span><\/a>,[1] such as \u201cclass and sexual orientation\u201d (Springer, 63). The idea of a perfectly united struggle against hegemony is itself problematically monolithic.<\/p>\n

Audre Lorde, for instance, struggled not only against racism and sexism but also against homophobia, ableism, and U.S. chauvinism. In the Cancer Journals<\/em>, Lorde<\/a> reflected that \u201cI am defined as other in every group I\u2019m part of\u201d (Lorde, 18). Notably, this dilemma did not lead her to give up advocating for each group\u2019s political rights. Rather, Lorde is famous for her intersectional methodology<\/a> of using difference as a source of power and community, rather than a cause for constructing adversarial hierarchies and mutually exclusive competition.<\/p>\n

Springer\u2019s \u201ccracks,\u201d then, do not only refer to destruction of hegemony but to the generative use of difference as a basis for political solidarity, instead of insisting on identity as a prerequisite for empathy and shared interests. Here, I use the term \u201cidentity\u201d according to its original meaning \u2014 the property of being identical. White rich women, for instance, claimed access to \u201cequal\u201d rights in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments on the basis of their \u201cidentity\u201d<\/a> with white rich men. To these white feminists, equal rights meant rights identical to those of white rich men \u2014 meaning, an equal right to own enslaved people; an equal right to exploit the working class by owning businesses; an equal right to hire unpaid or underpaid surrogates for child care and domestic work. Far from challenging white rich men to end colonial capitalist violence, the 1848 Declaration epitomizes the ways in which white rich women\u2019s challenge to power constituted of them jostling with white men for front and center seats in perpetrating colonial capitalist violence \u2014 especially against working women and women of color \u2014 and reaping the profits, \u201cequally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201ccracks\u201d represent a Black feminist refusal to seek \u201cidentity\u201d with power. These \u201ccracks\u201d do not build on the foundation of power to include more groups, such as white women and the Irish and the middle class, but work to tear down the foundation of power altogether, and offer a more radical and syncretic way of life in its place. \u201cThe heterogeneity of black feminists\u2019 individual political perspectives would yield dissention,\u201d Springer reflects, \u201cbut that dissention would in turn expand the boundaries of black feminist politics and the base of the black feminist movement\u201d (Springer, 64). Like roots splitting apart pavement, this rhizomatic disruption of monolithic hegemony<\/a> creates what Black Lives Matter<\/a> cofounder Alicia Garza<\/a> has described as \u201can effervescence \u2013 so, a bubble up, rather than a trickle down.\u201d<\/span><\/a>[2]<\/p>\n

These cracks that create more cracks abound in Ntozake Shange\u2019s poetry. The diasporic geography of Shange\u2019s Bocas: A Daughter\u2019s Geography<\/em><\/a> mirrors the dissension that expands the base of intersectional and transnational political solidarity:<\/p>\n

i have a daughter\/ la habana
\ni have a son\/ guyana
\nour twins<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shange weaponizes the same slashes used in formal grammar to separate lines of poetry in order to unite people across difference, be it gender or oceans. Like Springer\u2019s \u201ccracks,\u201d Shange\u2019s slashes are a breaking that expands the boundaries of how we see ourselves and our opportunities for collaboration in the freedom struggle. Through her poetic mutilation of the colonizer\u2019s language, Shange demonstrates the need to shatter the power structure and its standardizing mission in order to create a radical future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1] The term \u201cintersectionality\u201d was popularized by Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw<\/span><\/a>, a Black woman and legal scholar who is not credited often enough for her contribution. She uses the term not simply for people who stand at a crossroads of \u201cidentity,\u201d but for people who find themselves targeted by multiple interacting systems<\/span><\/a> of oppression at once.<\/p>\n

[2] Great analysis of that TED talk here<\/a>. Excerpted from Deva Woodly\u2019s upcoming book, Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readings \u2022 Kimberly Springer, Chs. 1, 2, 4, Living for the revolution: Black feminist organizations, 1968-1980 \u2022 Ntozake Shange, A Daughter’s Geography After discussing how Black women created their own organizations after finding their needs often sidelined in both white feminist and masculinist Black civil rights movements, Springer engages with fissures within Black feminist movements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[482,459,134,568,333,64,179,567,570,53,571,569,546,561],"class_list":["post-2414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blogpost","tag-intersectional","tag-intersectionality","tag-a-daughters-geography","tag-alicia-garza","tag-audre-lorde","tag-black-feminism","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-cancer-journals","tag-civil-rights-movement","tag-daughters-geography","tag-declaration-of-sentiments","tag-effervescence","tag-kimberle-crenshaw","tag-kimberly-springer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2415,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414\/revisions\/2415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}