The Black Scholar is proud to announce the second of a two-part issue on the future of Black feminism. Our guest editors – Brittney Cooper, Tanisha Ford, Treva Lindsey, Joan Morgan, and Kaila Story – have curated a group of contributors covering new territory within the field of Black feminisms more broadly, and the use of Black feminist frameworks within specific disciplines. Our contributors include Drs. Jessica M. Johnson, Kristie Dotson, Susana Morris, and Tamura Lomax. These wide ranging inquiries consider the politics of producing theory, the challenges for articulating a pleasure politic, the shifting demands of queer inquiry and its relationship to black feminism’s broader intellectual project. Within disciplines contributors interrogate how Black women’s literature aids in the process of imagining Black feminist futures, argue for a reclamation of the importance of spirituality and the sacred, chart a new course for Black feminist inquiry within the discipline of philosophy, and expand our national borders with a consideration of how Black gender politics emerge in transnational spaces. Returning our attention to the intellectual production of Black women and to questions of how gender should figure in liberatory politics is especially salient in the context of the emerging Black Lives Matter Movement. These pieces demonstrate that Black feminism remains a generative and vibrant site of radical knowledge production. Moreover these pieces challenge any existing imperatives that seek to center or recenter Black cisgender, Black male experiences as paradigmatic of Black experience more generally. This two-part issue models in the best traditions of Black feminism what a queer, anti-patriarchal, trans*, and cis inclusive Black politic should look like in this moment. Although focused on academic Black feminisms, these works self-consciously have praxes based investments. They demonstrate that the best thinking has an impact on our doing. Taken together, these two issues offer an expansive, though by no means exhaustive, look at some of the most exciting and generative new work within the field of Black feminism and will challenge readers to critically consider the current state and future of Black feminism.
Read intro here (free for a limited time).
