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13 - Reworking Black Feminist Anthropology through Transnational Scholar-Activism and Antiracist Solidarity in Africa and Its Diaspora

from Part Three - Resistances and Intersections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2023

By
Riché J. Daniel Barnes
Edited by
Cecilia McCallum ,
Silvia Posocco  and
Martin Fotta
Cecilia McCallum
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Silvia Posocco
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Martin Fotta
Affiliation:
Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
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Summary

Black feminist anthropology has been and continues to be rooted in intellectual engagements with transnational Blackness, transnational feminism, queer politics, global anti-Blackness, anti-imperialism, and anticapitalism. Black feminist anthropology is a global endeavor that applies theory and lived experience to restructure ethnography and praxis that is engaged in an intersectional analysis of various oppressions and strategies for resistance, survival, and freedom. This chapter builds on those studies that identify the importance of including transnational Black feminism in the anthropological canon and supporting scholars who center Black women’s experiences throughout the diaspora. The aim is to encourage the use of a transnational Black feminist analytic to transform anthropological approaches to the study of Africa and its diaspora; constructions of labor, production, and reproduction; racialized identity formation; the performance of those identities across gender and sexuality; and narratives of oppression, resistance, and survival. The author centers transnational Black feminist frameworks that see the formation of diaspora as a site for solidarity that coalesce as a result of, around, and between women-led and gender-based political movements. For Black feminist anthropologists it names what was already possible, while providing an intentional epistemic framework and methodology for collaboration with Black feminists throughout Africa and its diaspora.

Keywords

Black feminismtransnational Blacknesstransnational feminismBlack feminist anthropologyanthropological theoryAfrican diasporaBlack experiencesidentitiesgender-based political movements
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality , pp. 336 - 369
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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