Introduction: Perspectives from the Radical Other

Anim-Addo, Joan; Covi, Giovanna; Marchi, Lisa

doi:10.12681/syn.16189

Cited by 1 publication

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“…As Giovanna Covi argues, and I concur, the promise of feminist politics cannot lie only in academic encounter, deconstruction and engagement with its limits and oversights consequent upon repeated naming by Black feminism (Anim-Addo et al, 2009). Mainstream feminist praxis needs to be seen to engage on behalf of the 'other'.…”

Section: S: Black British Feminist Sisters At the Frontlinementioning

confidence: 93%

Activist-Mothers Maybe, Sisters Surely? Black British Feminism, Absence and Transformation

Anim-Addo¹

2014

Feminist Review

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This article, drawing on selected feminist magazines of the 1980s, particularly Feminist Arts News (FAN) and GEN, offers a textual 'braiding' of narratives to re-present a history of Black British feminism. I attempt to chart a history of Black British feminist inheritance while proposing the politics of (other)mothering as a politics of potential, pluralistic and democratic community building, where Black thought and everyday living carry a primary and participant role. The personal-mothering our children-is the political, affording a nurturing of alterity through a politics of care that is fundamentally antiracist and antisexist. I attempt to show how Black feminist thought can significantly contribute to democracy in the present and how Black British history and thought, as fundamentally antiracist and anticolonial, can generate a reinvention much needed in the present of a shared British history. I argue for feminist intervention premised upon a politics of care, addressing through activist mothering the urgency of Black absence from prestigious institutions. Such debilitating absence in Britain inhibits the development of scholarship, distorts feminist history and seriously concerns potential Black feminists. From diverse texts, I develop a genealogical narrative supplemented through memory work. This 'gathering and re-using' privileges Black women's theorising as a crucial component of the methodological métissage, which includes auto-theorising to develop ideas of resemblance in relation to Black British feminism and feminist kinship. The resultant 'braiding', I suggest after Lionnet, questions the absence of intersubjective spaces for reflection on Black British feminist praxis, indicating a direction for British feminists of all complexions. Attentive to the 1980s as historical context while invoking the maternal, I consider what is required to engage generationally, counterwrite the academy and pursue a dynamic process of transformation within a transnational feminism that challenges Black British absence from academic knowledge production, while nurturing its presence. keywords Black British; Black feminism; (other)mothering; kinship; history; care feminist review 108 2014 (44-60) © 2014 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/14 www.feminist-review.comGathering and re-using takes time, measurable in hours during a day certainly but also a sense of time having passed before, a sense of history and most importantly a sense of future, a knowledge of survival. (Himid, 1988) [W]e have moved to excavate the past and restore the words of many of our foremothers who were buried in the rumble of history … Using our stories and images, we have taught our daughters and sons about ourselves; our sisters, brothers and lovers about our desires. And some of us have shared a palaver with our writers/readers that prompts us all to re-vision ourselves. (Christian, 1990) True feminist theory and practice entails an understanding of imperialism and a critical engagement with challenging racism-elements which the current women's movem...

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Section: S: Black British Feminist Sisters At the Frontlinementioning

confidence: 93%