Davidson, Maria Del Guadalupe, Kathryn Sophia Belle (formerly known as Kathryn T. Gines), Marcano, Donna-Dale L. (eds). Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy
2010, State University of New York Press.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Esther McIntoshPublisher's Note: A range of themes - race and gender, sexuality, otherness, sisterhood, and agency - run throughout this collection, and the chapters constitute a collective discourse at the intersection of Black feminist thought and continental philosophy, converging on a similar set of questions and concerns. These convergences are not random or forced, but are in many ways natural and necessary: the same issues of agency, identity, alienation, and power inevitably are addressed by both camps. Never before has a group of scholars worked together to examine the resources these two traditions can offer one another. By bringing the relationship between these two critical fields of thought to the forefront, the book will encourage scholars to engage in new dialogues about how each can inform the other. If contemporary philosophy is troubled by the fact that it can be too limited, too closed, too white, too male, then this groundbreaking book confronts and challenges these problems.Comment: This is a stub entry. Please add your comments below to help us expand it
Davis, Alison. Right to life of handicapped
1983, Journal of Medical Ethics 9 (3):181-181.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: This notion of non-personhood denies the right of handicapped people to be recognised as equal human beings in a caring society, and it makes a mockery of the goodwill which seemingly abounded in the International Year of Disabled People. Legislation of the type proposed could well also lead to the de facto decriminalisation of the act of killing a handicapped person of any age, just as it did in Hitler'sGermany.And if it does, woe betide any handicapped people who are too ill to defend their right to life by protesting that they are in fact happy. And woe betide us all, when we get too old to be considered 'useful' and all the friends who could have spoken in our defence have already been oh so lovingly 'allowed to die'.
Davis, Angela. Women, Race and Class
1981, New York: Vintage
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallionPublisher's Note: A powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.Comment: This text would be useful for courses which touch upon Black Feminism, intersectionality, Slavery or the history of feminism.
Davis, Angela. Women, Race, and Class
1981, Random House
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallionPublisher’s Note:
Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable w
Comment: Angela Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic and author. She is a professor at the University of California and a longtime member of the Communist Party USA. She is also a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and the author of over ten books on class, feminism, race, and the US prison system. Women, Race and Class is a Marxist feminist analysis of gender, race and class. The third book written by Davis, it covers U.S. history from the slave trade and abolitionism movements to the women's liberation movements which began in the 1960s. In this chapter, Davis examines and describes the unwritten history of black women slaves and their legacies.
Davis, Angela. The Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves
1971, The Bancroft Library
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerIntroduction: The paucity of literature on the black woman is outrageous on its face. But we must also contend with the fact that too many of these rare studies must claim as their signal achievement the reinforcement of fictitious cliches. They have given credence to grossly distorted categories through which the black woman continues to be perceived.Comment (from this Blueprint): Content warning: Details of cruelties of slavery, sexual assault. In this 1971 text written while incarcerated, Angela Davis makes an argument against the truth of a stereotype of the black enslaved woman. She argues that, contrary to popular belief, the stereotype of a black woman under slavery as the “matriarch” (i.e., dominating the men in their lives and colluding with the white slaver in black people’s oppression) is not true. Instead, she argues, appealing to empirical evidence and marxist theory, that black women’s position in the community of slaves uniquely positioned them to aid in liberation struggles. She argues it is empirically borne out that they in fact were crucial to both explicit and everyday resistance efforts.
1997, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 32, Taylor & Francis, Ltd
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Added by: Björn Freter & Marc GwodogAbstract:
CHERYL DE LA REY leads a discussion with AMINA MAMA about the writer's groundbreaking work on black subjectivity. ZINE MAGUBANE presents some of the highlights of the conversation on the book BEYOND THE MASKS, held at the African Gender Institute in Cape Town.Comment (from this Blueprint): This conversation with Amina Mama on some of the core elements of her book provides an excellent guide to some of her ideas and allows to place them within the larger context.
Debra Jackson. An Examination of Racialized Assumptions in Antirape Discourse
2003, Studies in Practical Philosophy: A Journal of Ethical and Political Philosophy 3.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin CovingtonAbstract: In this paper it is argued that contemporary conceptualisation of rape obscure the real but often unexamined connections between racism and sexual assault. Indeed, women of color are more likely to be victimised by sexual assault than white women. They are also less likely to report their assault, less likely to be believed and less likely to participate in the anti rape movement. This suggests that the racial factor should be involved in any discussion on sexual assault.
Deloria Jr., Vine. Why We Respect Our Elders Burial Grounds
2004, In: American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays. Anne Waters (ed.), Blackwell (Oxford).
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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
This book brings together a diverse group of American Indian thinkers to discuss traditional and contemporary philosophies and philosophical issues. The essays presented here address philosophical questions pertaining to knowledge, time, place, history, science, law, religion, nationhood, ethics, and art, as understood from a variety of Native American standpoints. Unique in its approach, this volume represents several different tribes and nations and amplifies the voice of contemporary American Indian culture struggling for respect and autonomy. Taken together, the essays collected here exemplify the way in which American Indian perspectives enrich contemporary philosophy.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Demaria, Christina. The Performative Body of Marina Abramović Rerelating (in) Time and Space
2004, The European Journal of Women's Studies 1(3): 295-307.
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Added by: Rossen VentzislavovAbstract: Can a performance be analysed as a textual practice? Starting from this question, the article tries to describe the effets du sens (meaning effects) of some of the work of Marina Abramović, a Serbian performer and visual artist. From the 1970s, when the so-called body art emerged as a visual genre, offering the artist's body as a naked site of inscription, up to the present, when performing has become a more playful and direct transmission of energy between the doer and the viewer, the work of Abramović represents an effective and powerful example of the body-as-a-text in which subjectivity can be re-expressed and reinvented through the transformations of the relation between time and space. In the strong relationship created between the performer and the audience, what is enacted is a translation–transduction of material and cognitive meanings that results in a redefinition of a subjective and, simultaneously, collective experience of identity.Comment: This is a prime example of feminist aesthetics and its treatment of the human body. Demaria's main contention is that performance art can be understood textually and representationally even if it does not lay an explicit claim to either type of content. She agrees with Judith Butler's notion of citationality as a perpetual re-inscription of power norms and codes onto the human body. Since bodily presence plays such an important part in most performance art, the question of the possibility of embodied meaning arises naturally. Demaria uses the art of Marina Abramović to show that the question should be answered in the affirmative. Abramović's body exercises discursive transgressions (of language and code) in ways that, according to Demaria, establish a new language of dissent.
Dembroff, Robin. What is Sexual Orientation?
2018, Philosophers' Imprint 16.
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Rory WilsonAbstract: Ordinary discourse is filled with discussions about ‘sexual orientation’. This discourse might suggest a common understanding of what sexual orientation is. But even a cursory search turns up vastly differing, conflicting, and sometimes ethically troubling characterizations of sexual orientation. The conceptual jumble surrounding sexual orientation suggests that the topic is overripe for philosophical exploration. This paper lays the groundwork for such an exploration. In it, I offer an account of sexual orientation – called ‘Bidimensional Dispositionalism’ – according to which sexual orientation concerns what sex[es] and gender[s] of persons one is disposed to sexually engage, and makes no reference to one’s own sex and genderComment: Dembroff provides an interesting alternative to the Kinsey scale as well as Edward Stein's dispositional account of sexual orientation. Pairs well with Stein's piece of the same name: 'What is Sexual Oreintation' in "The Mismatch of Desire: the science, theory, and ethics of sexual orientation". Can be used for debate on sexual and desire attraction.
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