This has largely come about through the efforts of black women intellectuals. “Collins points out that since about 1970, an increasing reclamation of black women’s ideas has been occurring. In coming to grips with the “definitions, core themes and epistemological significance” of black feminist thought, we must understand that this thought is resisted in the context of race, class, and gender oppression.

Understanding this dialectical relationship, suppression and resistance, is crucial to understanding the political context in which black feminist thought is situated.

She calls this the politics of black feminist thought. Although black women’s ideas are suppressed, the dialectic of black womanhood involves intellectual activism against that suppression. Dominant groups control subordinate groups through the suppression of their knowledge, for self-knowledge is power. “A major premise of the book is that black women have created knowledge which is not known or respected. Indeed, an extraordinary number of conventional notions about black women are turned on their heads as a black women’s standpoint takes form in this important sociological work. She does this by placing “Black women’s experiences and ideas at the center of the analysis.” The implications of this theoretical move are profound.

Yet, powerfully, Collins renders for us black feminist thought, which transcends all these perspectives. The work reflects diverse theoretical traditions such as feminist theory, Afrocentric philosophy, Marxist social thought, the sociology of knowledge, critical theory, and postmodernism. Print.įrom a review: “In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins creates a syncretic tour de force. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Hill Collins, Patricia.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.

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Black feminist epistemology collins