Feminism and Epistemic Injustice

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on injustice that is distinctly epistemic. The first part of the chapter focuses on the contributions that classic feminist theorists have made to the conceptualization of issues of epistemic injustice long before such name was available, focusing especially on the writings of feminists of color from the seventeenth century onward (Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, etc.). The second half of the chapter focuses on the contributions to recent discussions of epistemic injustice by contemporary feminist scholars, especially Lorraine Code, Kristie Dotson, and Miranda Fricker. The chapter highlights the ways in which the feminist paradigms of intersectionality and standpoint theory have shaped analyses of epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance against injustice, elaborating the key notions of epistemic agency, epistemic responsibility and epistemic advocacy.

The Trope of the Papers: Rethinking the (Un)Documented in African American Literature

I argue for a reconceptualization of undocumentedness, the experience of being undocumented, from an experience that is simply a result of the modern immigration regime to an experience that is a result of interlocking systems of oppression and resistance to them that has shaped Blackness and the vision for black liberation. I make this argument by defining and tracing the trope of the papers—the use of legal and extralegal documents to examine and document African Americans’ and other people of African descent’s relationship to the nation-state—in the slave narrative and the neo-slave narrative. I offer a close readings of slave narratives, including Sojourner Truth’s The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, and neo-slave narratives, including Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) and Gayl Jones’s Mosquito (1999), to illustrate the significance of the undocumented immigrant in African American literature and demonstrate that writers of African American literature have been thinking intensely about undocumentedness, although not in the way undocumentedness is typically understood.

“Inoculations: The Social Politics of Time, Labor, and Public Good in COVID-America”

“We are becoming a 24/7 workforce.” —Fair Workweek Initiative “I Can't Breathe” —Eric Garner, George Floyd, Manuel Ellis, Derrick Scott, Byron Williams, Vincente Villela, Ngozi Mbegu, Willie Ray Banks, James Brown… On May 1, 2020, Justa Barrios, a New York City home-care worker and labor activist, passed away from COVID-19. After working twenty-four-hour shifts for fourteen years, Barrios had injuries and compounding medical issues, including asthma, stomach difficulties, and heart problems. Her doctor determined that she could no longer work twenty-four-hour shifts. Yet when the home-care agency received a letter from the doctor requesting Barrios be assigned to eight-hour shifts, the agency dropped her. Barrios fought back. She found her voice in the “Ain't I a Woman?!” Campaign; comrades described her as a “fearless leader.” Stemming from an alliance among female immigrants and US-born garment, plastics, office, and home-care workers, via workers’ centers such as the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, this organizing effort has sought to end twenty-four-hour days—and the legally permissible practice of paying for only thirteen hours—in New York state through direct action, the courts, union arbitration, and state legislation prohibiting twenty-four -hour shifts. Women such as Justa Barros, Lai Yee Chan, Mei Kum Chu, Seferina Rosario, and Sileni Martinez see the “Aint I a Woman?!” Campaign as a “new women's movement fighting for control over our time, health, respect and payment.” As a cross-racial group, members chose to invoke Sojourner Truth, who tied together the causes of slavery abolition and women's rights, emancipation from coerced labor and from patriarchy, the dignity of women's labor and the dignity of release from work. But this legislation, which would seem so obviously humane and jarringly anachronistic, has been stalled in the New York legislature and ignored by Governor Andrew Cuomo for over a year.

From Suffragists to Pink Pussyhats: In Search of Intersectional Solidarity

The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women in American politics. The tools of intersectionality allow scholars to pinpoint the progress and pitfalls produced by ongoing modes of sexism and patriarchy as well as racism and classism. It is now well known that major movements for the rights of American women have not always addressed the issues specific to black women (Simien 2006). Indeed, in 1851, Sojourner Truth discussed this issue of not being included in conversations about women’s rights (or civil rights for blacks) in her alleged “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Similarly, the fact that Ida B. Wells and other black women were told to process at the back of the 1913 Women’s March on Washington is another illustration of the historical exclusion of black women by their white counterparts (Boissoneault 2017). Decades later and even after the 1965 Voting Rights Act enforced black women’s enfranchisement, the Combahee River Collective (1977) noted the exclusion of issues that affect black women by both 1970s white feminist movements and male-dominated anti-racist movements.

Uma virada epistêmica feminista (negra): conceitos e debates

Busco sistematizar neste artigo alguns debates que percebo como centrais para os feminismos negros americanos, tomando como sujeitos/as de análise mulheres intelectuais estadunidenses e brasileiras, tratando de suas singularidades e da complementaridade de falas e discursos repletos de afetos e de exemplos de vida. Considerando a virada epistêmica feminista das últimas décadas, a partir dos conceitos de interseccionalidade e (de)colonialidade, traço paralelos com base na localização de mulheres intelectuais negras, mapeando protagonismos de sujeitos/as em situação de margem, que trazem suas vivências para teorizações acadêmicas e enfrentamentos políticos, inspiradas seja pela voz de Sojourner Truth, nos EUA, ou pela “escrevivência” de Conceição Evaristo, no Brasil, junto com a confiança nos orixás e o respeito à ancestralidade de matriz africana. Falas localizadas e em primeira pessoa emergem dessas narrativas e confrontam epistemologias hegemônicas, trazendo novas propostas ao meio acadêmico, colocando novos (e velhos) desafios para a história e a historiografia no tempo presente.Palavras-chave: Feministas Negras. Racismo. Interseccionalidade. Colonialidade.