patricia hill collins black feminist theory

This article is a reading of Collins’s concept of intersectionality, the relationship between oppression and resistance, and the politics of empowerment. Table of Contents for Black feminist thought : knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment / Patricia Hill Collins, available from the Library. However, the significance of black feminist thought reaches far beyond US and black American communities. Beyond the characteristics of epistemology, there are several key implications for black feminist thought. Collins offers an interpretive framework for understanding the experiences of African American women. Patricia Hill Collins educates us through the four tenets of black epistemology, in addition to the contradictions against the scientific methods of social science positivistic knowledge. She describes them as 'outsiders within'. She uses this epistemology to empower black women to hold their own control. It uses intersectional analysis to shed light on the relationships between the structural, symbolic and everyday aspects of domination and individual and collective struggles in various domains of social life. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins developed and explained the concept of intersectionality in her groundbreaking book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, published in 1990. Patricia Hill Collins first introduced the idea of black feminist epistemology saying that it derives from the personal experience of black women dealing with both racism and sexism. Developed through a dynamic interaction with black women's everyday struggles, black feminist thought is important not only for its contribution to critical social theories and methodologies, but also for providing important knowledge for the use of social justice movements. Located in African American women's everyday and historical experiences of oppression and resistance, black feminist epistemology and critical social theory, Patricia Hill Collins raises the intellectual level in all these arenas.

Patricia hill collins black feminist theory