Customer Reviews

Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Joy James is Visiting Professor/John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor of the Humanities and College Professor in Political Science at Williams College. She has also written books such as Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture, and Spirit, Space and Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe (White Academe).

She states in the "Acknowledgements" section of this 1999 book, "Shadowboxing is one of many works refracting 'official' or state politics. Although its author is represented as an individual writer, its insights come from many political and cultural workers."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Shadowboxing stands as something of an anomaly in mainstream social and political thought, as well as in black feminist thought. Its discussions seek to unmask political dominance and the limits of liberalism or civil rights advocacy. The book highlights black women's challenges to state power and antiradicalism within conventional politics and within feminist and antiracist politics, as well as describes how cultural stereotypes obscure political agency." (Pg. 8)
"Racist and state violence and exploitation as 'public' overshadow the 'private' violence and exploitation within black families in antiracist rhetoric and organizing." (Pg. 68)
"Black feminist liberaton ideology challenges state power by addressing class exploitation, racism, nationalism, and sexual violence with critiques of and activist confrontations with corporate-state policies." (Pg. 83)
"Blacks share with gays and prostitutes the stereotypes of being 'naturally' and primarily sexual. In fetishized representations, they are all aberrational beings who court their own abuse." (Pg. 140)
"The walls built by isolationist discourse cause black women who refuse to bind to identities polarized as either 'black' or 'female' to be accused of gender or racial venality." (Pg. 185)