Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Caribbean vs Black Feminism

Using Barriteau to frame Ulysse's work brings up, as Barriteau acknowledges, more questions than answers concerning the academic relationship between Caribbean and Black feminism. I found Barriteau to be helpful in providing a brief overview of black feminist theory, but as such a short piece frustrating in suggesting stronger applications to Caribbean feminism without delivering. It did, however, provide an interesting lense through which to read Ulysse, especially as she is so concerned with her methodology. As acknowledged in the biline of her book, Ulysse's work is meant to investigate the researcher and her relationship with her subjects, as opposed to presenting her research as if it is completely objective.
Ulysse raises a number of interesting points she discovered, particularly in Chapter 3, regarding "natives'" attitudes towards researchers and how this affects their work and data. She observes that "this mistrust indicated their belief that the academy does not value, or even consider, researchers' relationships with subjects," and the assumption that she would only be interested in her birth country. Black feminisms emphasize "the personal is political," and the role of black women in shaping their own politics, which becomes problematic when looking at much of the work on Caribbean feminism; Ulysse engages with this difficulty as a "Regional Native, Local Outsider." Is this what makes Caribbean feminism distinct from Black feminism, the relationship of the academic to the subject?
Barriteau's most interesting point, to me, was from her previous work, that the way African American and Caribbean black people experience racism is completely structurally different (10). This presents the role of transnational feminisms to confront racism in different countries, in all its forms. While Barriteau argues for greater applications of black feminism to the Caribbean, it seems to me that the academic effort should be put into either specifying the essential differences between the two camps, or utilizing a theory that takes international differences into special account.

No comments:

Post a Comment