We used our place in the world to imagine ourselves differently': Black Feminist Activism and the Politics of Race, Nation and Empire in Britain

我们利用我们在世界上的地位来以不同的方式想象自己”：黑人女权主义行动主义和英国的种族、民族和帝国政治

• 批准号: 2268577
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2268577
• 关键词: used; our; place; world; imagine

My doctoral thesis will investigate Black British feminist activism during the period 1968-1988. This timeframe covers the beginning of Black women's organising within the Black Power movement, through to the end of the Black Women's Movement (BWM) in the Thatcher years. Despite the relative lack of scholarship on the subject, Black women throughout this era constructed an anti-imperialist praxis that resisted the racist, sexist and classist sources of their oppression in Britain. Black women's activism offers fertile ground to examine the intersection of race, gender, nation and empire in Britain, yet, fifty years after they began to organise collectively, their revolutionary work remains a marginalised narrative. My interdisciplinary and transnational study brings together intellectual history and the history of activism in order to reconceptualise our understanding of Black British women's contribution to feminist theory and praxis. Instead of understanding Black women as merely responding to and critiquing the multiple oppressions that they faced, my thesis will examine how they utilised their liminal position in Britain to form fundamentally new and radical political theorisations. Such an investigation will inform my central research question: how did Black feminists use their marginal position in Britain to develop new understandings of imperialism and to contemplate the possibility of a post-imperial future? My thesis will engage with its central inquiry using three key bodies of sources. Primarily, my analysis will be structured around oral history interviews that I will conduct with women who were involved in activist spaces throughout this period. This will include members of the British Black Panthers, OWAAD and Brixton Black Women's Group (BBWG), the most prominent organisations and vanguards of Black feminist organising in Britain. Oral history methodology will be key to this thesis, seeking as it is to challenge the historical erasure of Black British feminism and counteract the limited availability of documentary material on Black women's activism. In addition to oral history interviewing, I will also analyse printed and archival sources located at the Black Cultural Archives, where OWAAD co-founder Stella Dadzie's personal papers are stored, along with other archival collections and oral history interviews of Black women activists conducted by the archive in 2010.My interdisciplinary approach will enable me to make an original contribution to scholarship on the impact of empire on the metropole. Recent works by Bill Schwarz (2011) and Camilla Schofield (2013) have exemplified the significance of this impact; however, these works do not interrogate the seminal contribution of Black British feminism in the development of anti-imperialist thought and activism. Similarly, whilst earlier groundbreaking feminist sociological studies by Heidi Mirza (1997) and Julia Sudbury (1998) sought to articulate how Black feminists challenged racism in Britain, they do not fully investigate such women's responses to British imperialism. In more recent scholarship, Natalie Thomlinson (2016) has argued that a specifically 'feminist' politics 'never entirely superseded older forms of Black women's organisation' in the BWM (65). Conversely, I will argue that Black women's groups engaged with a range of radical ideologies to construct a politics of Black Socialist Feminism.

我的博士论文将研究1968-1988年期间的英国黑人女权主义。这一时间框架涵盖了黑人妇女在黑人权力运动中组织起来的开始，直到撒切尔时代黑人妇女运动的结束。尽管在这个问题上相对缺乏学术研究，但整个时代的黑人妇女都建立了一个反帝国主义的实践，抵制英国的种族主义，性别歧视和阶级压迫。黑人妇女的行动主义为研究英国种族、性别、国家和帝国的交集提供了肥沃的土壤，然而，在她们开始集体组织起来50年后，她们的革命工作仍然是一种边缘化的叙述。我的跨学科和跨国研究汇集了思想史和行动主义的历史，以重新概念化我们对英国黑人妇女对女权主义理论和实践的贡献的理解。而不是理解黑人妇女仅仅是回应和批评他们所面临的多重optimisations，我的论文将研究他们如何利用他们在英国的阈位置，形成从根本上新的和激进的政治理论。这样的调查将告知我的中心研究问题：黑人女权主义者如何利用他们在英国的边缘地位来发展对帝国主义的新理解，并思考后帝国未来的可能性？我的论文将使用三个关键的来源来进行中心调查。首先，我的分析将围绕口述历史采访，我将与在这一时期参与活动家空间的妇女进行。这将包括英国黑豹、OWAAD和布里克斯顿黑人妇女团体（BBWG）的成员，这些组织是英国最著名的组织和黑人女权主义组织的先锋。口述历史的方法将是关键，这篇论文，寻求因为它是挑战历史擦除黑人英国女权主义和抵消有限的可用性的纪录片材料的黑人妇女的行动。除了口述历史采访，我还将分析位于黑人文化档案馆的印刷和档案资料，OWAAD联合创始人斯特拉·达齐的个人文件就存放在那里，沿着其他档案收藏和口述历史采访的黑人妇女活动家进行的档案在2010年。我的跨学科的方法将使我能够作出原创性的贡献，奖学金的影响帝国对大都市。比尔·施瓦茨（Bill Schwarz，2011）和卡米拉·斯科菲尔德（Camilla Schofield，2013）最近的作品体现了这种影响的重要性;然而，这些作品并没有质疑英国黑人女权主义在反帝国主义思想和行动主义发展中的开创性贡献。同样，虽然海蒂·米尔扎（Heidi Mirza，1997）和朱莉娅·萨德伯里（Julia Sudbury，1998）早期开创性的女权主义社会学研究试图阐明黑人女权主义者如何挑战英国的种族主义，但他们并没有充分调查这些妇女对英国帝国主义的反应。在最近的奖学金中，娜塔莉·林森（2016）认为，在BWM中，一个特别的“女权主义”政治“从未完全取代旧形式的黑人妇女组织”（65）。相反，我认为黑人妇女团体参与了一系列激进的意识形态，以构建一个黑人社会主义女权主义的政治。