Description
Kathryn Sophia Belle centers feminist frameworks, discourses, and vocabularies of Black women and other Women of Color that existed prior to and have continued to exist after The Second Sex. She centers and amplifies the voices of Black women and other Women of Color, such as Lorraine Hansberry, Angela Davis, Chikwenye Ogunyemi, Deborah King, Oy?r?nk? Oyw?m?, Mariana Ortega, Kathy Glass, bell hooks, Kyoo Lee, Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Patricia Hill Collins, and Alia Al-Saji. Special attention is also given to Claudia Jones and Audre Lorde, both of whom implicitly and indirectly engage with The Second Sex. Beauvoir and Belle demonstrates the myriad ways in which these frameworks both expose and surpass the limits of The Second Sex. Belle argues against the frameworks of oppression used by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, a foundational text of white feminist philosophy. She frames Beauvoir's analogies as limitations, and shows how Beauvoir either does not engage with Black women and other Women of Color-or engages with them in problematic ways. Belle explores how Black and other Women of Color have critically written and talked about The Second Sex, and in so doing exposes the ways in which the existing Beauvoir scholarship has mostly ignored these engagements, thereby replicating Beauvoir's exclusions.
Table of Contents
PrefaceIntroduction: "Beauvoir and Belle: A Black Feminist Critique of The Second Sex"Part 11. A Select Genealogy of Black Feminist Frameworks for Identities and Oppressions: "If we are not careful the work we are doing now is going to have to be 'rediscovered' at some point"2. Claudia Jones: "The Negro question in the United States is prior to, and not equal to, the woman question"3. Lorraine Hansberry: "The Second Sex may well be the most important work of this century"4. Audre Lorde: "Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged"Part 25. Simone de Beauvoir's Analogical Approach: "There are deep analogies between the situations of women and blacks"6. Slavery and Womanhood: "Assimilating woman to the slave is a mistake"7. Abolition and Suffrage in the US: "They undertook a campaign in favor of blacks"Part 38. The Coloniality of Gender and the other Others: "The category of Other is as original as consciousness itself"Conclusion: Simone de Beauvoir: "I think The Second Sex will seem like an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless. . . a book which will have made its contribution"Index
