Exploring the Black Feminist Imagination

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors demonstrate how black feminist sociology immerses itself in the crucial work of decolonization, theory building, and radical black feminist possibility through centering black women. Black feminist theory and Afrofuturism are interconnected epistemologies in which dreams and the imagination flourish. Acknowledging the symbiotic relationship between the two reveals as much, similar to artist Mawena Yehouessi’s description of Afrofuturism as “the recall for a forgotten/despised legacy, the struggle for present-time acknowledgment and the attempt to impose its rights to be as equally part of future forecasts”. Additionally, black feminist theory and Afrofuturism share the goal of disrupting the past centered in confronting our race memories. Race memories refer to the collective memories of Black people that have more accurate depictions of own historical events even though that narrative is not included in the white patriarchal history-making processes.