“Harvesting our collective intelligence”: Black British feminism in post-race times

Abstract

Synopsis At the heart of the contingent and critical project of black British feminism is the postcolonial impulse to chart counter-narratives and memories of racialised and gendered domination. This paper takes up this challenge by exploring the struggles of a new generation of black British feminists, 30 years after the landmark publication of Feminist Review's special issue Many Voices One Chant and the edited collection Black British Feminism which followed. The paper explores the changing articulation of black British feminism at a time where foundational categories such as ‘blackness’ as a political construct continue to have purchase but where new forms of activism are more fleeting and contingent in response to the changing post-racial terrain.