The Part-Time Cyborg: Asserting Self-Care under Persistent Surveillance

What role have black women from poor black townships of South Africa played in African or black feminism? To ask this is to open up Pandora’s box about our denial of the homogeneity of black middle class feminism in South Africa. Black feminism is invoked as though black women are devoid of class/sexuality/gender/educational differences. To ask what role black feminists from the township play requires us to examine the shape that black feminism takes in the black townships of South Africa. This paper takes the form of a transcribed interview with my aunt and black feminist scholar, Wanelisa Xaba. In the interview, I locate myself as a ‘township feminist’ and reflect on what this identity means in post-apartheid South Africa. Much needs to be explored about the disjuncture between middle class black feminism and the lived realities of poor black African women on the ground. Informed by Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, the transcribed interview between Xaba and me reflects on the dynamics of gender/class/education ‘privilege’ in our family. During the interview, we explore the politics of a university education as a legitimiser of feminist ‘credibility’ and how ‘university privilege’ is a form of structural violence perpetrated against black feminists outside of the academy. We further explore how Xaba (a feminist who went to university) experiences privilege within the family while my feminism remains marginalised. Taking a closer look at our childhood, Xaba and I further explore the gendered extra labour we have had to undertake in order to ‘hold down the home’. This speaks to a broader issue: when the state fails to liberate black people from poverty, the girl child is tasked with the extra burden of providing. This we mirror against prevalent traditional Xhosa values that assert that ‘men are providers’. We juxtapose this view with the actual situation in which black women are the actual providers and pillars of township communities. This interview aims to illuminate an intergenerational conversation between family members about privilege, power, socialisation and reclamation of black township feminism.

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

Reviewed by: Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups Patricia Hill Collins (bio) Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups. Cynthia Burack . Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. In Healing Identities, Cynthia Burack brings together the tools of psychoanalysis and political theory with the theoretical work of modern Black feminism in order to shed light on the workings of groups. The six chapters in Healing Identities render difficult concepts in all three discourses accessible to readers who may be unfamiliar with psychoanalysis, political theory, or Black feminist thought. Burack believes that all three theoretical traditions have important things to say about developing the kinds of groups that will be adequate to social justice projects. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the connections between psychoanalysis and political theory, in order to introduce the repressive nature of groups. They also survey how race and racism appear in both discourses. Chapter 3, titled "Reparative Group Leadership" is in many ways the heart of Healing Identities. Burack introduces Black feminist thought, which she describes as both an academic and identity group discourse that is produced by Black women scholars for a primary audience of Black women. Burack perceives Black feminist scholars so defined as comparable to the leaders of other identity group discourses, and sees them as group leaders. Burack uses the term "reparative," which she suggests has a positive and healthy meaning within Black feminist thought. Burack [End Page 227] understands reparative groups to be those that "collectively work through issues that routinely plague groups without giving in to the worst, most destructive and unfortunately most common group possibilities" (59). When applied to groups, the term "reparation" suggests a group's ability to mend harms done or desired, possible or imagined to other groups. With psychoanalytic theory and Black feminist thought so defined, Burack proceeds to examine the differences between group psychoanalytic expectations associated with group leadership and the actual reparative group leadership of Black feminist thought. Using Black feminist thought as a touchstone for analysis, chapters 4 and 5, titled "Conflict and Authenticity" and "Bonding and Solidarity," respectively, take up different dimensions of Burack's model of repressive and reparative leadership. Chapter 6, "Coalitions and Reparative Politics," explores the implications for mainstream scholarship of Black feminist thought's reparative leadership: "Black feminist theorizing about groups violates pessimistic expectations about group life that are widely held by social and political theorists. The reparativeness of Black feminist thought is most plainly revealed precisely by the dimension that is so often celebrated by scholars and commentators of Black feminism: coalition-building and coalition politics" (159). Despite its good intentions, Healing Identities raised two sets questions for me. For one, there is the question of how Burack's intended audience affects the overall organization and arguments of this volume. Healing Identities does not seem designed for African American readers. Instead, this book appears to be written to appeal to White feminist readers who are engaged in debates about the merits of interpretive uses of psychoanalytic theory and of political theory for Western feminist projects, especially those that might build feminist coalitions. As the author points out, "black feminist thought . . . evokes emotion in many of its readers. I am convinced that, like much passion in political life, this emotion is defensive—an attempt to fend off guilt, self-examination, and genuine confrontation with otherness" (5). Just who exactly are the readers who would engage Black feminist thought as a site of otherness? Certainly not Black women. In a similar vein, the author's goal to "refine a set of theoretical uses of psychoanalysis for feminists and other interested in the social production of groups" (4) seems undermined by her parallel claim that "black feminists are more likely to bypass than to debate psychoanalytic explanations" (8). If this is the case, one might wonder why Black women who are so involved in building reparative groups would reject psychoanalytic frameworks. Some Black women readers might see the treatment of healing and reparations in Healing Identities as violating the very spirit of Black feminist thought. Burack seems unaware of how the thesis of the damaged Black psyche renders her focus on healing suspicious. Healing...

Young looks at the place of black feminists in today's academy in Britain, and poses some questions for contemporary self-identified black and white feminists based in that country. There is a new confidence among some black, professional Britons but infiltration into the academy remains problematic for many. Black British feminists and writers are largely absent in so-called postcolonial literary canons developed in the Anglo-American institutions, and by and large black British feminists are only offered fragile support by white feminists. Although African-American feminism offers intellectual sustenance and networks, the situation in the United States is very different, particularly as, there, black feminism has had much more impact and recognition. Discussions of the intersections of race, class and gender are rare in Britain outside black feminism, and there has been much less attention than in the States to black women's writing. Perhaps some kind of 'provisional essentialism' is still needed, for it is difficult for black feminist academics ever to feel the question of race is optional. It can be argued that 'blackness' is used to describe women of very different origins, and can obscure differential histories, but 'blackness' is always a political concept, not a register of national belonging. Black women have transformed British culture, but white feminists have largely failed to understand their problems. Attention to the social history of black women in Britain, and particularly to the creative work of black women writers, filmmakers and other cultural workers, is the place at which a new analysis should begin.

Review: <i>Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times</i>, edited by Christina Baade and Kristin A. McGee

Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States

A Black Feminist Statement The Combahee River Collective We are a collective of black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974.1 During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we see black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face. We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) The genesis of contemporary black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) black feminist issues and practice. 1. The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism Before looking at the recent development of black feminism, we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our [End Page 271] membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Y. Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters. A black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973 black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us were active in those movements (civil rights, black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and antisexist, unlike those of black and white men. There is also undeniably a personal genesis for black feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual black women’s lives. Black feminists and many more black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and, most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that [End Page 272] we women use to struggle...

Through a hip hop feminist lens, how are we to interpret black girls’ and women’s self-identification in digital spaces that visibly resonate with new/remixed images? And more importantly, what happens when black female rap artists and their fan base disrupt, subvert or challenge dominant gender scripts in hip hop in order to navigate broader discourses on black female sexuality? Drawing on the work of Joan Morgan and hip hop feminist scholarship in general, this essay aims to offer a critical reading of ‘hot girl summer’. Inspired by Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s lyrics on ‘Cash Shit’, where she raps about ‘real hot girl shit’, the phrase has morphed into a larger-than-life persona not only for Megan’s rap superstar profile, but also for a number of black girls. According to Megan, a hot girl summer is ‘about women and men being unapologetically them[selves] […] having a good-ass time, hyping up their friends, doing [them]’. What does ‘hot girl summer’ tell us about significant changes in the ways that black women cultivate community in digital spaces, how they construct their identities within systems of controlling images and grapple with respectability politics? In order to address these questions with a critical lens, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in black feminism and hip hop feminism, this essay offers a theoretical approach to a digital hip hop feminist sensibility (DHHFS). Too little has been said about black women’s representation in digital spaces where they imagine alternative gender performance, disrupt hegemonic tropes and engage in participatory culture.

Review: <i>Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound</i>, by Daphne A. Brooks

Black women readers have innovated various literacies—oral, textual, visual, and digital—as a way to validate their lived experiences, bond with one another, and lobby for their personal and collective agency. During the 18th century, black women made use of both vernacular and print cultures as strategies of survival and emancipation. Throughout the 19th century, they used reading for racial uplift in institutions such as the black press, the black women’s club movement, and literary societies. Moreover, they documented these acts of reading in cultural artifacts such as scrapbooks, which gave them the ability to manipulate print culture in deeply personal and political ways. Throughout these endeavors, black women readers deployed various literacies—reading both “aright” as well as “rogue”—to assert their agency in the era of print. In the 20th century, black women’s reading became even more professionalized in the role of editor, a position that facilitated the circulation and promotion of black women’s writing; this effort became even more urgent toward the end of the century when black feminists formed consciousness-raising groups and established new academic disciplines that depended on the recovery, anthologizing, and reading of black women’s writing. At the same time, from the postwar era through the end of the century, black women readers emerged as a significant reading demographic, courted by publishers who recognized them as a profitable consumer base. Into the 21st century, black women readers have turned to online and digital spaces in which to continue the tradition of reading for liberation and unity. In this way, the act of reading has also provided for black women a way to negotiate their relationships to American culture, each other, as well as themselves.

This article is based on a study of Pentecostal Charismatic constructions of femininity in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg. I narrate my ‘native’ and (auto)ethnographic standing within the community I study and show how this stance accounts for my ethical considerations and for the building of relationships with my participants. Relying on ‘Blackwomen’ scholarship (Gqola, 2017), this article addresses the gaps and misconceptions in anthropological accounts of Black African Pentecostal women by writing as an embodied voice within the movement, rather than a mere object of research. This article then, heeds to Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s argument for ethnographies ‘that offer new points of reentry by questioning the symbolic world upon which “nativeness” is premised’ and ‘that aim explicitly at the destabilization and eventual destruction of the Savage slot’ (Trouillot, 2003, p. 22). I argue that Black and African feminist autoethnography is a research method that can destruct this Savage slot as it not only questions reductionist representations of what Black African women are. Black African feminist autoethnography also takes seriously the foregrounding and offering of Black women’s voices to transform the anthropological canon so that it reflects the richness and validity of Black feminist thought. In this way, I take a stand for the telling of African stories by African women in a responsibility for engagement and change, and to illuminate the meaning of township women’s everyday experiences as a legitimate source of knowledge.

The title ‘Seditious Spaces’ is derived from one aspect of Britain’s colonial legacy in Malaysia (formerly Malaya): the Sedition Act 1948. While colonial rule may seem like it was a long time ago, Malaysia has only been independent for sixty-one years, after 446 years of colonial rule. The things that we take for granted today, such as democracy and all the rights it implies, are some of the more ironic legacies of colonialism that some societies, such as Malaysia, have had to figure out after centuries of subjugation. While not suggesting that post-colonial regimes should not be held accountable for their actions, it is ironic to see a BBC commentator grilling the leader of a Commonwealth state about repressive laws and regulations inherited from the colonial era. (Even the term ‘Commonwealth’ is itself ironic, implying shared wealth, in reality it commonly meant a colonised country was contributing to the wealth of the metropolitan centre). This research sought to understand how the trajectory of urban development, which is shaped by the colonial legacy, has produced the contemporary geography of contention in Malaysia. Given that public space is shaped by the colonial legacy, how does it facilitate or hinder street protests as a function of democracy, which is also a vestige of colonialism? To do this, rather than going into a long discussion about notions of public sphere and public space, much of which originated from Western traditions, I used postcoloniality as a lens for the topic1. By taking the concepts as a given, the postcolonial gaze allowed me to contextualise particular Malaysian conditions. In this thesis I argued that the postcolonial narrative (democracy, modernisation, development) is ambivalent precisely because the colonial narrative itself is ambivalent; there was no real break between colonisation and the present condition. I examined three aspects in particular. Firstly, colonial architecture as a subversive ‘third space’, where independence amplified the subversive quality of colonial architecture because of the power vacuum left after the colonisers had left. Secondly, postcolonial ‘amnesia’, where certain aspects of history were conveniently forgotten or others selectively remembered in the production of space to build a hegemonic vision of society. Finally, I looked at postcolonial mimicry, where the post-colonial society imitated either the former colonial master or some other references that fit within its narrative. These notions were mapped onto public space which not only provided the backdrop for dissent but also shaped its form and practices. Protest provided a direct line for the interrogation of just how democratic postcolonial public space actually is. The mobilisations, negotiations, and potential conflicts that arise from the moment a street protest is announced reveal a lot about the politics of space as much as the event itself. Public space comprises material and discursive spaces and, at the time of writing, included social media which has become part of the infrastructure of protest. The empirical part of this research came from the Bersih 4 protest in Kuala Lumpur, which took place from 29-30 August 2015. To ground the somewhat abstract postcolonial discussion, methods (outlined below) were used to collect and analyse data. Firstly, to understand the logic behind the control and surveillance of public space I reviewed literature on how architecture and public space are produced and governed in Malaysia. Secondly, I observed protest in both digital and material public space, which means I harvested social-media data about the protest but also observed street protests in Kuala Lumpur. This informed me how protest produces space within which protesters could foster a collective identity, something that is necessary for the continuity of the protest. I then conducted a thematic analysis on a large number of tweets collected during the protest to understand how information about their places were communicated. Other protests that have taken place in Kuala Lumpur since 1998, when new media started playing a role, were also mapped; this was crucial for the understanding of the spatial patterns of the protests. By tracing the production of architecture in Malaysia we can see how the nation-building project was an ambivalent one, evidenced by how the state mapped their aspirations onto the built environment. Postcolonial amnesia is exhibited in how the Malay-Muslim identity is amplified in architecture while other identities were suppressed and only utilised when it seemed productive. Mimicry, on the other hand, can be seen in how certain architecture is created based on an imagined past, and how visions of modernity fluctuate between Occidental and Orientalist visual cues. Malaysian public space is not only a colonial legacy in terms of its material infrastructure and regulations, it also carries traces of colonial practice. Here, mimicry was manifested in how society imitated the erstwhile colonial masters in seeking to avoid the Other (due to the perception that public space is dangerous and uncomfortable, and showing that segregation had moved from one defined by ethnicity to one defined by class). The lack of a clear break between the colonial and the Neoliberal can also be seen in how public space is governed. Undesirable activity was always framed according to its potential for disrupting economic activity, indicating that public space was perceived as being useful only for production and consumption, not for the performance of citizenship. An urban-planning assessment of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya (the seat of the postcolonial government) was carried out to see which place could better support protest. Accessibility, land-use patterns, and urban form were all aspects of the city that were decided upon at the urban-planning level and throught to influence the probability of protest taking place. This indicates that a city can be designed to support or hinder the performance of democracy. I found that Kuala Lumpur, founded during the colonial era, was actually more supportive of protest activities than Putrajaya, a city purpose built by the newly independent democratic regime. Analysis based on data collected around Bersih 4 was organised into four themes. I first examined how protest produces space. I did this by tracing how the collective identity, already formed by previous Bersih protests, was cultivated on social media in order to mobilise protesters to take to the streets. The act of converging in the same space and performing these spatial choreographies (marching, knowledge-sharing, occupation) further enhanced the collective identity. Images and descriptions of what took place on the streets then travelled through social media which in turn propelled events in the public space. While protest is shaped by the materiality of the urban environment, protest also produces space. Secondly, a reading of the space revealed the interplay between symbolic places and the spaces of everyday life. Protests are shaped by the existing materiality of space, which the authorities could further control by putting up extra measures. Due to this, Bersih 4 ended up occupying the intersection between symbolic and institutional places and spaces of everyday life. The polite restraint shown by Bersih 4 (in not entering Dataran Merdeka – which was barred to them) served to amplify the distance between the state and the people, further magnified by the fact that the protest coincided with Independence Day (31 August). The junction that Bersih occupied was teeming with people throughout the occupation but Dataran Merdeka was left empty and silent on the eve of the Independence Day commemoration. On the other hand, a thematic analysis of tweets revealed that most of those that mentioned geographical places were inflammatory in nature, in the sense that they were urging people to join the protest. Therefore, while the state could construct the symbolism of the space, it does not mean that the space is viewed in a similar way by the people, which means, in turn, that it can be rewritten. This is one way in which the subversiveness of colonial architecture was manifested. Thirdly, I found that the control of digital and material space was symmetrical. This can be seen in three ways: One, how regulations of both spaces can be used to suppress dissent; Two, how access to space can be blocked, either by blocking certain websites or platforms, or by limiting the access to the material public space; and Three, bottom‑up disruptions – while the Red Shirts disrupted Bersih’s performativity in the material public space, cybertroopers were disrupting protest exchanges on Twitter. Finally, the digital and spatial divide between Bersih and its opponents. The digital divide was not defined by degrees of expertise, but, rather, it revealed a differing logic of operation based on norms shaped by what was available to these different parties. Geographically, it revealed the difference between experience of organising protests for a collective cause versus a lack of experience (compounded by racist motivations). What this indicated was that the cleavage does not only run along communal lines, is also political. The research showed how the production of the Malaysian built environment is ambivalent, as is evidenced by the traces of amnesia and mimicry found in the narrative, where identities are grafted onto projections of modernity. Putrajaya shows that there is a disconnect between what the regime claims itself to be, a democracy, and the city it builds. What Putrajaya seems to demonstrate (ironically, as the seat of a democratic government) is how urban planning can be used to design a city so that it does not support the performance of democracy. It is also ironic how Kuala Lumpur, a city founded during the colonial period, is now more accommodating to street protest, cem

Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 201 Ileana Nachescu Censoring Anglogynophobia: Reconsidering the Disappearance of the National Alliance of Black Feminists Black women’s activism in the 1970s has often been located in the fissures between the civil rights movement, women’s liberation movement , and Black nationalism—a form of “interstitial feminism,” in the words of Kimberly Springer.1 Providing crucial interventions to disrupt male supremacy and sexism within Black organizations as well as racism and homophobia within feminist organizations, Black feminist politics modeled a “vanguard center” whose liberation signaled the liberation of all.2 The Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement” (1977), which has become a classic in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies curricula, encapsulates the power of this transformative image. The Combahee River Collective was not the only Black feminist group active in the second half of the 1970s, of course. The Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), founded in 1969, had a vibrant presence on both the East Coast and the West Coast throughout this decade. The National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), active between 1973 and 1975, mobilized Black women around the country and gave the impetus for the formation of several local chapters. After NBFO ended, the 1. Kimberly Springer, “The Interstitial Politics of Black Feminist Organizations ,” Meridians 1, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 156. 2. Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 91. 202 Ileana Nachescu National Alliance of Black Feminists (NABF) became perhaps the bestknown Black women’s organization at the time due to appearances on national television, articles and essays published in multiple Black and feminist venues, and its attempt to build a national organization. In October 1977, NABF’s national conference, “A Meeting of the Minds,” attracted more than two hundred African American women to Chicago for two days in order to discuss their experiences, listen to speakers, and develop an agenda to address the most pressing issues of the day. To this day, the long list of resolutions passed at this conference constitutes the most comprehensive set of political, economic, and cultural demands collectively devised by African American women. Yet, more than four decades later, NABF has disappeared from public consciousness, remembered only by a small group of feminist historians. The erasure of NABF from women’s history and Black history is a puzzle—in part because the organization excelled at the kinds of activities that leave visible traces. In an interview with Kimberly Springer, Combahee River Collective founder Barbara Smith noted that “People who write get far more visibility than those who don’t.”3 But NABF Executive Director Brenda Eichelberger published many essays in regional and national periodicals documenting diverse initiatives by Black feminists in the 1970s. Furthermore, unlike many feminist organizations that did not record their operations or whose records have been lost, NABF intentionally gathered and preserved rich archival materials.4 Using materials from the National Alliance of Black Feminists archives, I suggest that NABF defies many received views about Black feminist activism, and this defiance makes attention to NABF all the more vital to the history of US feminism. By examining NABF’s original theorization of “Anglogynophobia,” Black women’s distrust of and animosity toward white women, I advance a much darker explanation for the 3. Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 75. 4. For this article, I have conducted research at the following archival sites: Brenda Eichelberger / National Alliance of Black Feminists Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library; Brenda Eichelberger / National Alliance of Black Feminists Papers, 1974–1997, Chicago History Museum Research Center; and National Black Feminist Organization collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago. Ileana Nachescu 203 disappearance of NABF from feminist histories—one linked to the politics of erasure. There is clear evidence that NABF’s efforts to reveal Black women’s perceptions of persistent racism and white supremacy within the feminist movement was censored, as the series of articles titled “Anglogynophobia!” was canceled prior to completion by...

Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 201 Ileana Nachescu Censoring Anglogynophobia: Reconsidering the Disappearance of the National Alliance of Black Feminists Black women’s activism in the 1970s has often been located in the fissures between the civil rights movement, women’s liberation movement , and Black nationalism—a form of “interstitial feminism,” in the words of Kimberly Springer.1 Providing crucial interventions to disrupt male supremacy and sexism within Black organizations as well as racism and homophobia within feminist organizations, Black feminist politics modeled a “vanguard center” whose liberation signaled the liberation of all.2 The Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement” (1977), which has become a classic in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies curricula, encapsulates the power of this transformative image. The Combahee River Collective was not the only Black feminist group active in the second half of the 1970s, of course. The Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), founded in 1969, had a vibrant presence on both the East Coast and the West Coast throughout this decade. The National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), active between 1973 and 1975, mobilized Black women around the country and gave the impetus for the formation of several local chapters. After NBFO ended, the 1. Kimberly Springer, “The Interstitial Politics of Black Feminist Organizations ,” Meridians 1, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 156. 2. Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 91. 202 Ileana Nachescu National Alliance of Black Feminists (NABF) became perhaps the bestknown Black women’s organization at the time due to appearances on national television, articles and essays published in multiple Black and feminist venues, and its attempt to build a national organization. In October 1977, NABF’s national conference, “A Meeting of the Minds,” attracted more than two hundred African American women to Chicago for two days in order to discuss their experiences, listen to speakers, and develop an agenda to address the most pressing issues of the day. To this day, the long list of resolutions passed at this conference constitutes the most comprehensive set of political, economic, and cultural demands collectively devised by African American women. Yet, more than four decades later, NABF has disappeared from public consciousness, remembered only by a small group of feminist historians. The erasure of NABF from women’s history and Black history is a puzzle—in part because the organization excelled at the kinds of activities that leave visible traces. In an interview with Kimberly Springer, Combahee River Collective founder Barbara Smith noted that “People who write get far more visibility than those who don’t.”3 But NABF Executive Director Brenda Eichelberger published many essays in regional and national periodicals documenting diverse initiatives by Black feminists in the 1970s. Furthermore, unlike many feminist organizations that did not record their operations or whose records have been lost, NABF intentionally gathered and preserved rich archival materials.4 Using materials from the National Alliance of Black Feminists archives, I suggest that NABF defies many received views about Black feminist activism, and this defiance makes attention to NABF all the more vital to the history of US feminism. By examining NABF’s original theorization of “Anglogynophobia,” Black women’s distrust of and animosity toward white women, I advance a much darker explanation for the 3. Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 75. 4. For this article, I have conducted research at the following archival sites: Brenda Eichelberger / National Alliance of Black Feminists Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library; Brenda Eichelberger / National Alliance of Black Feminists Papers, 1974–1997, Chicago History Museum Research Center; and National Black Feminist Organization collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago. Ileana Nachescu 203 disappearance of NABF from feminist histories—one linked to the politics of erasure. There is clear evidence that NABF’s efforts to reveal Black women’s perceptions of persistent racism and white supremacy within the feminist movement was censored, as the series of articles titled “Anglogynophobia!” was canceled prior to completion by...

This paper advances a decolonial and Black feminist intervention into higher education research by positioning emotive storytelling, creative methodologies, and Black joy as transformative tools for epistemic resistance and institutional critique. Centring the voices of Black women in academic and professional roles across the UK and Canada, the study draws on Decolonial Theory, Black Feminist Thought, and Critical Race Theory to examine how contributors navigate systemic exclusion, racialised emotional labour, and the limitations of performative diversity. Using a cross-contextual, contributor-led approach—including storytelling conversations, reflective journals, poetry, and visual artefacts—this research establishes emotive and creative forms of expression as legitimate and vital modes of knowledge production. Black joy is conceptualised not as an affective state, but as a radical methodological and political framework: enacted through humour, ritual, and care, it becomes a strategy of survival, refusal, and reimagining. Storytelling functions as both method and praxis, offering contributors space to articulate lived realities and assert epistemic agency. Visual artefacts—such as collages, metaphorical drawings, and illustrated poetry—are analysed as counter-narratives that disrupt erasure and reframe Black women’s presence within academic institutions. While UK contributors contend with the afterlives of empire and class-based exclusion, Canadian contributors confront the contradictions of multiculturalism and anti-Indigenous racism. Across both contexts, the study exposes how symbolic inclusion masks structural harm. This study contributes to current debates on decolonising research by demonstrating the power of emotionally grounded, arts-based methodologies to surface hidden forms of knowledge and resistance. It calls for institutions to move beyond rhetorical equity by honouring Black women’s intellectual labour, embedding joy as method, and supporting creative, relational approaches to transformation in higher education.