Where Black Feminist Thought and Trans* Feminism Meet: A Conversation

Abstract

This conversation meditates on the ways in which Black Feminism and Trans Feminism relate to one another, how they speak to and supplement one another, and how they are in fact constitutive. Considering that Black feminism, historically, has attempted to interrogate the capaciousness of the very term “woman” and to gender, if you will, an androcentric “Blackness,” one might say, as Che Gossett has said, that Black feminism is “always already trans.” The present conversation, taking place via e-mail from October of 2015 to October of 2017, is a dialogue conducted by Black feminist scholars that deeply engages prevailing notions of Blackness and transness, and radicalizes how these are understood with respect to feminism. In short, it is a conversation in Black, in trans, in feminism, and offers different conceptions of how Black and trans and feminism work with and through one another.