The Black Diaspora

Author(s): jennie ruby

Source: Off Our Backs, Vol. 18, No. 8 (aug-sept 88), p. 10
Published by: off our backs, inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25796493
Accessed: 13-07-2016 10:41 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

off our backs, inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Off Our Backs

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.110 on Wed, 13 Jul 2016 10:41:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

nwsa

The Black Diaspora

Michelle Parkerson, Audre

Lorde, and Cheryl Clarke spoke in a

session moderated by Kim Hines

called "The Heritage Series:

African-American Women and the

Black Diaspora." Their talks shared

the theme of the importance of

accepting a diversity of self

expression among Black women in

order to counter definitions and

stereotypes imposed from the out

side.

behind the camera

Michelle Parkerson's talk, "Did

You Say the Mirror Talks?" is
largely published in Hurricane
Alice. Literature by black women
writers, said Parkerson, takes the
time to examine the thoughts and

experiences, feelings, deeds, and

worth of Black women. It humanizes

and broadens the concept of art,

providing literature and the cinema

with weapons for change.

Hollywood films overlook the

challenges to racism and sexism

present in Black women's work.

Since the 1970s, the work of Black

women writers has been exploited in

films. Several contemporary Black

women writers, including Toni Mor

rison and Alice Walker, have screen

plays currently in the process of
being made into films. Neverthe
less, the danger of exploitation
and a dilution of their message is

still present. In the production

of Alice Walker's "The Color Pur
ple," Parkerson commented, the

white male executives still managed

to take out some of the anger and
pain expressed in the book.
Black women film makers are

countering this by "redefining the

telling of our stories." Parkerson

spoke of Monica Freeman, who did

documentaries in the early 1970s,

and Cathleen Collins. She also

spoke of the barriers Black women

film-makers encounter: money is a

constant one, given that a documen

tary costs $2,000 per minute to
produce. Racism in the feminist
film community and homophobia and

sexism among Black independent

film-makers are further barriers.

Nevertheless, Parkerson cheers the

different from the North American

experience, she said. When reading

The study of women in philos

ophy is at that exciting stage

African women's literature you must

where women philosophers throughout

as homogenous." "Issues like this"

beginning to examine the ways in

which male paradigms for the study
of philosophy made these women

realize that they look at things

differently than you do. "Exper
ience and look at the differences,"
she said, "don't think of ourselves

she warned, "if not explored may

detonate at the point when we try

to work together."
She called on the audience to
support Black women's presses, such
as Kitchen Table Press, that enable

connections between Black women.

The first woman-owned press in
South Africa was run by a Black
woman in Soweto, she commented.

Lorde related the stories of

German women of the diaspora she

met while teaching Black American
women's literature in Germany in

1984. These women expressed the

"pain of a difference that had no

name": they had never heard the

expression "Afro-German." They

grew up being called "war babies,"

even though their heritage dated
back to the 1800s and had nothing
to do with World War II. Lorde
noted that a growing force for
international change are Afro-Euro
peans and Afro-Asians, as black
people find identities of strength
and unity within these countries.

sexual expression

Cheryl Clarke spoke on the

representation of sex in black wo
men's poetry. Black women have
felt they need to prove their
sexual respectability to overcome
the stereotypical image of the
black woman as either wet nurse or

prostitute. Black women poets have

thus avoided mention of overt sexu

ality until the 1960s. Then as

these poets began to discover

sexuality, it was predominantly
heterosexual.
Poets could take a lesson from
blues singers, Clarke said, who
even in the 1940s were able to

express lesbian sexuality. She

quoted a Ma Rainey song "Prove it

on Me":
"I went out last night with a
crowd of my friends
They must have been women

"new presence of Black, women behind

history are being discovered, and

students of philosophy are just

invisible. In the session entitled

"Historical and Contemporary Per

spectives on Women in Philosophy,"

Mary Ellen Waithe, of the Univer

sity of Minnesota, Duluth, spoke on
the development of the Project on
the History of Women in Philosophy.

The project has discovered

women philosophers throughout his

tory, dating back to the time of

Pythagoras. Some Greek women

philosophers were Phyntys of Spar

ta, c. 400 B.C.; Perictione, c. 350

B.C., and Perictione II, c. 300

B.C. In the Middle Ages, there

were Beatrijs of Nazareth, c. 1200;
Mechtild of Aackborn, c. 1240; and
Christine of Pisan.
In the 1500s women formed

salons to discuss philosphy, and

Teresa of Avila and Marie le Jars
de Gournay were of this era. Al

men"

and
"I looked and to my surprise
The gal I was with was gone

Where she went, I don't know

I mean to follow her everywhere she

go"

The repression of black wo

men's sexuality is a product both
of the more general repression of
women and of forces specific to the

though most women philosophers did

the same kinds of work male philos

ophers were doing, Margaret Caven

dish, 1617-1673, saw feminist is

sues in metaphysics and epistemol

ogy and wrote on how ways of know

ing related to gender.

The 1700s saw Mary Wollstone

craft and Laura Bassi, an Aristo

telian philosopher. In the 1800s
philosophers Harriet Martineau and
Harriet Taylor Mill struggled
against slavery. Antoinette Brown
Blackwell wrote on women's rights

in the late 1800s and lived to vote

for president for the first time at

age 93.

The Project started with a

notice published in a journal, and
within a short time there were 40
people working on the establishment

of a history of women in philos

ophy. The end result is a four

volume series on women in philos

ophy containing extensive bibilog-r

raphies. A number of the scholars

involved in the project have gone
on to write books on individual
philosophers or topics that were
discovered.

-how Mechtild disappeared

Joan Gibson, of York Univer
sity, is one such scholar, who has

studied Mechtild of Madgeburg as a

13th century philosopher. Mech

tild's major work, The Flaming

Light of the Godhea~cf7~had been

studiecFas religion and as litera

ture, but not as philosophy.

A large part of Gibson's study
was to explain this omission. The

clericalization of religion in the

Middle Ages, along with the dif

ferentiation and institutionaliza

tion of disciplines, combined to

place her, as a layperson, outside
of recognized avenues of study.

Later, when the Aristotelian corpus

was recovered in the 12th and 13th
centuries and philosophy became a
secular science, Mechtild's work
was too mystical to be considered.
Thus the traditional study of

philosophy has overlooked women

philosophers. There is not yet the

critical mass in the study of women

in the history of philosophy to

allow the kind of feminist critique
that has taken place in fields such

as literature. But given the reve

lations of feminist scholars in

this field, it is surely on its

way.

.Simone de Beavoir - revisited.

Margaret Simons, of Southern

Illinois University, presented a

paper called "Simone de Beauvoir's

Moral Philosophy: A Woman's Voice."

Although some have called de Beau

voir "masculinist," Simons sees in

her work a woman's moral voice.

Simons pointed out ways in w.iich de

cause I don't 1 ike no

the camera."

literature of the diaspora

Women in Philosophy

Beauvoir's existentialism differs

from that of Sartre. Where Sartre
is an absurdist, she posits the
concept of ambiguity. For de Beau
voir, your truth is grounded in
your era; mortality gives us Mit
sein, a generational cohort. Thus
both individual experience and cul
tural definition are important.

The elements of a woman's moral

voice are that it does not exag

gerate separateness, truth is seen
as contextual, not absolute, and it

relies on a character-Dound, rather

than rule-bound ethics.
Some problems with seeing de

Beauvoir's voice as a woman's moral

voice are her alienation from

motherhood and the fact that she

ends The Second Sex not with sis

terhood, but with the individual.
Nevertheless, it is time, says
Simons, for a re-reading of de
Beauvoir that sees her not as a

man, but as a woman.

.care-based ethics: feminine ethics?

Black community. Women have been

Audre Lorde spoke on "Black

Women's Literary Tradition and the

Black Diaspora." Lorde emphasized

that sharing is an important part

of forming a Black women's literary

tradition. Black women must "think

of ourselves as members of a world

wide community," beyond just North

America. The experiences of black

women around the world must be

respected as both similar to and

taught to reject our erotic urge.

The concept of non-penile sex is
especially threatening and danger
ous to talk about.
Clarke found four basic types
of expression of sexuality in Black
women's poetry: the expression of a
wish for sex, or the lack of or
longing for sex; hyperbolic expres
sion; the expression of sexual
loneliness or unrequited or rejec
ted desire; and graphic and ex

plicit expression. Clarke noted

that sexually explicit language

makes us nervous because it has so

often been used by men to objectify

women. Fatalism and circumspection
characterize much of Black women's
writing about sex. "We have to
work against silence," Clarke con
cluded, and not gloss over and thus
keep inviable Black women's

sexuality. by jennie ruby

Suzanne Steinbeigle, of the

Does the apparent valorization

of female characteristics affirm
the stereotype? A look at the

University of Minnesota, Duluth,

presented her paper coauthored with
Eve Browning Cole entitled "Fem

character Mrs. Ramsay in To the

care is based on emotional inclina

tions, particularity, and a per^
sonalized context, it has been
criticized as being tied to per

and her caring masks unhappiness

inist Ethics of Care: Nurturing the

Stereotypes?" Since an ethics of

nicious stereotypes of women.

These authors, however, find it a

refreshing departure from the ab
stractness of traditional ethics.
Care-based ethics says that a
morally good person will consider
the particularity of a situation,
asking for details about the victim
and the perpetrator before making

an ethical decision. The more

abstract "ethics of the father" ask
instead what principle is involved.

page 10/august/september 1988/off our back?

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.110 on Wed, 13 Jul 2016 10:41:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Lighthouse is enlightening. She

seems to be female care and nur
turing embodied, but a closer
examination reveals that her ener
gies are directed primarily at men,
and is a means of control.
A true care-based ethics must
include the caring self among those
to be cared for. The stereotypical
feminine caring based on self
depreciation is not what it is
about. These writers believe that
a care-based ethics is not an af
firmation of stereotypes, but an
ethics based on an ability to care
for others that is grounded in an
individual's sense of inner peace.
by jennie ruby