For the proposal of my final paper for one of my classes, I decided I wanted to write about Black women’s affect, embodiment, and the social logics that support misogynoir along those lines. Upon submitting my proposal to my professor, he asked, “Why just Black women’s affect?” I’ve been reflecting on this question since then, because of all of the ways that Black women are oppressed (reproductive injustice, spiritual abuse, etc.). Given that there are so many other topics and forms of harm that I can discuss, why Black women’s affect?
Muse by artbyastral. Used with artist’s permission.
The following is a personal reflection on why I plan to study Black women’s embodiment. Situated as a Black woman in the U.S., I share this informal reflection, not to argue why Black women’s affect is important. Rather, I’d like for other marginalized philosophers, especially Black women, to know that topics pertaining to our personal lives can be evaluated in a philosophical manner and are valuable in philosophical spaces. This reflection is a portrayal of the ways that I take the feminist idea of the personal as political and convert it to the personal as also philosophical. In this way, we can begin to open the field beyond hegemonic Euromodern views and move toward more inclusive and pluralistic thought. As I write this reflection, I also lay out many of the starting points for my own theorizing to ground future work.
So, when thinking about Black women’s affect, Patricia Hill Collins comes to mind. One of my major points of departure is the work she’s done on controlling images or the social understandings of Black women that depict them in stereotyped ways. There’s the angry Black woman or the Sapphire, the docile and restrained woman or the Mammy, the hyper-sexual seductress or the Jezebel, the strong Black woman, and so much more. Of course, there are many things that draw controlling images together, but the focus on Black women’s affect is most salient to me. Our emotions, our sexualities, even our fatigue are packaged into these controlling images. As such, our affect becomes mystified, overdetermined, and exaggerated to the end of distorting the meanings around these experiences.
This happens on a social level, insofar as critics deem Black women’s affective responses to oppression “irrational” and “overblown.” For example, when Black women are angry at their oppression, respondents often question our ability to perceive said oppression. Black women tend to have a similar response in healthcare in terms of our understanding of pain. When we report extreme amounts of pain, healthcare professionals often fail to provide the corresponding care protocols. Black women’s ability to perceive pain has a long history with the medical field, as many physicians have held (and still hold today) that Black women sense less pain than other women. Unfortunately, this has meant complications in so many areas of health, especially increased rates of Black maternal mortality and other harms.
At the same time, Black women’s affect becomes deviant with overdetermined meaning. Sometimes, Black girls and women are just perceived as perversely sexual without action. Other times, Black women’s expressions of sexuality are socially understood as horrendously indecent. When Black women in popular culture make art that explores sex, we are often met with overwhelming disapproval. This does not go to say that all of Black women’s art about sex is free of oppressive notions, but their art seems to provoke social responses that correspond with many of the aforementioned hyper-sexualized controlling images.
The hegemonic attempt to evacuate meaning from Black women’s affect also makes it difficult for many Black women to make sense of their own lives and experiences. In societies that distort our perceptions so deeply, it becomes difficult for Black women to develop accurate self-perception that isn’t interfered with by these controlling images. Here, the issue of controlling images becomes an epistemic and hermeneutical one. Of course, I could quote literature on the importance of having the knowledge-generating or interpretive resources that one needs to make sense of their experiences. However, I will save that for future formal papers I write. In terms of this blog post, I hope that personal experience suffices.
Many Black women are always trying to reason with our self-understandings, these controlling images, and the world. I have seen Black women reject their anger for the sake of not falling into certain stereotypes. I have also seen Black women refuse to be forthcoming with a crush because they fear the way that the person of their affection might view them as more aggressive or may solicit them for sex too soon. My peers have been in many situations where they have been asked to take on more work than others because they are perceived as more capable of getting things done. I have also been in these situations and ones like them.
So, when I choose to write about Black women’s affect, I write to help others get a few steps closer to understanding Black women. There is so much going on for us as we try to make sense of a world that ensures our marginalization. I also long to help Black women gain a better self-understanding. Where society won’t give us the resources to make sense of our experiences, I want to help create that language so that we can better make sense of our struggles to heal from and articulate our joys to share. Finally, I write for myself. The little Black girl that I once was. The Black girl whose hardworking nature was used as an opportunity to provide extra labor for others’ causes; whose anger was relegated to “trippin’”; who was ridiculed for having crushes. I choose Black women’s affect to give these younger iterations of myself the meaning-making resources of which I was deprived.
Ananda Griffin
Ananda Griffin is a Philosophy Ph.D. student at the University of Connecticut. She received her B.A. in Philosophy, Summa Cum Laude, as an Honors Program member, UNCF/Mellon-Mays Fellow, and Social Justice Fellow. In philosophy, Ananda’s focuses are Black Feminism, epistemology, moral psychology, affect theory, and embodiment. Continuing the work of other Feminists of Color before her, Ananda bridges the gap between philosophical conceptions of knowledge and feeling in her writing.
