Tonisha Spratte Blog 8

Blog 8 A Look Back/Black Feminism

Anderson describes a nation as something that is quite natural and unchosen.  Stating in chapter 8 “As we have seen earlier, in everything ‘natural’ there is always something unchosen.  In this way, nation-ness is assimilated to skin-colour, gender, parentage and birth-era – all those things one can not help.”  He also says “Even in the case of colonized peoples, who have every reason to feel hatred for their imperialist rulers, it is astonishing how insignificant the element of hatred is in these expressions of national feeling.”  In my very first blog, I wrote about what ties one to a nation.  First I tried to describe what a nation is.  I looked online at Merriam-Webster and had to dig a little until I found what I thought was a good understanding of the word.  I then went on to describe what ties one to a nation.  We had just seen the film/documentary Passing Through, in which an adopted Korean American was basically searching for his roots, trying to figure out where he belonged.  I argued that he felt the strongest connection to the place where he cultivated those memories of his childhood and growing up and where his family was.  Although he went to Korea, he had no real feelings of connectedness and even had to extend his sixth month stay in order to try and create or find these feelings.  In the end, despite the fact that he did finally get in touch with his biological family, he still ended up having the strongest ties with the people and to the place he was raised.  This led me to think about my own community.  What community do I belong to and how can I try to bring my classroom community closer to this other community I belong to? 

So, what community do I belong to?  Well, there’s the William and Mary community, which is one that I am quite proud of!  There’s the Virginia community or Suffolk community.  Maybe more generally, I should be grouped with blacks, or women, or, better yet, the community of black women!  I’d have to say that is a community I definitely identify with.   This community is one that is built less on nation-ness and more on race and sex.  We have talked about feminism and black feminism and watched a film or two which address it either directly or indirectly.  The most direct pieces were found in the Colored Museum, in the scene with the wigs, and the woman with the egg.  These scenes addressed the image, her hair, and the value, her offspring, of the black woman.  We also watched La Noire de, which was about a young Senegalese woman who went to work for a white woman in France.  This one was a display of the treatment of the black woman.  Diouana’s boss treated her as if she was a slave, manipulated, and then degraded her in order to get what she wanted from her.  The latter sentence is basically a summary of colonialism, but I digress.  I believe that screening these films was a great way for the classroom community to become better acquainted with black feminism, even those of us who are in this community (of black women) can benefit from the discussion of the topics displayed in these films in class. 

Inspired by documentary, Passing Through, I started blogging about what ties someone to a specific place.  It all boiled down to the relationships and memories a person has in a specific place which will lead the person to call the place ‘home’ or feel connected to it.  This relates to what Anderson talks about in chapter 8, these are the things one cannot choose which influences one to have specific feelings about a certain place.  Nathan could not choose the place he grew up in or the people he grew up with and this relates to nation-ness because they are all unchosen.  This led me to think about the community I most relate to, which is that of black women, and even though it is not based on geography, I feel that it is just as real or significant a community as any other.  Black feminism is an area that has been created in order to explain and rectify the mistreatment of black women and I think educating the community of this subject will be one of the best ways of increasing the pool of knowledge shared in the classroom.  But there is something that perplexes me; why is there a difference between feminism and black feminism?  What is the goal of feminism and since its been around for quite some time, why aren’t its goals reached?  Why hasn’t feminism been more successful in creating the desired environment?  Chakraborty says it’s because the feminists can’t get along enough to unite for the common goal; “Because the notion of subject formation is crucial to the feminist academy, a host of theoretical, identitarian, and seemingly generational differences have come to interrupt feminisms timely arrival in a post-patriarchal future.”  But one could argue that even with all the fractions within feminism, since they have the same goal it should be able to be accomplished.  Is there more to feminism’s slow ability to change or is it merely lack of unity within the movement itself?  Do those in power, the men, even listen, or could it disrupt hegemony?  Or is it just that the forerunners in this movement have not been as progressive as they should have been?  Or have they been too progressive that they have scared off needed supporters?