Peace, Love,Unity, Respect,
Supersonic d
Productive Anger in the Theories of Materialist Feminism and Black Feminism
Possesed by ‘the Spirit of Independence’ I Awaken, I Self-Define, and I Innovate
I do not want to pretend that I’m a happy Feminist because I am not writing to entertain. As a Black Feminist pioneer, Maria Stewart astutely assured us in 1891,
“we [Women of Color] have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing…possess the spirit of independence…you can but die if you make the attempt; and we shall certainly die if you do not.”[1]
This process of writing or “possessing the spirit” is significantly powered by what can best be described as productive anger. Anger is one of the most unsettling emotions that stirs up from the depths of our female psyches a reality check about the oppression that comes with being labelled a woman. Anger can be expressed in two distinct ways: productive/positively or destructive/negatively. [2] This paper will only examine the role of productive anger within the theories of Materialist Feminism and Black Feminism. Anger transformed into a productive expression has awakened us Feminists to create a new self-definition, confront the source of our oppression, and forge a new direction for the future of gender politics. Without productive anger there can be no Feminist Revolution. Without productive anger there is no human essence to Feminist Theory. Anger gives us a necessary push out of sedation and passification. I am Possessed by the Spirit of Independence, I awaken, I self-define and I innovate. Analyzing the place and role of productive anger in Materialist Feminist Theory, according to Radical Feminist Mary Daly and Materialist Feminists Monique Wittig, plus Black Feminist Theory as penned by Patricia Hill Collins, can shed light on how these processes of awakening, self-defining and innovation occurs. Anger enables me to speak out against women’s oppression which has effectively silenced women on every part of the planet and has almost taken my voice, until today.
Productive Anger Leads to Awakening
Feminists become angry when they become aware of the exploitation, degredation, and general disrespect women endure on a daily basis simply because of their gender or sexual identity. Materialist Feminist, Christine Delphy explains that anger is the emergency response of a woman’s unconsciousness, flashing an alert to her consciousness to awaken her into rebellion. “The only basis for this consciousness is our revolt; and the only foundation for this revolt is our anger.”[3] This trigger function of anger to shake us out of our deepest depression/paralysis is especially important to other Feminist/Womanist/Gynocentric authors like Radical Feminist Theorist, Mary Daly and Black Feminist Theorist, Patricia Hill Collins.
Mary Daly names the four strategies of the fathers as erasure, reversal, false polarization, and divide and conquer.[4] Awakening requires an abrupt shattering of illusions about the self and the dominant groups in society. It requires breaking out of these four strategies.“We transmute the base metals of man-made myths by becoming unmute, calling forth from our selves and each other the courage to name the unnameable.”[5] Productive anger opens up the possibility to discuss something previously ‘unnameable,’ forcing us to confront and overcome our difficulties, anxieties, and fears. Based on experiences with identity erasure, reversal, false polarization, and divide and conqueur, women have been devalued and internalized this degredation. Anger at this leads to the awakening of the mind, body, and Feminist spirit of independence. Silence and docility means to become complicit in one’s own erasure.
Anger from the standpoint of Black Feminist Theory is part of the conscious raising process about the simultanous oppression of racism and anti-womanism. Patricia Hill Collins agrees productive anger is what sparks awareness, self-definition, and revolutionary action. Collins praises the character of ‘Peaches’ from Nina Simone’s blue’s song “Four Women.” She [Peaches] “is an especially powerful figure, because Peaches is angry. ‘I’m awfully bitter these days,’ Peaches cries out, ‘because my parents were slaves.”[6] Collins hears the expression of pain in Simone’s blues as a transformation of consciousness towards self-definition and the expression of her self definition as a form of rebellion. The expression of productive anger is not to be confused with wallowing in self-pity; it is an affirmation of one’s capacity to feel human in the most dehumanizing of conditions. The fact that women feel anger at being politically, socially, and economically objectified is an affirmation of our humanity; the full humanity men of all social categories have routinely denied to women. Picture the social order in the shape of a hierarchy where White skin is awarded a higher “humanity” than Black skin, and masculinity is preferred to femininity. Productive anger is how awareness of one’s own positionality on the hierarchy is made known to many courageously outspoken Black women.
Productive Anger Empowers Self-Definition
Angry women find the need to re-define themselves, on their own terms. The renown Materialist Feminist, Monique Wittig elucidates the precarious condition of women when her fictional female warriors express cognizance of their oppression in Les Guerilleres. “The women say, unhappy one, men have expelled you from the world of symbols and yet they have given you names, they have called you slave, you unhappy slave.”[7]The systematic devaluation of women’s knowledge and humanity is no accident but man-made, and enforced through a “matrix of domination” that parades itself as ‘natural.’ However, women’s subordination is not fixed in nature, but artificially constructed by men to suit their best interests as slavemasters. In One is Not Born a Woman, Wittig clarifies the complex relationship between self-identity and anger expressed through rebellion.
“For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can be a subject (as opposed to an object of oppression), that one can become someone in spite of oppression, that one has an identity. There is no possible fight without an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since although I fight with others, first I fight for myself.”
Wittig exposes the rationale that to fight is to defend the self, one must first accept that she is human and is being dehumanized. The question why arises. Why are you not allowed to be free from the attacks of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and xenophobia? Followed by the realization that one is relegated onto a social, political, and economic hierarchy based on a given identity; an identity with no basis in nature but it certainly is a real part of most woman’s lived experiences. The power to name the self therefore comes from realizing that she has been misnamed and will ‘fight’ to change this. We cannot change our identities; we can only change how we feel about them and how we feel about others. Productive anger makes us aware that we are to define ourselves as separately than how we are defined by the phallocracy.
Productive Anger powers the process of self-definition. Collins quotes Nancy White to describe the status of Black women within the ruling establishment. “My mother used to say that Black women is the White man’s mule and the White women is his dog…but he ain’t gon’ treat neither one of us like he’s dealing with a person.”[8] The discrimation against Black women based on race and gender make for a more nuanced definition of the self. Nancy White’s mother in teaching her this lesson is preparing her to be aware of the suffering that comes with being Black and a woman in a society that hypervalues Whiteness and masculinity by degrading everything else. Add heterosexual priviledge to the list of politically constructed categories to examine and another dimension of systematic oppression is revealed. The strength and courage to self-define is made known to the self. Collins draws from the wisdom of the talented Aretha Franklin’s song, Respect. “All I’m asking is for a little Respect when you come home.”[9] The creative direction Franklin takes in demanding to be treated as she sees fit is a result of anger’s potential to be transformed for the Feminist liberation fight. The responsibility to self-define yields many possibilities to innovate.
Productive Anger Motivates Innovation
On the journey to become fully free of patriarchal restraints, both Black and Materialist Feminists have recognized the value of productive anger in shaping their ability to make contributions to the women’s liberation movement. One of the most fundamental polarizations between human beings, according to Mary Daly, is through the socio-political constructions of sex and gender. Women are the routine victims of patriarchal violence, control and exploitation from the hands of individual men to the bureaucratic arms of phallocratic states. Toppling the patriarchal state would require the simultaenously dethrowning of the God/father social order and recreating a new, Feminist order in its place. The innovation is inspired by having found strength in the power to self-define and love the self as well as other women. Previous experiences with oppression make for a compassionate innovative process founded on dialogues, not monologues . Daly encourages unity/love between Feminists or “Hags”/ “Crones” as the ultimate act of rebellion to undermine the phallocracy.
“As this Sparking communication occurs, Hags do not haggle over ‘equality,’ for we know there is no equality among unique Selves…expect and encourage each other to become sister pyrotechnists building the fire that is fueled by Fury, the fire that warms and lights the place…where we can spin and weave the tapestries of Crone-centered creation.” (My emphasis)[10]
The “Fury” that fuels the fire is what I have termed productive anger; the energy that pushes outward the spirit of independence breathes life into Materialist Feminist Theory. The Fury is what fuels the fire of revolt and the ecstasy of liberation is what follows the success of productive anger. Anger is not the ideal state of existing but only the fuel that drives us to ‘build the fire.’ By emphasizing the appraisal of different women’s unique personhoods, Daly invites women to come together over Fury of being assimilated, mutalated, or destroyed and to cast off those things which reduce women to mere wombs or sex toys; from bras to S&M chokers. She gives us space for diversity by recognizing that our uniqueness as individual women is a source of strength when building the fire as “sister pyrotechnists,” to each have an important responsibility in the process of social reconstruction.
While the goal is not to shift one set of oppressive paradigms for another (matriarchy for patriarchy), it is exigent to drastically alter gender relations for the benefit of humankind. Although Daly encourages Fury, she also draws considerable attention to the project of recreating gynocentric pleasure; ecstasy. “Gyn/Ecology is Un-Creation; Gyn/Ecology is Creation.”[11] I refer to this creation as innovation. Collins neatly sums up the ties between self-definition and innovation as she clarifies that
“by persisting in the journey towards self-definition, as individuals, we are changed. When linked to group action, our individual struggles gain meaning…perhaps that is why so many African-American women have managed to persist and ‘make a way out of no way.’ Perhaps they knew the power of self-definition.”[12]
There exists few positive role models for women in the culture of the patriarchal dominant group. The sterotypes and labels given to women, to African-Americans, to Latino/as, recent immigrants, First Nation Peoples, and the LGBT communities are meant to disassociate the anger meant for white supremacist, phallocracy and seduce us to participate in the oppression of other groups as well as ourselves. We must self-define and let our consciousness guide us, even if we must ‘make a way out of no way,’ as our Black Feminist foremothers did. The ultimate goal of Feminist Theory is to lead to Feminist praxis. Mary Daly critically asks, “how much can I say unless I’m going to do something?”
Conclusion; Collaboration between Sista ‘Pyrotechnists’
Productive anger can be defined to help awaken, self-define, and innovate through two main bodies of Feminist scholarship; Materialist Feminism and Black Feminism. Each theory uniquely possess great merit in exposing, analyzing, and preparing women to live and fight for surivial in a patriarchal world order. Collaboration between the Radical Feminists and the Black Feminists is imperative, but impossible without reaching some common ground. Productive anger can provide a solid platform from which Feminist movements to build Gyn/Ecology together.
Racism has effectively helped to expedite the divide and conquer of all women as an oppressed group. Black Feminists agree to a certain extent that men of all shades, backgrounds, and identities are slavemasters of women, but that to disregard men as enemies altogether is to replace Big (White and Brown) Brother with Big (White) Sister. Black Feminists are weary of aligning with White women’s movements based on gender because of previous racist experiences. P. Hill Collins highlights the culpability of White priviledge in thwarting efforts of women’s unity movements, currently as in the past. Black women’s struggles were marginalized at least during the first and second U.S. ‘Waves of Feminism’ by the White, upper-middle class women that set the movement’s agenda.’ Writing and discussing the subject of women’s subjugation without diverse alliances between activists is elitist in leiu of the fact that far too many women are routinely denied educational opportunities and resources to participate in the making of academia’s Women’s Studies. The standpoints of priviledged women simply do not represent women universally. The urgent success of an overarching Feminist agenda depends on strengthening political alliances between Feminist theories and practices. Women angry at each other and divided cannot resolve difficult questions such as how to effectively stop domestic violence, rape, genocide, war, corporate exploitation, and imperialism. The spirit of independence is the call for individual Feminists to come to awareness, self-definition, and innovation so as to collaborate lovingly with other sista ‘pyrotechnists.’
[1] Read from Black Feminist Thought by P. Hill Collins
[2] Destructive anger leads us down a path of suicide, madness or worse, the prolonged triumph of patriarchy.
[3] Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis, C. Delphy, 153
[4] Erasure refers to the femicide of women and girls as a method to keep women enslaved to men. Reversal in this context suggests men appropriate the labor of women. False Polarization means here that male defined ‘feminism’ is then used to offend women and keep them from reaching out to one another. Divide and Conquer as a strategy uses token women to keep other women in check.
Gyn/Ecology, M. Daly, 8
[5] Gyn/Ecology, M.Daly, 34
[6] Black Feminist Thought, P. Hill Collins, 124
[7] Les Guerilleres, M. Wittig, 112
[8] Black Feminist Thought, P. Hill Collins
[9] Black Feminist Thought, P. Hill Collins, 127
[10] Gyn/Ecology, M. Daly, 384
[11] Gyn/Ecology, M. Daly, 424
[12] Black Feminist Thought, P. Hill Collins, 132
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