But the other thing this book makes clear is the value and crucial importance of black women intellectuals making a record for themselves - performative utterance, legitimizing a legacy that history might otherwise forget. It's been over a century since Anna Julia Cooper named "undisputed dignity" as a prerequisite for social and racial equality for black women, and nearly every woman quoted in Beyond Respectability, no matter the era, takes note of how distant that ideal remains. Reading this book, it's hard to escape its condemnation of history. Sometimes the veil between Then and Now is even thinner - take Mary Church Terrell's 1905 essay "The Mission of the Meddler," in which she exhorts the political meddler to "ask disagreeable questions about the political corruption which makes a single white man in one section equal to seven in another." Reading this book, it's hard to escape its condemnation of history.īeyond Respectability also connects this history to the ways contemporary black women spearhead public discourse, from Melissa Harris-Perry to the use of social media as an activist platform, as when Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi introduced #BlackLivesMatter. It introduces concepts of the black woman as a public citizen in post-Restoration America, and explores women whose work pushed against the dominant narrative - Fannie Barrier Williams speaking of black women as a political body, Mary Church Terrell documenting resistance over the course of decades, Pauli Murray's discussions of queerness, Toni Cade Bambara's 1970s anthologies of black women's writing - and draws us through that history to the present. (It means "to invest with mental or emotional energy," and that's as good a description of this book as any.)īut it's clear early on that Beyond Respectability is a work of crucial cultural study. It takes its material seriously and expects you will, too, and though you don't have to be particularly well-read on this history going in, expect to be rereading certain sentences, flipping to the end notes for further reading, and double-checking the definition of terms like cathect. While this is a rewarding read, it's an academic history rather than a chatty one. it's clear early on that 'Beyond Respectability' is a work of crucial cultural study. Through actions like listing – creating "lists of prominent, qualified Black women for easy consumption," Cooper writes, these women gave context to their own history, granting "intellectual, political, and/or cultural legitimacy to the Black women speaking their names." And since these women were struggling against both racism and misogyny, that legitimacy was critical performative utterance became lifeblood. Cooper's Beyond Respectability, which profiles several black feminist intellectuals who not only fought against the idea of "respectability" as a prerequisite for being heard, but against the tendency of white feminists and black men to erase their contributions.įor the thinkers and activists Cooper writes about - whose work spans over a century of public intellectualism - verbally laying claim to public space was a crucial step in legitimizing their ideas. Performative utterance carries a particular power - it's the thing you want to make true.Īnd performative utterance is at the heart of Brittney C. "I now pronounce you" at a wedding is one "I christen this ship" is another. You know what a performative utterance is, even if you've never heard the term before. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Beyond Respectability Subtitle The Intellectual Thought of Race Women Author Brittney C.
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