Place of Speech

Among the great contributions of Black feminism is, precisely, breaking up  the division that is already present in an unequal society that has assigned specific spaces to different groups of people. Places of power, of authority discourse and universalization, in the face of places of erasure of knowledge, voices and existences. When Black feminists part with this discursive authorization, it means thinking about new projects and civilizing milestones so that we could envision and discuss new models of society – as Lélia Gonzalez said.

In this sense, Black feminism does not exclude, but expands. It is a society project that proposes otherness to Black women, thought of as subjects and active beings. Resistance and re-existence, in the tradition conceived by Ana Lúcia Silva Souza. It thinks about the intertwined oppressions, guides a discourse of counterpower that causes discomfort in those who enjoy epistemological privileges, that is, privileges of knowledge. No wonder, when we are branded, as Black women, to be stigmatized, there is less discomfort than when we brand ourselves to organize politically. The elders will say so.

The grievance against Black feminist women, especially those who publicly pose as subjects, stems from a colonial vision that wishes to be imposed by groups that historically enjoyed legitimacy as a moral, political and epistemological paradigm in a system that hierarchies humanity, but that with the advance of anti-colonial narratives is forced to assume, on the other hand, that it is not universal but that it is also crossed by identities.

With these brief reflections, I share with you my book Place of Speech, which breaks with imposed discourses and affirms the Black woman as a subject.

 

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