Patricia Hill Collins reflects upon her past, present, and future scholarship.

Via a close reading of The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, this chapter examines how Simone de Beauvoir's analogical thinking about race and gender shape her arguments concerning oppression and freedom. First, Beauvoir uses gender as an analytical category to examine women's oppression. In contrast, Beauvoir uses race, age, class and ethnicity as descriptive experiences that provide evidence for her analysis of women's oppression. Second, Beauvoir's analysis of women's oppression relies on an uncritical analogical method to develop arguments (...) about gender oppression, with the race/gender analogy granted special prominence. Third, the substance of Beauvoir's analogies undermines her theory of existentialist freedom: manipulating root metaphors that depict Black people as silent slaves or non‐independent women as complicit in their own subordination makes existential freedom difficult if not impossible for the majority of human beings. (shrink)

Intersectionality has attracted substantial scholarly attention in the 1990s. Rather than examining gender, race, class, and nation as distinctive social hierarchies, intersectionality examines how they mutually construct one another. I explore how the traditional family ideal functions as a privileged exemplar of intersectionality in the United States. Each of its six dimensions demonstrates specific connections between family as a gendered system of social organization, racial ideas and practices, and constructions of U.S. national identity.

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of (...) racial-ethnic women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

the term community remains firmly entrenched in everyday speech and public discourse, circulating widely across disparate situations, with vastly different meanings attached to its use. Yet despite its seeming simplicity, the construct of community may underpin the social and political organization of power relations and the politics they engender. The myriad ways that community, power relations, and politics have informed one another suggest a potential theoretical richness for this word of power.Scholarly perspectives of community cluster around two competing focal points. (...) On the one hand, romantic perceptions of community celebrate their strengths, arguing that belonging to a community shields individuals from... (shrink)

The essays in this book criticise the new positivism in education policy, whereby education is systematically reduced to those things that can be measured by so-called 'objective' tests. School curricula have been narrowed with an emphasis on measurable results in the 3 R’s and the ‘quality’ of university departments is now assessed by managerial exercises based on commercial audit practice. As a result, the traditional notion of liberal arts education has been replaced by utilitarian productivity indices.

In this paper, I begin to construct an inheritance map for the epistemological insights in Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought. An inheritance map attempts to take stock of what one has been given in a particular project and what one inherits as work yet to do. Here I outline that Black Feminist Thought demonstrates that knowledge has no proper subject, while leaving a project to imagine black feminist epistemology outside of ascriber dynamics.

O presente trabalho pretende apresentar, em um primeiro momento, uma noção de interseccionalidade a partir da obra Interseccionalidade (2021), de Patricia Hill Collins e Sirma Bilge. Para tanto, em um primeiro momento consideraremos o percurso histórico de tal noção, bem como sua estreita relação com o feminismo negro a partir da ancoragem que esta noção fornece à tradição feminista negra no Brasil. É possível compreender a interseccionalidade sob diversas óticas, como um conceito, uma teoria, uma prática ou, a (...) forma mais aceita, como uma ferramenta analítica cujo objetivo é apresentar diagnósticos e respostas para problemas sociais. Essa noção torna possível ler os diversos marcadores sociais como a classe, a raça, o gênero, entre outros, ligados a cada indivíduo e não excludentes entre si. Com efeito, esses diversos marcadores sociais se sobrepõem e se interconectam de tal maneira que operam unificadamente e interferem na nossa experiência em sociedade, fato este que joga luz à necessidade de se considerar o que Collins chama de Bases das relações interseccionais de poder, que são o domínio cultural, estrutural, disciplinar e interpessoal de poder, que englobam a relação entre o processo histórico do país e contexto cultural analisado. É nesse sentido que, a despeito da heterogeneidade do termo, é possível não apenas extrair um entendimento geral, mas também assimilar essa heterogeneidade como uma vantagem em relação a outras propostas de leitura crítica do social, o que destaca a coerência que uma teoria feminista de construção participativa exige. Dito isso, propomos expor, em um segundo momento, a partir da obra Bem mais que ideias: a interseccionalidade como teoria social crítica (2022), como se tornou um desafio para a autora explicar o objeto teórico da interseccionalidade, pois se trata-se de uma disputa epistemológica para indicar o que caberia nesse “guarda-chuva” conceitual no campo da teoria crítica. Nessa proposta, Collins nos apresenta provocações sobre o que há de crítico em teorias sociais, para destacar os espaços possíveis nos quais a interseccionalidade se torna uma alternativa de teorias de transformação do social, adicionando dispositivos de leitura do social negligenciados por outras teorias. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins likewise (...) draws on Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (shrink)

in her 2010 paper, "the new politics of community," Dr. Collins's argument on community as conceptually and practically a political construct provides a vital connection to the American philosophical tradition, particularly the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and John Dewey. In my response to her paper, I combine components of her argument with her earlier work in black feminist epistemology. I tie these insights to Du Bois's and Dewey's arguments regarding how communities develop. These are then connected to (...) the work by transnational feminist Chandra Mohanty and political scientist Benedict Anderson on imagined communities. I use these to develop a framework for thinking of some communities as communities of epistemic... (shrink)

i am honored to have the opportunity to think with Patricia Hill Collins about community as a political construct. Collins has argued that, like concepts of family and love, community often has been considered to be part of a nonpolitical sphere, something personal and private even as it is not individualistic. As feminists have shown, however, the personal is political, and as Collins urges, an intersectional understanding of the political can and also should apply to the concept of (...) community. In Collins's words, "instead of being a natural, apolitical space, or even an empty category that can be used for political purposes, the construct of community may lie at the heart of politics itself". The concept of... (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of (...) racial-ethnic women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of (...) racial-ethnic women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

In this discussion, I engage the politics of intention to explore how structural racism structures the production of meaning and the practice of reason. Building on María Lugones's analysis of intention formation as a form of practical reasoning, I explore the reasoning at work during the 2011 Stand Your Ground (SYG) hearing of black survivor of domestic violence, Marissa Alexander, to contend that structural racism—in this case, both intimate personal violence and intimate state violence against black women—enacts race/gender domination through (...) projecting constructed intentions onto black women as a strategy to rationalize punishing black women. I also discuss two key black feminist critiques of reason—Patricia Hill Collins’ discussion of “controlling images” (2000) and Michelle Cliff's concept of the “mythic mind” (1982)—to propose controlling intentions as a framework to theorize how structural racism produces fictive intentions used to rationalize the criminal punishment of survival and justify that outcome as common sense. (shrink)

Recent debates between modernists and postmodernists have shaken the foundations of modern social science. The epistemological assumptions of long-established procedures for constructing and validating knowledge claims have been called into question. This article discusses how two major contributors to the “new feminist epistemologies”—Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins—selectively integrate premises of modernist and postmodernist thought into their standpoint approaches. However, the particular premises they select result in significant ontological and epistemological differences between their works. These differences reflect major (...) controversies over materialism versus idealism, as well as essentialism versus diversity. As such, these different standpoints have important implications for feminist scholarship and political practice. (shrink)

Drawing on 75 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Arab, South Asian, and Black Muslim women social justice activists, ages 18–30 years, organizing in the United States and the United Kingdom, I theorize their experiences as the basis of the matrix of gendered Islamophobia. Building upon Jasmine Zine’s concept of gendered Islamophobia, I synthesize this concept with Patricia Hill Collins’s theory of the matrix of domination to give a more in-depth and nuanced structure of how gendered Islamophobia operates and is (...) resisted by Muslim women activists. This article identifies the overlapping configurations of power that affect Muslim women’s lives through structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains, countering reductionist accounts of Islamophobia as a universalized, unvariegated social force impacting all Muslims in similar ways. Instead, the matrix of gendered Islamophobia locates Islamophobia within shifting axes of oppression that are simultaneously structured along the lines of gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship. The findings of this research reveal a dialectical relationship between Muslim women’s oppression and simultaneous contestation of gendered Islamophobia via their collective remaking of alternative ideas, politics, discourses, and organizing practices. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, several feminist theorists began developing alternatives to the traditional methods of scientific research. The result was a new theory, now recognized as Standpoint Theory, which caused heated debate and radically altered the way research is conducted. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader is the first anthology to collect the most important essays on the subject as well as more recent works that bring the topic up-to-date. Leading feminist scholar and one of the founders of Standpoint (...) Theory, Sandra Harding brings together the a prestigious list of scholars--Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and Hilary Rose--to not only showcase the most influential essays on the topic but to also highlight subsequent developments of these approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and intellectual and political positions. The Reader will be essential reading for feminist scholars. (shrink)

Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression 110 RONALD A. T. JUDY 7 (...) Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity‘: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era‘ 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY. (shrink)