Musing: A Black Feminist Philosopher: Is

That Possible?
V. DENISE JAMES

I. NAMES I CALL MYSELF

The most general statement of our politics at the present time would
be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual,
heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the
development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact
that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. (Combahee
River Collective 1995)
This excerpt from the influential Combahee River Collectives Black Feminist Statement is posted on the door of my office at the private Catholic institution where I
teach. It serves to announce my political and professional commitments to whomever
might come calling. Although some might say the idiosyncratic quotes that eccentric
philosophy professors choose to post on their doors mean little in the greater scheme
of things, I thought long and hard before deciding to greet students, colleagues, and
other visitors with words from a black feminist statement and not a quote from one
of the canonical philosophical thinkers. The quote makes a declaration.
I am a black feminist philosopher.
I want to work on projects that will contribute to understanding the lived experiences of black women and girls. I believe that philosophy done from a black feminist
standpoint can help to define, clarify, assess, and suggest changes in our social world
that would greatly improve the lives of all people. I believe that my standpoint is
both a political and philosophical commitment. I am happy to admit that commitment to this standpoint is a rejection of the supposed neutrality and universalist
claims often made by other philosophers.
I am a black feminist philosopher.
I have only just started saying this as a reply to the question posed by other academic philosophers in those awkward between-paper conversations at conferences
when they ask me that all important question, What do you do? The question
means many things. When I answer that I am a black feminist philosopher, I am
expressing more of a hope of what I might become than what I have been. My
musings here are particular to my experience as an African American feminist
working as a professional philosopher and how I have come to understand this
Hypatia vol. 29, no. 1 (Winter 2014) by Hypatia, Inc.

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question of what do you do with many meanings and how I have come to understand the work I do (and would like to do). I do not intend for them to stand in
for anyone elses experience but my own, although I am certain there are many
people to whom my reflections might speak.1 These thoughts may come off as a
self-diagnosis, an exercise in existential angst of little benefit to anyone other than
me. There are fewer than forty academic black women philosophers in the United
States. In that number those of us who would call ourselves feminists are a smaller
number still. And I would not need all of the fingers of my hand to count the
number of us who are attempting to be black feminist pragmatists. Yet I would
wager that my attempts to name my philosophical self, to think through the possibilities that the profession offers for my particular interests, may have resonance
with others who also came to philosophy with wonder and the thought that they
too could be philosophers.
Asserting that I am a black feminist philosopher is a revision of my prior attempts
to define my areas of specialty and competence. A few years ago when I was preparing to go on the job market, I listed contemporary social and political philosophy as
my specialty, with critical race theory and feminism as two of a string of areas of
competence. To say that I am a black feminist philosopher is a re-envisioning of the
work that I will do as an academic and a critical reflection on my prior training and
efforts. It is also a self-designation that has at times drawn blank stares, looks of confusion, outright derision, and at least once, disbelief in the tenability of such a pursuit
from the person to whom I offered it as a description of my work. The astute senior
philosopher looked me over and asked, A black feminist philosopher? Is that possible? I must admit there are times that I have my doubts.
Although I found it difficult to explain to my working-class mother, who had
hopes that I would become a lawyer, what it meant to be a philosopher when I
decided to pursue professional philosophy as a career during my first year at Spelman
College, I had no doubts then that I was a philosopher. In my naivet
e as a young
philosophy major I came to philosophy in immature wonder. I was blinded by philosophys claim that it was the discipline that sought answers to grand and universal
questions. Western philosophy spoke to me in my immaturity because it was presented to me as a tradition that took deep, reflective thinking on the human lived
condition seriously. It appealed to my love of the written word and my youthful
rebellion against the popular view that my generation was anti-intellectual. While
sitting in a classroom reading the texts of the Western philosophical canon with a
dozen other young, black women, I did not once think that I was incapable of philosophical thought or that philosophy as a professional discipline was founded upon
and happy to continue to support a series of practices that silenced, marginalized, and
excluded black women. Dynamic, committed, and all male, philosophy professors fostered my love for philosophy in those early years. They encouraged many of us to
major in philosophy and to pursue graduate study. It was only later that I realized
these men knew very well that there were few black women doing professional philosophy and that their efforts were a part of an intentional desire to bring about
change in the profession.

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I was so lost in the inclusive wonder of my delusions about philosophy, I

decided without much assistance when we read non-Western thinkers in my other
classeshistory, womens studies, about the African diasporathat they were philosophers. When I began to develop my black feminist consciousness, it did not
dawn on me that the serious and important thinking of women like Maria Stewart,
Anna Julia Cooper, and Barbara Smith was not considered philosophical. Even
though I had some worries about how well I would be paid as a philosophy professor, I was certain, economic concerns aside, that I could be a black feminist philosopher. There had been so many before meAngela Davis, Pauli Murray, Audre
Lordeeven if they did not teach in philosophy departments or, in the case of
some, hold philosophy degrees. Graduate school and later professional experiences
revealed just how rare such an expansive attitude about what counts as philosophy
and who counts as a philosopher really was. I understood that to be successful I
had to call myself by an appropriate name and practice philosophy in a certain
manner.
You do philosophy like a white man, a white friend joked after a seminar in
graduate school. He meant it as a compliment. I spent years in classrooms and at
conferences demonstrating my ability to do philosophy like a white man. Although
I was still a black feminist who was committed to social justice projects, I learned
to posture and behave like many professional philosophers do. I decided that I
would be a critic. I would learn to cut and undercut. To outwit and to argue minutiae not because the points were important to the projects I wanted to pursue or
because my criticism truly shed light on the difficulties of the task at hand, but
because that was the way to do philosophy right, to do philosophy like a white
man. I learned to use my black feminist jackhammer to crack foundations, disrupt
interpretations, shut down ethical theories, and most important, to be perfectly
acceptable while doing it. The key to doing philosophy successfully was to be
accepted by my white counterparts, to follow the rules of play set by the norms of
the profession, and to simply add a layer of critical black feminism on top as
another tool in my arsenal of argumentation. Although I am sure some of the philosophers I encountered along the way have been annoyed by my insistence on
using my black feminist standpoint as the starting point of my critique and taken
aback by my willingness to fight on their terms like one of the boys, I had not conceived of black feminism as more than a tool to use in the critique of more mainstream currents of philosophy.
I had yet to reflect upon the possibility of a black feminist philosophy. Was it
possible?

II. STANDING

ON A

NAME

My black feminism was critical but not constructive. In talks and papers that vary
from exploring the complexities of local geographies in relation to social justice to
the connections that could be made between John Dewey and hip-hop, black

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feminism was not a methodology but a weapon I used to conduct philosophical study.
I was certain that I had a standpoint and that standpoints were integral to the production of knowledge, but my work had only pursued the critical dimension of claiming my black feminist standpoint.
In a defense of standpoint theories, Sandra Harding argues the adequacy of standpoint projects is to be judged by the success of the practices they legitimate rather
than the truth or verisimilitude of representations of nature and social relations.
Do they in fact produce more accurate, comprehensive, rationally justifiable, and
politically useful knowledge for the exploited groups to which they are accountable?
(Harding 2009, 195). Taking seriously Hardings claim that standpoint projects
should have criteria of success, I became acutely aware of just how much I longed to
do philosophical work from a black feminist perspective from my position in a philosophy department. I thought about the work that I had done and was doing and wondered if I could, on Hardings terms, judge my work to be successful. Had I produced
useful knowledge or just started calling myself a nameblack feministwithout living up to the imperative set by such a label?
Kristie Dotson has ably mused that it is fairly common to witness in those newly
awakened to the world of academic philosophy the attitude that being philosophical
amounts to being critical of others and their beliefs (Dotson 2011, 404). Admittedly, my own critical moment in philosophy extended well past my philosophical
awakening. Reinforced by problematic but prevalent practices in the profession,
what Dotson, following Janice Moulton, calls the adversarial method in philosophy
was my preferred method of philosophical engagement. I have easily dismissed arguments for social justice, torn up foundations of ethical theories, and not had important exchanges with other philosophers because I believed that philosophers ought to
proceed that way. I have let slip away opportunities to really muddle through the
messy difficulties of how we might best ameliorate our social problems because I was
more interested in pointing out inconsistencies in a paper than in talking to the presenter. Such a commitment to criticism above all else was a betrayal of the two most
influential philosophical roots of my work: Deweyan pragmatism and a black feminist
tradition that has its beginnings in the work of Anna Julia Cooper. Both Dewey
and Cooper were able critics in their time, but beyond their critiques, each sought to
contribute to positive projects that would do more than demonstrate their own
intellectual powers.
After that senior philosopher questioned the possibility of my existence as a black
feminist philosopher, I started calling myself a pragmatist because Deweys work on
democracy came closest to helping me answer the what do you do? question without betraying my growing desire to do philosophy differently. Pragmatist was a name
I could stand on. I could locate myself in the profession. Some time in the field
helped me realize that when philosophers ask each other, So, what do you do? they
often mean, Whos your guy? Where do you publish? Who are your allies? Are you a
friend or foe? Without a guy, my status as a philosopher in these settings was tenuous. Pragmatism, although fringe in some circles of mainstream professional philosophy, has a long tradition of socially engaged, critical theory. As a pragmatist, I was

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able to talk about the lived experiences of the urban poor and criticize philosophical
attempts to discuss democracy that did not take into consideration the standpoints of
black women. With Dewey as my guy, the looks of confusion, of misunderstanding,
of suspicion lessened, although they did not disappear. Dewey gave me access to a
professional philosophical community. Although I smuggled in black feminist thought
from outside of the discipline, as long as pragmatist was the name I called myself, I
could be understood.
It is possible to be a pragmatist philosopher in our profession. I am still not sure
if it is possible to be a black feminist pragmatist philosopher even as I claim the
name.

III. ON

THE

POSSIBILITY

OF

BLACK FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY

In 2007, George Yancy published a collection of philosophers reflections on the profession entitled Philosophy in Multiple Voices. In his contribution on Africana philosophy, Lucius Outlaw writes, among the critical issues overdue for attention are those
having to do with black women (Outlaw 2007, 125). Outlaw gives a list of books,
essays, and thinkers where a person interested in black women as producers of philosophical knowledge might begin. Outlaws reflections on Africana philosophy and the
scarcity of attention paid to the work of black women thinkers in the continued
development of that strand of philosophy was highlighted for me when the possibility
of being a black feminist philosopher was questioned recently at conference of people
interested in Africana philosophy.
When I attempted to articulate my desire to do black feminist philosophy, to
claim that such a philosophy might be distinct from Africana philosophy that had
not taken such a standpoint, a well-established black male philosopher asked, But
who do you work on? What are the seminal texts of a black feminist philosophy?
Skepticism was apparent in both his tone and gestures. It was clear that he thought
such a project had little hope. His questions, a reworking of the what do you do?
question in a room of people most of whom acknowledged that much of what counts
as Africana philosophy does not come from the thought of traditional, academic philosophers, were not questions that could be satisfied with a list of black feminists from
other fields. No one, except the other black feminists in the room, initially seemed
to find what he was asking of mea list of monographs by black feminists trained as
philosophersodd. My list was far too short and was not made up of the right names
to satisfy his query and worse yet, his doubts about the possibilities of black feminist
philosophy could not be countered by my own projects.
Was I really a black feminist philosopher if I worked primarily in the critical vein?
Have I produced a body of work that reflects a black feminist commitment to what
the quote on my door announces? If my greatest successes are found in how well I
play the adversary at conferences and in print or how dexterously I layer some black
feminism on top of the more important and more properly philosophical thinking of
mostly dead, white, US men, am I doing something worth labeling black feminist

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philosophy at all? Is it possible to be an academic, professional philosopher and privilege black feminism?
I was left to ask, does black feminist philosophy exist? Is it possible?
I have come to see that there are several questions that this question entails and
does not entail. I am not asking if there are black philosophers who identify themselves as feminists. I can in my limited knowledge name at least five people in the
professional class of black women philosophers who would associate with such a label.
(Such a large number I know!) I am also not asking if what counts as black feminist
theorizing in other fields by people not trained as philosophers should be counted as
philosophical. This question is settled in my mind: of course. Much of the writing of
black women thinkers is philosophical. The questions asked, the problems worked
through, even the impetuses for the pursuits are philosophical. Doctorates in philosophy notwithstanding, there are more than thirty-odd black women in the US who
have done and continue to do philosophy. Black feminist philosophy exists. But it
exists elsewhere in other spaces, on the pages of journals that professional philosophers do not read, in the contexts of conferences where professional philosophers do
not go.
The question then should be separated into two. First, does professional philosophy need black feminist philosophy/philosophies? I would argue that it does,
along with philosophies from many other standpoints. Without these standpoints,
philosophy does not fulfill one of its most nave yet brave promises to help us
make sense of the world. Second, will professional philosophy make room for and
take seriously black feminist philosophy? This last question is the one about which
I have little optimism. I wonder if there will be room on journal pages, conference programs, and in the minds of reviewers to call what I do philosophy when
I move from critique to centering a black feminist standpoint. When I ask, is it
possible for me to be a black feminist philosopher, what will the profession
answer?

NOTE
1. For other reflections about being a black woman philosopher, see Yancy 2008.

REFERENCES
Combahee River Collective. 1995. A black feminist statement. In Words of fire: An
anthology of African-American feminist thought, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. New York:
The New Press.
Dotson, Kristie. 2011. Concrete flowers: Contemplating the profession of philosophy.
Hypatia 26 (2): 40309.
Harding, Sandra. 2009. Standpoint theories: Productively controversial. Hypatia 24 (4):
192200.

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Outlaw, Lucius. 2007. What is Africana philosophy? In Philosophy in multiple voices, ed.
George Yancy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Yancy, George. 2008. Introduction: Situated black womens voices in/on the profession of
philosophy. Hypatia 23 (2): 15559.