"Between Critical Theory and the New Materialism: Paradigm Thinking and Paradigm Shifts in Black Feminist Studies"

null, Naomi Simmons-Thorne

Black feminist studies has undergone a paradigm shift. Scholarship has pivoted from critical themes like intersectionality and antiessentialism to material ones like antiblackness and posthumanism. To better understand these developments, I argue that we need a better understanding of paradigm thinking in black feminist studies altogether. This talk seeks to aid our understanding by defining black feminism’s competing paradigms—black feminist critical theory and the new material black feminisms—and exploring their philosophical foundations, differences, and status in black feminism today. I demonstrate why some have argued that the thought of Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Agela Y. Davis, and bell hooks constitute a distinct black feminist paradigm (black feminist critical theory). And then I move to show why others argue that the thought of Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Saidiya Hartman constitute a distinct competing one (new material black feminism). Today, many scholars believe that black feminist critical theory has been the casualty of black feminism’s paradigm shift. I offer some tentative reasons for this development and discuss some ways that black feminist critical theory might be reinvigorated for today.