The essays in this forum originated out of a roundtable at the American Studies Association meeting on the occupied territory of the Kanaka Maoli (Hawaii) in 2019, sponsored by Environment and Planning D: Society & Space. Our roundtable was conceptualized around an open question about Black feminism's relation to "settler colonialism," a term that is understood as a critical framework, categorical description, and/or narrative genre. Among our questions: does Black feminism intervene in a settler colonial critical discourse that has become the "preferred discourse for examining colonialism in North America" (King, 2019: 56)? Does Black feminism even need settler colonial critique? Or does it already offer an immanent critique of conquest, accumulation, dispossession, disposability, and erasure? These are hardly neutral questions, and they speak both to the broadening appeal of Black feminist theory across the humanities and social sciences, alongside growing disenchantment with the white male center of settler colonial studies. Our panel was met with feedback that reflected some of these developments. In the Q&A, an audience member asked how relevant the positionality of non-Black people of color (and presumably white people) was for advancing Black feminist thought. This was a question concerned with the appropriation of Black feminism by non-Black scholars. We also received criticism about the pairing of Black feminism and settler colonialism, a critical framing they felt validated Black feminism only by routing it through a white settler colonial paradigm oriented around the construction of an idealized Native subject. In other words, Black feminism should be understood as originating its own critique of settler colonialism. Our contributions do not aim to resolve these concerns but rather to sit with their indeterminacy. In place of resolution, we offer our own critical investments, whose areas of overlap and divergence reframe the norms of coalition.
展开▼
