Erik McDuffie's Sojourning for Freedom (2011) uses historical methods to demonstrate that black left feminists were the first to articulate an intersectional feminist analysis. In doing so, he uses a transnational women of color intersectional methodology as both an analytical framework and part of his object of study. The "alternative genealogy" (McDuffie, 2011, p. 16) that he has constructed demonstrates the contingent and somewhat uneven trajectories of black left feminism.
At the beginning of chapter 5, "We are Sojourners for Our Rights," McDuffie states that the Sojourners, the organization that is the focus of that chapter, provides a lens through which to better understand black left feminism during the Cold War. (2011, p. 161). Employing a practice, object, or in this case, an organization as something to look through to better know or explain a larger phenomenon is useful for my own work. I found McDuffie's Chapter 5 to be one of the most effective in his book, in part because of the way he set up his argument for that chapter. Using noninvasive prenatal screening both as a technology and a practice as a lens through which to understand how knowledge gets produced and maintained about disability in clinical settings.
McDuffie details how black left feminists during the Cold War continued to theorize triple oppression and form the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, even as the larger context became increasingly difficult and altered public perceptions of both communism and black feminist organizing. The links, for instance, between the Cold War's emphasis on familialism and the Sojourners' use of essentialized gender roles represent a break with previous black left feminism, and interrupt a linear conception of history by demonstrating that more radical gender reforms had been called for as early as the 1930s.
Through this example, and others throughout the book, it becomes clear that McDuffie's use of "conjunctural description" (Clifford, 1997) is very effective in that it demonstrates the (sometimes) uneven interactions betweeen structure and agency. McDuffie's use of a historical moment as a "lens" will hopefully be useful for my work, but I also wonder about the limits of that methodological device in speaking about the present. That is, does it work better in a historical setting? I'll have to think through this as my object of study is sort of a moving target. One of the things that McDuffie does so well is contextualize his arguments through his previous chapters and arguments. I think he does this so skillfully we don't even notice (at least I didn't until I went back and looked over my notes). This is more challenging for me to do since I'm not technically doing historical methods. I'll need to contextualize things, of course. But one of the questions people have asked me about my proposal is how I'll show the difference in terms of what was going on, cultural production wise, before this new technology came on the scene. I'm not sure yet how to deal with this-is doing a thematic review of the literature enough? There are similar monographs and qualitative articles that deal with similar subject matter, and a lot of them are from the 1990s. Should I do a kind of historiography (even if just in my introduction) to set the stage? I was not planning on constructing a comparative argument in terms of, that was then, this is now. It's not that simple. But how do I show the contingent nature of the present moment without history? McDuffie's book makes me realize the potential effectiveness of historical work.
One of the other merits of this book is how it could be used for courses. As Emily ( I think it was Emily) mentioned, the common narrative is that intersectionality began in the 1980s. The utility of McDuffie's work is far-reaching in terms of its implications for how we as feminists conceptualize feminism itself. Decentering and interrupting the "wave" metaphor, this work responds to the deconstructive moment of poststructuralism by providing an alternative historical reconstruction.
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