Scribblings with Green Chalk

Dear all,

this is a request for advice and cooperation.

I’m an MA student in an American Studies program and wish to write my thesis on black feminism in the blogosphere. I want to look at blogs by writers who define themselves as black feminists or womanists as sites of personal and political expression, reaction towards discrimination, tools of activism, and as literary texts. My idea is to approach blogs as living texts: as a form of writing that promptly reacts to experience, decodes and critiques norms and beliefs usually taken for granted, and finally celebrates free thought and the beauty of publishing speed and publishing independence.

This project cannot come into life without a real dialogue with black feminists, especially those among you who blog about their views and experience. Blogging is a form of writing based on exchange and the writer’s presence. My questions serve the purpose of clarifying how ideas from black feminist theory function in practice, how they are interpreted and used in building an online community. The basis for the project are blog posts, the questions are there to provide a forum for discussion and for me to get advice and learn about specific issues. I hope you will be willing to share your thoughts with me and answer the questions that will come as the project moves on.

One of the challenges for me is that I do not directly share Black women’s experience and only become aware of certain issues through reading black feminist theory and blog posts. However, it’s not just curiosity that brought me to the idea: I want to see how I as an ‘outsider,’ that is a person not directly involved and touched by the issues she reads and writes about, can engage in the ongoing project of black feminism.

Quite simply: I do not wish to dissect arguments and pretend to be analyzing them, but to listen and learn by opening up to a perspective different from my own. I’m a white European, which in itself is a vague label, a feminist, a student. I want to know how I can respectfully and fruitfully participate in the things going on around me, even if they’re not happening in my closest neighborhood.

Hence the idea.

If you’d like to know more and, hopefully, are willing to contribute your time and ideas, please leave replies here under posts concerning the project or contact me via email at:

scribblingswithgreenchalk (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks a lot.

More to come.

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QUESTIONS

• The Project & Comments Policy
• Question 1: Who Can Be a Black Feminist?
• Question 2: Black Feminist Blog Personae — Can We Generalize?
• Blogs Project: A Few Words on Doubts and Lack of Updates