Womanism
Womanism is a feminist movement, primarily championed by Black feminists, originating in the work of African American author Alice Walker in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Walker coined the term "womanist" in the short story "Coming Apart" in 1979. Her initial use of the term evolved to envelop a spectrum of issues and perspectives facing black women and others. Walker defined "womanism" as embracing the courage, audacity, and self-assured demeanor of Black women, alongside their love for other women, themselves, and all of humanity. Since its inception by Walker, womanism has expanded to encompass various domains, giving rise to concepts such as Africana womanism and womanist theology or spirituality.
Womanism can be applied as a social theory based on the history and everyday experiences of Black women. According to womanist scholar Layli Maparyan, womanist theory seeks to "restore the balance between people and the environment/nature and reconcil human life with the spiritual dimension."
Theory
Womanist theory, while diverse, holds at its core that mainstream feminism is a movement led by white women to serve white women's goals and can often be indifferent to, or even in opposition to, the needs of Black women. Feminism does not inherently render white women non-racist, while womanism places anti-racism at its core. Both the empowerment of women and the upholding of Black cultural values are seen as important to Black women's existence. In this view, the very definition of "the feminine" and "femininity" must be re-examined and contextualized. While third-wave feminism shares this concern with the more recently coined term, intersectionality, the two concepts differ in the valuation they place on intersectionality within their respective theoretical frameworks. Womanism supports the idea that the culture of the woman, which in this case is the focal point of intersection as opposed to class or some other characteristic, is not an element of her identity but rather is the lens through which her identity exists. As such, a woman's Blackness is not a component of her feminism. Instead, her Blackness is the lens through which she understands her feminist/womanist identity.Womanist theory grew in large part out of the perceived indifference of the feminist movement towards the concerns of Black women. Early feminist activism around suffrage in the United States largely excluded non-white women, as non-white women were not seen as feminine/female in the same ways as white women and therefore did not merit full inclusion.
The rise of second-wave feminism brought greater inclusivity of non-white women within the movement. However, white feminists equated this inclusion with "colorblindness" and preferred to deemphasize racial issues in favor of focusing exclusively on gender concerns. An inability to reconcile this division ultimately hampered the ability of white and non-white feminists to create a functional interracial movement. As a result of this disconnect between the groups, a third-wave feminism began that incorporated the concepts of intersectionality and womanism.
The historic exclusion of Black women from the broader feminist movement has resulted in two interpretations of womanism. Some womanists believe that the experience of Black women will not be validated by feminists to be equal to the experience of white women because of the problematic way in which some feminists treated Blackness throughout history. As such, womanists do not see womanism as an extension of feminism, but rather as a theoretical framework which exists independent of feminist theory. This is a departure from the thinking of Black feminists who have carved their own space in feminism through academia and activism.
However, not all womanists hold this view of womanism as distinct from feminism. The earliest conception of womanism is expressed in Alice Walker's statement "womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender". Under this rubric, the theories appear intimately tied, with womanism as the broad umbrella under which feminism falls.
Phases of the theory
Womanist (1979)
Author and poet Alice Walker first used the term "womanist" in her short story "Coming Apart", in 1979, and later in In Search of our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. Walker defined a "womanist" as a Black feminist or feminist of color. The term comes from the Black folk expression of mothers to female children, 'You acting womanish', referring to grown-up behavior. The womanish girl exhibits willful, courageous, and outrageous behavior that is considered to be beyond the scope of societal norms. She goes on to say that a womanist is also:According to Walker, while feminism is incorporated into womanism, it is also instinctively pro-humankind; womanism is a broader category that includes feminism as a subtype. The focus of the theory is not on gender inequality, but race- and class-based oppression. She sees womanism as a theory/movement for the survival of the Black race; a theory that takes into consideration the experiences of Black women, Black culture, Black myths, spiritual life, and orality. Walker's much cited phrase, "womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender", suggests that feminism is a component beneath the much larger ideological umbrella of womanism.
Walker's definition also holds that womanists are universalists. This philosophy is further invoked by her metaphor of a garden where all flowers bloom equally. A womanist is committed to the survival of both males and females and desires a world where men and women can coexist, while maintaining their cultural distinctiveness. This inclusion of men provides Black women with an opportunity to address gender oppression without directly attacking men.
A third definition provided by Walker pertains to the sexuality of the women portrayed in her review of Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson. Here, she argues that the best term to describe Rebecca Jackson, a Black Shaker who leaves her husband and goes on to live with her white Shaker companion, would be a womanist, because it is a word that affirms the connection to the world, regardless of sexuality. The seemingly contrasting interpretations of womanism given by Walker validate the experiences of African-American women, while promoting a visionary perspective for the world based on said experiences.
Much of Alice Walker's progeny admit that while she is the creator of the term, Walker fails to consistently define the term and often contradicts herself. At some points she portrays womanism as a more inclusive revision of Black feminism as it is not limited to Black women and focuses on the woman as a whole. Later in life, she appears to begin to regret this peace-seeking and inclusive form of womanism due to the constant and consistent prejudice inflicted upon Black women, specifically those whose voices had yet to be validated by both white women and Black men.
Womanism (1985)
is a Nigerian literary critic who, in 1985, published the article "Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English" which described her interpretation of womanism. She asserts that the womanist vision is to answer the ultimate question of how to equitably share power among the races and between the sexes. She arrived at her interpretation of the term independently of Alice Walker's definition, yet there are several overlaps between the two ideologies. In alignment with Walker's definition focusing on Blackness and womanhood, Ogunyemi writes, "black womanism is a philosophy that celebrates black roots, the ideals of black life, while giving a balanced presentation of black womandom".Rather than citing gender inequality as the source of Black oppression, Ogunyemi takes a separatist stance much like Hudson-Weems, and dismisses the possibility of reconciliation of white feminists and Black feminists on the grounds of the intractability of racism. She uses a few examples of how feminists write about Blackness and African Blackness specifically to make salient the need for an African conception of womanism. These critiques include the use of Blackness as a tool to forward feminist ideals without also forwarding ideals related to Blackness, the thought that Western feminism is a tool which would work in African nations without acknowledging cultural norms and differences, and a co-opting of things that African women have been doing for centuries before the western notion of feminism into Western feminism.
Ogunyemi finds her conception of womanism's relationship with men at the cross roads of Walker's and Hudson-Weems'. Walker's expresses a communal opportunity for men while acknowledging how they can be dangerous to the womanist community. Hudson-Weems' conception refuses to see the Africana man as an enemy, disregarding the harm that Africana men have imparted on to the community.
Africana womanism (1995)
is credited with coining the term Africana womanism. In 1995, the publication of her book, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves sent shock waves through the Black nationalism community and established her as an independent thinker. Hudson-Weems rejects feminism as the theology of Africana women, that is to say women of the African diaspora, because it is philosophically rooted in Eurocentric ideals. Hudson-Weems identifies further differences between womanism and feminism being; womanism is "family-oriented" and focuses on race, class, and gender, while feminism is "female-oriented" and strictly focuses on biological sex-related issues women and girls face, globally.She further asserts that it is impossible to incorporate the cultural perspectives of African women into the feminism ideal due to the history of slavery and racism in America. Furthermore, Weems rejects feminism's characterization of the man as the enemy. She claims that this does not connect with Africana women as they do not see Africana men as the enemy. Instead the enemy is the oppressive force that subjugates the Africana man, woman, and child. She claims that feminism's masculine-feminine binary comes from a lack of additional hardship placed on women by their circumstances as feminism was founded to appeal to upper-class white women.
She also distances the Africana woman from Black feminism by demarcating the latter as distinctly African-American which is in turn distinctly Western. She also critiques Black feminism as a subset of feminism needing the validation of white feminists for their voices to be heard. She claims that feminism will never truly accept Black feminists, but instead relegate them to the fringes of the feminist movement.
She ultimately claims that the matriarchs of the Black feminist movement will never be put into the same conversation as the matriarchs of the feminist movement. A large part of her work mirrors separatist Black Nationalist discourse, because of the focus on the collective rather than the individual as the forefront of her ideology. Hudson-Weems refutes Africana womanism as an addendum to feminism, and asserts that her ideology differs from Black feminism and Walker's womanism.