I get why Deb was acting like an excited school girl when Melani came to speak to us. There is no other way to describe her… she’s simply badass. One of the parts of her talk that intrigued me most was when she briefly mentioned ‘womanism’. I’d never come across this concept and I had to find out more. Please note that the research I have done is a mere skim over the rich complexities of womanist theory. I am simply attempting to summarise some of its most fascinating and noteworthy points so that we can all learn a little bit more about this engrossing theory.
Alice Walker coined the term womanism in her short story ‘Coming Apart’. Womanism was developed as a theory after black feminist scholars saw mainstream feminism not encompassing their experiences, perspectives and concerns. Walker asserted that womanists were committed to the wholeness and survival of all men and women, where she saw white feminists only concerned with the upward social mobility of white women. An absolutely essential idea underpinning womanism is that femininity cannot be stripped from the culture that one belongs to (Phillips, 2006). In this way, womanism is a theory which is particularly valuable and applicable to the experiences of black women, indigenous women and women of colour.
From my google (scholar) deep dive into this topic I understand it has a few key differences from mainstream feminism. Firstly, womanism is a concept that is family oriented and concerned with race, class and gender (Hudson-Weems, 2001). Feminism is more associated with biological sex related issues that women and girls face (Hudson-Weems, 2001). I guess that womanism is somewhat comparable to intersectional feminism in that they are both concerned with how other aspects of a woman’s identity affects her experiences. However, these frameworks do differ in that womanism specifically has a spiritual element to it.
Layli Maparyan argued that an integral part of a womanist’s consciousness was her spirituality. This spirituality is defined by 3 key characteristics; spiritual curiosity, spiritual eclecticism and spiritual self-authorship. This spiritual curiosity she speaks of is related to an individual’s desire to learn and connect more not only with community (both local and global), but also to benefit the community. Although womanist spirituality is rooted in the Black Church, spiritual womanism is a diverse, multi-faceted concept that can be related to African, Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions and belief systems. Spiritual self-authorship speaks to the desire to learn and grow into knowledgeable, capable political activists of and for women.
In ‘Coming Apart’ Walker wrote “womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” This is understood to mean that although ‘classic’ feminism is mainstream it is merely a smaller component of the overall ideology of womanism. I encourage everyone to do some of their own research on this and let me know what you find- I know I will certainly be reading more about womanism!
References:
Walker, Alice (1979). Coming Apart.
Phillips, Layli (2006). The Womanist Reader. New York and Abingdon: Routledge
Hudson-Weems, Clenora (2001). “Africana Womanism: The Flip Side of a Coin”. Western Journal of Black Studies. 25 (3).
Maparyan, Layli (2012). The Womanist Idea. New York, New York: Taylor & Francis.
