Oppression and Resistance in Black Feminist Thought

the Critical Social Theory of Patricia Hill Collins

Abstract

This article aims to present how Patricia Hill Collins develops an intersectional understanding of the relationship between domination and resistance based on the experiences of black women. We will try to show why Collins considers black feminist thought to be a critical social theory, and how this theory aims to understand the intersectional phenomena of oppression and resistance from the perspective of black women’s outsider within. Next, we present the intersectional understanding of oppression developed by Collins and analyze what she means by the matrix of domination, namely the four different domains in which intersectional forms of oppression operate: the structural, the disciplinary, the hegemonic and the interpersonal. Finally, based on the fundamental assumption that a critical social theory must pay attention to the tendencies that actually exist to overcome social injustices in practice, in the third part of the article we will analyze the dialectical relationship that Collins establishes between domination and resistance based on the processes within which black women produce self-definitions and individual and collective forms of struggle for social justice. By identifying the genesis of black women’s varied forms of struggle, resistance and empowerment within the framework of experiences of social injustice, intersectional systems of oppression and particular organizations of the power domains, Collins enriches and complexifies the understanding of intersectionality.