Colonizing the Soul Cesaire Wrote about colonization, colonialism What is it?  Race, class, gender discrimination  Thingification (Object)  Both idea and practice

Colonialism  Idea of modernity Of natural historical development/progress of extraction  Process Of industrialization and capitalism Of exploitation Also, psychological process (thingification)

Fanon  Empire = symbolic distinction between colonizer and colonized (heirarchical)  Criteria of “good” is spread among all and internalized  Dual roles – One with White man, another with African peers

Being To speak is to assume a culture to support the weight of a civilization There has been no ontology (theory of being) of the colonized Requires recognition, consciousness of self

Patterson  Institutional frameworks of prejudice die more slowly than outright prejudices  Patterns of adaptation of oppressed people can become dysfunctional under less constrained circumstances

Paradoxes  America Legal and political rights are advanced Exist with binary conception of race Freedom requires discovery of identity Antiracism reinforces racial categories

Challenges to One Drop Rule  Integration and Civil Rights  Immigration of Latin Americans and Asians  Children of mixed parentages

Hill Collins  Standpoint Knowledge is produced from distinct social locations  Responding to Afrocentrism (marginalizes gender) Feminism (marginalizes race)

Black Feminism  Highlights different ways of knowing  Epistemology How do you know? Standards of knowing Why we believe what we believe to be true

Power in Knowledge Legitimation  Social Institutions Produce and Evaluate Example Positivism and Black feminism

Conflicting Standards African American women live in and address different worlds with conflicting standards 1. African American women 2. African American women scholars 3. Dominant academic groups Truth combines standpoints.

Epistemology Example Positivism Vs. Black feminism