vendredi 29 février 2008

" Decentering " : Décentrement et Cultural Studies

J'invite les lecteurs à lire sur la question du décentrement dans les Cultural Studies. Que disent en effet les Cultural Studies : Où est le "Centre" (merci à MHB pour l'idée) ? Peut-on demander à un minoritaire de se "décentrer" ? Il est indispensable de ne pas faire l'impasse sur ce sujet pour qui veut se réclammer des Cultural Studies.

Patricia Hill Collins ( May 1, 1948 )


Patricia Hill Collins is Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, and charles Phelps Taft Emeritus Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, University of Cincinnati. She is author of Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Conciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment published by Routledge originally in 1990, which is her first book. In this book she manage to show how class, gender, sexuality, race and nation are interconnected so that it should be considered in the understanding of oppressions. She shows how external definitions of Black womanhood through controlling images inform Black Women restriction in society. Accurately, she has been awarded the Jesse Barnard Award in 1993 for Black Feminist Thought where she expresses the feminist figures of Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde thoughts.

Also recipient of the C. Wright Mills Award in 1990 two years later she co-edits Race, Class and Gender : An Anthology with Margaret Andersen in 1992. In 1998 she publishes Fighting Words : Black Women and The Search for Justice, which focuses on fighting discrimination against Black women in Black communities. In this book she also embraces the notion of Black Women as "outsiders within". In 2006 From Black Power to Hip Hop : Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism is to discuss the relationship between feminism and women in the hip hop generation but connected with Black nationalism. However notice that this very same year she is to be named Distinguished University Professor by the University of Maryland.

The Book that please me the most among her books is Black Sexual Politics : African American Gender, And The New Racism published also by Routledge in 2004 for how it shows that race and sexism are intertwined ant that to understand the wide range of racism somebody needs to consider it.