All the Rage: Black Feminists on Anger

Catalog description

Anger is a formidable emotion with a complex social life. In this course, we examine black feminist writings that ask us to think critically about anger, and develop cultural analyses regarding the work that it can and cannot do. Among the questions we consider are: How do race, ethnicity, sexuality and gender identity determine who is allowed to be angry and whose anger will be attended to? In what ways are we as black women encouraged to think of our anger as unreasonable or unjustified, taught to deny it, squash it, or be afraid it will kill us? What is the relationship of anger to demands for justice? Or, put another way, how is this emotion, long stereotyped and stigmatized, reworked by black feminist scholars, artists and activists who see in it the potential for personal and political empowerment? What do they see as the particular promises and posible pitfalls of angry power? Our inquiry is shaped by contributions from Brittney Cooper, Audre Lorde, Staceyann Chin, bell hooks, CeCe McDonald, Maria Stewart, Claudia Rankine, Roxane Gay, Sara Ahmed, June Jordan and Solange Knowles. Along the way we will note that these authors' and artists' contributions are varied and inconsistent. Rather than come away with a monolithic understanding of black feminist thinking about anger, students will learn to be alive to the differences in approaches and strategies represented by the materials under study here.