Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - András Tarnóc: Voices From the Wild Zone: Three Versions of the Feminist Aesthetic in American Culture

that sexual identity determines women's relationship to power, is nonessentialist. Black feminism deconstructs several myths. The abolition of slavery after the Civil War did not mean the liberation of black women. Unlike for black men, racism is not the sole concern for black women, as the elimination of racial discrimination would not put an end to sexism and sexual oppression. An additional damaging myth, not taking into consideration that the movement aims to improve the situation of all non-hegemonic groups, contends that the scope of black feminism is narrow (Smith XXVI-XXIX). The primary purpose of black feminist aesthetics is to struggle against the "simultaneity of oppression" (XXXII) based on interlocking modes of forcing black women into submission. Black feminism demonstrates that this "triple jeopardy" (XXXII) rests on race, class, and sexual orientation components. The movement, similarly to the black aesthetics, is a political program, rather than a means of evaluation of artistic products created by black women. As Smith asserts, black feminism emphasizes organizing and day-to-day activity over theory, and its primary concerns, home truths, include a wide range of issues from abortion through sexual harassment to welfare rights (XXXV). Black feminists reject the sexist blueprint for blackness created by the Black Power Movement and the black aesthetes (XL). Furthermore, the movement struggles against being viewed as the Other. Black feminists, unlike their white, middle class counterpart, do not fight against the black family, and similarly to Vécriture feminine believe in the existence of a black female language. The latter assertion is justified by Smith's discovery of a "specifically Black female language" in the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker (Toward a Black Feminist Criticism... 174). The black female aesthetician combats such stereotypical descriptions of African-American womanhood as the "mammy" and the "castrating matriarch." The former is represented by the cantankerous, yet well-meaning Mammy adored by Scarlett in Gone With The Wind (1939), by Idella in Ossie Davis' play "Purlie Victorious" (1961), or by Dilsey in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929), the latter is suggested by Nanny, the invincible grandmother in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Mama