Week 5: Black Feminism and the Caribbean

     From the very beginning both Gina Ulysse and Barriteau state that it is their duty to represent their people in the Caribbean.  Ulysse states, "For me, the difficulty of occupying this slot of 'representative other' is many fold.  I present it here in terms of two interwoven threads.  The first is the politics that brought me to anthropology the second is my position as a so-called native within the discipline" (2).  Similarly, Barriteau stated that, "As a precondition to problemitzing the intersection where my multiple identities meet Caribbean realities, I believe I have a responsibility to generate new knowledge about Caribbean societies" (11).  And while each may have felt duty bound to be the token child of Caribbean culture, how is it that they believe that they have the right to speak on other's behave?  Ulysse harkens to Gloria Anzaldua's call to action.  Her method to giving other's a voice without narrating for them is through the use of reflexivity.  Barriteau claims the right to speak on the grounds that black feminism and its contributions have gone unnoticed by (white) feminists.  Ulysse's provides specifically to ICIs of Jamaica while Barriteau focuses on black feminist scholarship at large.
     Uylsse points out that many divisions between women in Jamaica including higglers and "rude gals," ladies and women, visible ICIs and invisible ICIs, and colored women and black women.  She explains how overarching themes of race and class affected all these categories.  For instance, visible ICI Mrs. C "is dark skinned and describes herself as black.  She comes from a lower-class family and considers herself a lady" (140).  In a similar course, Barriteau claims that identity politics is a central concern for feminism and feminist theory in the Caribbean.  Are they suggesting that identity politics is more fundamental to women in the Caribbean and black women in general?  Is it because these women are more likely to be on display, performing their roles?  Indeed, Ulysse's claims that ICIs are hyper visible.  "One of the consequences of this hypervisiblity is that the ICI is not only 'out of place,' but is also perceived as not knowing her place" (53).  Barriteau's is more problematic case.  She claims that black feminist scholarship has added much to feminist scholarship overall but has gone unnoticed.  How could it have gone unnoticed if it has changed the way feminism is understood and understanding themselves and others?  If black scholarship was truly ignored by feminist scholarship then it would not have changed such thing as methodological approaches to research and theory.  On some level it had to be acknowledged as viable.  Indeed, she states that "Feminist knowledge and feminist methodologies change when the specificity of the lives of black women/minority women/marginalized women inform feminist theory" (16).  Similarly, Ulysse wanted to change her anthropological approach in order to be better informed by black women's experiences.  This is evident in how ICIs mistrusted researchers because they would never come back and are perceived to not care or value their subject.  Indeed, there is a distance (a hierarchy) created between interviewer and interviewee.  How does one dismantle this hierarchy?  Should it be dismantled?