Black Feminist Thought places multiple Black women's voices in conversation with one another, encompassing a collectivity-oriented citational practice that refuses the compulsory silencing of Black working-class women's voices. The text's strength lies within its polyvocal representations of an inclusive 'Black women's intellectual tradition.' 1 Over time, Black Feminist Thought's epistemological polyvocality has been heralded as emblematic of the potency of Black feminisms, and, conversely, persistently and subtly undermined within women's studies.Ĭrucial to Collins's project was troubling the imposed hierarchies among Black women's theoretical knowledge wherein academic knowledge was prized and privileged, and the vital, unique, experiential knowledges of the Black woman masses marginalized.

Collins's intentional centering of Black women's voices in order to theorize Black women's lived experiences offered a departure from feminist analyses rooted in the ostensibly unmarked category of 'woman' that tended to obscure racial, ethnic, and cultural differences, and from Black cultural studies frameworks that subordinated gender to race. Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought (1990) helped to announce and participated in a watershed moment in Black feminist theory, one that ushered in what might be understood as the era of intersectionality within women's studies.

Black feminist thought patricia collins