Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a Radical African Feminist Life

Citation:

McFadden, Patricia. 2018. "Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a Radical African Feminist Life." Meridians 17 (2): 415-31.

Author: Patricia McFadden

Abstract:

This essay theorizes contemporarity as a new framework for Black feminist resistances—personal and sociopolitical—and explores reimagined lived realities as a crucial site for the generation of new feminist epistemologies and alternative ways of living. Given the failures of neocolonial and neoliberal state regimes across the African continent and the globe to respond equitably to the imperatives of human emancipation, the paper argues for a return to and closer interrogation of personal politics and feminist relationships to the self and the ecosystems that nurture both. The challenge is to find new sources of creative imaginaries and resistance that will lead to the unfolding of discourses, practices, and ways of living that offer an alternative to neoliberal capitalism. From the experience of sustaining oneself through ecological balance, a respectful interaction with nature, and nonmarket practices of sufficiency, the paper proposes to glean the knowledge and inherent integrity embedded in such processes to create new radical social knowledge and practices.

Keywords: contemporarity, alternatives, sufficiency, nature, vegan

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender Mainstreaming, Race Regions: Africa

Year: 2018