Ain't I a Womanist, Too?

Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought

Monica A. Coleman

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780800698768
• eBook ISBN: 9781451426427
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Third wave womanism is a new movement within religious studies with deep roots in the tradition of womanist religious thought—while also departing from it in key ways.

After a helpful and orienting introduction, this volume gathers essays from established and emerging scholars whose work is among the most lively and innovative scholarship today.

The result is a lively conversation in which 'to question is not to disavow; to depart is not necessarily to reject' and where questioning and departing are indications of the productive growth and expansion of an important academic and religious movement.

4

Politics

11

Aesthetic Pragmatism and a Third Wave of Radical Politics

Sharon D. Welch

In 1998, the sociologist Patricia Hill Collins sounded a clarion call for the revitalization of visionary pragmatism, a tradition deeply rooted in the African American tradition, but largely absent in many urban African American communities and sorely needed in progressive politics and in our common life. Collins advocates moving from the reactive stance of critique to the creative task of shaping policies and practices. She claims that “visionary pragmatism” cannot be reduced to a “predetermined destination,” but signifies participation in a larger, ongoing collective struggle: “Black women’s visionary pragmatism points to a vision, it doesn’t prescribe a fixed end point of a universal truth. One never arrives but one constantly strives.” Collins extols a pragmatism grounded in “deep love, intense connectedness and a recognition that those in the future will face struggles and challenges that we can neither imagine nor forestall.”^[1]

The visionary pragmatism described by Collins is essential for our work in this time of third wave political engagement, an era of activism that builds on the first two waves of radical politics and yet has its own energy, dynamics, and challenges.

The first wave of revolutionary politics was the forceful denunciation of the manifold forms of social injustice—slavery, the oppression of workers, and the secondary status of women—all forms of oppression defended for millennia as divinely ordained or part of the natural order of things.^[2]

These struggles for social justice have been augmented by a second wave of activism, the work of identity politics, the resolute claim for the complex identities and full humanity of all groups marginalized and exploited by systemic oppression and silenced through cultural imperialism, such as people with disabilities, those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, and all deprived of cultural respect and full political participation.

Within these two waves of political activism, people have exposed and denounced with power and courage the five forms of social injustice identified by the political philosopher Iris Marion Young: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.^[3]

While the critical work for social justice and for the full recognition and human rights for all peoples goes on, these tasks now occur within a third paradigm. Third wave radical politics is a response to the first two waves—to powerful declarations of defiance, rage, and joyous self-affirmation. Once we recognize that a situation is unjust, once we grant the imperative of including the voices and experiences of all peoples, how then do we work together to build just and creative institutions?

As we take up this creative task, we have much to learn from the visionary pragmatism analyzed by Patricia Hill Collins and manifest in the leadership of those who have led significant social change in the past (Nelson Mandela and Ronald Dellums, former Congressman and current mayor of Oakland) and in the leadership of one who may bring about significant social change in the present and future, President Barack Obama.

The leadership of Dellums, Mandela, and Obama is fueled by the intense connections highlighted by Collins, and by a lifelong commitment to human flourishing. What is remarkable, however, about the trajectory of the work of Dellums and Mandela is not only the depth of commitment but the duration of that commitment. When Mandela became one of the leaders of the African National Congress, the struggle for freedom in South Africa had been taking place for fifty years. His own work, from his first political involvement in the 1940s to his election as President in 1994, also spanned more than fifty years, including almost three decades spent in prison. In his autobiography, Mandela recounts the amount of creativity and time it took for even the most basic changes within the prison system, fifteen years to obtain the right to food that was equal in quality to that given white prisoners, twenty-six years to obtain access to newspapers.^[4]

In his work for social justice within the United States and internationally, Congressman Dellums was a stalwart supporter of the freedom struggle in South Africa, and worked for sixteen years before he was able to lead the U.S. in participating in the international pressure of sanctions that played a key role in the collapse of apartheid.^[5] In the case of President Obama, his leadership has just begun.

On an unseasonably warm fall evening in November 2008, I joined thousands of people in Grant Park, cheering the win in each state, and relishing the grand collective jubilation of shouts, dancing, cries, laughter, and hugs when the polls closed at 11:00 p.m. and we knew that we had done it.^[6] Three years after that momentous election, however, there is a complicated mix of determination, frustration, and confusion. How have the joyous cries of “Yes, we can!” become the painful realities of lowered expectations and blocked and only partial changes in political processes and policies?

Before the vote on healthcare reform, some analysts went so far as to pronounce the failure of the Obama presidency, and more than a few progressives agreed, many even expressing profound disillusionment with electoral politics and the existing democratic process as a venue for significant social change. What is it that made the struggle for even modest changes in healthcare policy so difficult and so deeply contentious? What has made it so difficult to reach a national consensus on governmental responses to the shared recognition of economic crisis?

What has occurred since President Obama was elected is indeed unsettling and sobering, but it is also predictable and unsurprising to those who know the complexities of institutional change.

It is a painful fact that to care passionately about justice—to understand thoroughly the contours and dynamics of oppression—does not mean that we are equally skilled in the task of coordinating and managing human and natural resources justly, creatively, and in a way that lasts for the future. As an activist, I have seen the impact of speaking truth to power: the inspiration and sense of identity evoked by clarion denunciations of injustice and faithful witness to ideals of justice and peace. As we take up the task of using power truthfully, however, we recognize that the work is not done when the protests are heard. Rather it is here, it is now, that another type of work begins.

The move from knowing what should be done to actually getting it done is as great a shift ethically and philosophically as is the move from is to ought. For here, as we move from ought to how, we encounter a paradox. Not only does work for constructive social change take significant amounts of time, but there are also intrinsic differences between prophetic critique/vision and democratic leadership. We may critique alone and we may even envision alone, but to implement that vision, to build on that critique, requires the cooperation of other people—other people to actually carry out the work on a daily basis, other people to judge, refine, and critique new systems and processes. And, as you may have noticed, other people tend to have different ideas—not only different ideas of how to meet shared goals, but possibly better ideas about the most fitting, concrete ways to administer healthcare, or to support ecologically sustainable forms of energy production.

Furthermore, as we implement new forms of social organization, there is one type of response that can be reasonably expected and anticipated, the ubiquitous Western resistance to social change. Professors at Booth, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, teach courses in which leaders in corporations, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions grapple with the complexities of social change. We often expect that a successful innovation will follow a steady trajectory, gradually and inexorably moving from little knowledge and little acceptance to being taken for granted as the way things are done. The researchers at Booth, however, found just the opposite in their study of successful business practices. While lasting innovations had an initial rush of success, this was followed by a dramatic decrease in support and a long period of intense resistance and uneven movement toward acceptance. Their conclusion: resistance cannot be prevented, but it can be overcome, possibly even taken as a catalyst for greater insight and creativity.^[7]

There are indications that this may well be a longstanding pattern in Western culture. The words of Machiavelli, in The Prince, are instructive:

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. . . . Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly.^[8]

Machiavelli certainly helps us understand why the supporters of President Obama’s healthcare reform and other policy initiatives have been relatively silent in contrast to those who fiercely resist any reform. And yet, it could be that the relative lack of passionate support for change is grounded as much in reason as in incredulity. In addition to known limits, any course of action may have devastating unintended consequences. It is in light of this reality that ecologists such as Anna Peterson (in Being Human) and Wes Jackson call us to a fallibility-based worldview: an acknowledgment that all that we know—whether through the resources of reason, imagination, intuition, or compassion—is partial, always vastly exceeded by that which we do not know.^[9] For example, we can only ever have partial knowledge of the long-term impact of our agricultural and industrial practices, the ripple effects of changes in social and economic policies, and the unpredictable consequences of our attempts to nurture and sustain the generations that depend upon us.

Let us return to the question of the Obama presidency. Has the Obama administration failed? Are there any other strategies that could have ensured greater success? If Machiavelli and the researchers a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Introduction: Ain’t I a Womanist Too?
• Religious Pluralism
• Popular Culture
• Gender and Sexuality
• Politics