Moments of becoming: genealogies of black diaspora feminism

Dr Nydia Swaby

Moving between past and present, narrative and theory, archive and ethnography, in this talk Nydia A. Swaby maps the genealogies of what she terms black / diaspora / feminism. Her usage of this concept is a decidedly epistemological proposition. She suggests particular ‘ways of knowing’ that consolidates black feminist consciousness with the idea of diaspora as a socio-political formation and the site for solidarity and resistance. She proposes this epistemology not to replace one type of black feminist episteme with another. Rather, she seeks to highlight a theory and praxis that refuses nativism, cultural nationalism, and ethnic authenticity by emphasizing that liberation can only be achieved if we imagine and seek to develop more inclusive modes of critical analysis. The knowledge created by black British feminism emphatically demonstrates this approach, which has, in turn, influenced Swaby's conceptualization of black / diaspora / feminism.