Womanist theology, epistemology, and a new anthropological paradigm

Cross Currents, Winter, 1998 by Linda E. Thomas

Such a reconstructed knowledge (e.g., an epistemology of holistic inclusivity, survival, and liberation) serves as a heuristic for the broader notion of recreating knowledge and thereby offers some elements for a theoretical conversation. Womanist epistemological insights suggest the importance of commencing with all who have been left out of reflection upon a society, both its past and present.

The current state of womanist theology and its implications for larger reconstructed knowledge conversations are advanced further with an imaginative womanist anthropological paradigm. Here we note the importance of secondary materials about African American women, but underscore the decisive role of fieldwork among poor and working-class black women living today. Out of an emphasis on their historical and cultural specificities and the impact of political economy, a creative model emerges where the voices and meaning of the anthropological subjects themselves move to the foreground. And simultaneously the power of the womanist religious scholar, as researcher, does not impede the presentation of data which invites the reader of ethnographic work to enter the interpretive dialogue with the voices of marginalized black women.

Bibliography

Andersen, Margaret L., and Patricia Hill Collins, eds. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1992.

Cabral, Amilcar. Return to the Source. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973.

hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1988.

Marcus, George E., and M. Fischer. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Thornton, R. "Culture." In South African Keywords, ed. E. Boonzaier and E. Sharp. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988, pp. 17-28.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Notes

1. See Rosaldo 1989:x for details about Stanford University's "Western Culture Controversy."

2. See Marcus and Fischer 1986:25 for an analysis of interpretative anthropology.

3. For an explanation for how anthropological theory has accented the subject's own life story, see Marcus and Fischer's discussion of the "native point of view" (1986:25).

4. Marcus and Fischer (1986:25-44) summarize two approaches to anthropological methodology. One deals with interpretation which accents culture (i.e., values) and the other underscores the relationship between particular ethnographies and global economies.

LINDA E. THOMAS is Assistant Professor of Theology and Anthropology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.