Devon Moore
Revisiting Joan Scott’s “The Evidence of Experience” through the Lens of Patricia Hill Collin’s Black Feminist Standpoint Theory; And Other Lessons on Experience
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Revisiting Joan Scott’s “The Evidence of Experience” through the Lens of Patricia Hill Collin’s Black Feminist Standpoint Theory; And Other Lessons on Experience
I argue that part of the work of charting feminist futures and navigating our contemporary sociocultural moment is to be recuperative of historical, theoretical, and philosophical lessons about experience so as to adeptly elucidate the implications of denying its relevance. To do that I analyze how Joan Scott renders the problematics of experience in her influential essay “The Evidence of Experience.” I highlight the implications of what Joan Scott calls “transparent vision” and problematize Scott’s argument by asking who—by virtue of identity and experience—is afforded so-called transparent vision? Then I complexify Scott’s insights about experience by close reading texts by two philosophers of Black experiences—DuBois and Wilderson. Through the interventions of Patricia Hill Collins, I argue that experience is often only called out as experience when it might articulate a line of sight that could pose a challenge to absolute perspectivity. Ultimately, adding to Johanna Oksala’s argument “In Defense of Experience,” I argue for a necessity to remember the theorizing of Black feminist thinkers such as Patricia Hill Collins whose work demonstrates why attentiveness to experience does not necessitate essentializing notions of identity or a deadening of liberatory potential, but are indeed necessary for that potential.