Black feminism as both ‘diacritical’ and ‘demonic’

Prelude to the Demonic and Diacritical

Sylvia Wynter’s (1990) work ‘Beyond Miranda’s Meanings: Un/Silencing the ‘Demonic Ground’ of Caliban’s ‘Woman’’ is a work of complex layered commentary on a ‘consolidated field’ (S. Wynter 1990: 357) called feminism or perhaps more accurately put, ‘white’ feminism. Wynter argues that due to the Black figure being beyond Miranda’s meaning, once introduced to the consolidated field of feminism, such a field becomes diacritical and demonic in its nature. This essay will give evidence to why the presence and experiences of the black woman adds a diacritical marker to mainstream feminism, changing its accent and giving way to a new course of thinking. Throughout the essay, reference to Sylvia Wynter (1990) work and many scholars alike will be used to consider the extent to which I agree with this characterization.

This essay will include the work of Bell Hooks (1982) ‘Ain’t I a Woman: Black Woman and Feminism’ to critique the flaws present in dominant feminism and its active roll in marginalizing/silencing the voices of black women in the American women’s right movement whilst giving evidence to how the impact of colonization and sexism stifled any meaningful contribution to the feminist struggle during the 1900s from black women. Furthermore, the additional work of Hortense Spillers (1987) ‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book’ will give context to why the black women's experiences and presence are diacritical and demonic by highlighting the tribulations of enslavement that has led the figure of the black woman to be beyond Miranda meaning. Both Bell Hooks (1982) and Hortense Spillers (1987) will be used to show evidence to why I agree to Wynter’s characterization of black feminism being demonic and diacritical.

Before a literature review begins, I think it is important to mention the analogy of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ (1623) used throughout Sylvia Wynter’s After/word. The semblance between ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Beyond Miranda’s Meaning: Un/Silencing the ‘Demonic Grounds’ of Caliban’ is more than just a play on words but instead, Wynter’s use of such a text is utilized as a totem of “western” thinking and how ‘Western culture on various levels - sex, race, and class to name a few’ (B. Hooks 1982: 194) populates the world. This semblance between the two texts is the first grounding work Wynter gives us before introducing us to a radical proposal.Sylvia Wynter grounds us through nodes of symbolism, beginning with Miranda, the figure who symbolizes the white woman and her “universal” experiences. Then there is Caliban, the figure of the Black man, the captured slave to Prosperos who epitomizes the white man in Shakespeare’s comedy. He, the man who colonizes the land of Caliban and subjugates Caliban. But throughout Shakespeare’s comedy, there is no mention of Caliban’s woman, Miranda has Properos as an ally, where is Caliban's ally? There is no figure/ character to depict the Black woman. Wynter’s (1990) analogy to ‘The Tempest’ marks an issue of presence which Wynter repeats throughout her essay. The’ question of presence’ (G. Lewis 2017) Wynter is addressing is central to the black feminist struggle, being absent from mainstream feminism marks one out of many issues to why it is flawed, a more reason to why Wynter characterises black feminism as demonic and diacritical.

Sylvia Wynter’s (1990) After/Word proposes that the consolidated field of feminism does not imagine the figure of the Black woman, ‘she is outside the bounds of reason’ (K. McKittrick 2006: XXV), her experiences are ‘too “alien” to comprehend’ (A. Lorde c1990: 283). This semblance is the base of Wynter’s argument, due to the figure of the black woman being beyond Miranda’s comprehension. Therefore, once introduced to mainstream feminism, the nature of this field becomes engaged with a different and wider set of concerns which theorizes the making and living of gendered lives through the prism of racialization, ‘racial categories’ (A.M. Gilliam c2001: 83), and racism. It is with these characterizations the Black woman brings to the field of feminism in contrast to the ‘White feminist’ (B. Hooks 1982: 188) that Sylvia Wynter (1990) describes Black Feminism as demonic and diacritical.

Demonic and Diacritical: A Brief Explanation

Demonic and Diacritical, these are the terms used by Sylvia Wynter (1990) to help us understand both the specificity of Black Feminism and what introducing the figure of the Black woman can and does do to the dominant ideology of feminism, feminism understood through a ‘consolidated field’ (S. Wynter 1990: 357). Wynter’s use of the terms is calculated, beginning with “demonic” a term that serves more than one meaning. At the outset, Wynter describes her After/Word as being from the ‘demonic grounds’ (356) grounds that operate outside mainstream feminist ‘present governing system of meaning, or theory/ontology…’ (S. Wynter 1990: 356). Drawing from theories established by Physicists who conceptualize that a demonic schema operates ‘outside the space-time orientation of the homuncular observer’ (K. McKittrick 2006: XXV), Black feminism operates with this demonic schema, operating beyond Miranda’s meaning, for Miranda the demonic ground is a field of uncertainty, ambiguous of what it will become. The demonic grounds are capable of establishing ‘a slightly different conceptual pathway’ (K. McKittrick 2006: XXV) a pathway that offers the voices of the subaltern presence in their absence (G. Lewis 2017, G. Spivak 2009).

Diacritical markers change the way you pronounce a letter  (this is a demonstration of a diacritical marker to the letter O - Ó). Like the diacritical mark placed on a letter in a word, the entirety of the word is changed, there is now an accent. Wynter’s choice of diacritical is an example of what happens when ‘the absented presence of black womanhood’ (K. McKittrick 2006: XXV) is introduced to dominant feminism. Sylvia Wynter (1990) achieves this accent by contesting the term “feminist” with the qualifier “womanist” (S. Wynter 1990: 356), this qualifier ‘expresses the paradoxical relation of Sameness and Difference’ (S. Wynter 1990: 356), this paradoxical relation is represented through the analogy of the diacritical marker, may it be the same word, but the marker gives it to another meaning, it is pronounced differently. The diacritical term womanist as Wynter states ‘can only be projected from a “demonic model” (S. Wynter 1990: 364) as the ‘marked woman’ (H. Spiller 1987: 64) like the diacritical term womanist brings forth a different and wider set of concerns. These sets of concerns are ruminations of the making and living of gendered lives through the prism of racialization, and the production of intersectional thought (K. Crenshaw 1989), enslavement (B. Bakare Yusuf c1999, H. Spiller 1987) and the racism that led to ‘the plot of her undoing’ (S. Hartman 2019: 1).

How is Black Feminism Demonic and Diacritical?

Sylvia Wynter’s (1990) proposition of Black feminism being ‘demonic and diacritical’ opens up the question of which direction does Black feminism plan on heading? Is there a direction to begin with or was Wynter’s statement on White feminism just a statement on its flaws? Considering the clearing work Sylvia Wynter (1990) has done in defining and introducing a new marker called ‘womanist’ (using Spillers term ‘marked’ (1987:64) and like Wynter making it diacritic, giving it new meaning from its abjected intention) Black feminism can be perceived as a ‘Black feminist project’ or as Patricia Hill Collins phrases it, ‘Black Feminist Thought’ (P.H. Collins 2000) which aims to introduce a previously silenced voice (from the demonic grounds) outside the universal category of “Woman” and along with it brings forth the conversation of race, gender, sex, class (the diacritical markers), to differentiate itself from its counterpart dominant feminism which does not achieve this. 
To follow this line of thought I will be looking into the writings of Bell Hooks (1982) ‘Ain’t I a Woman: Black Woman and Feminism’ as well as Hortense Spillers (1987) ‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book’. Both texts will be compared to demonstrate the wider set of concerns the black feminist project aims to address as well as evincing its prospectives. Furthermore, the use of both texts will echo Sylvia Wynter’s (1990) statement of Black feminism being demonic and diacritical as both texts operate beyond Miranda’s meaning, both Black feminist scholars are concerned with the intersections of race, sex, gender to name a few.

Bell Hooks (1982) informs us about how racism and sexism are a contributing factor in dominant feminism’s Othering. Dominant feminism actively ‘overlooks and excludes the efforts of black women in the discussion of the American women’s rights movement.’ (B. Hooks 1982: 160). Unlike their white counterparts who did not struggle with the systemic and ideological pain of racism, black women were unable to have a presence in the American women’s rights movement. Hooks specifies that both white and black women had shared goals of liberating American society of ‘male chauvinism’ (B. Hooks 1982: 161) yet certain concerns on racism remained “beyond Miranda’s meaning”/understanding of the world. White feminists assumed that black women were not interested in the resistance of male chauvinism and women’s liberation, yet white women’s dominancy in feminism is not a sign of black women’s disintrest towards the feminist struggle but further proof that the ‘politics of colonization and racial imperialism have made it historically impossible for black women in the united states to lead a woman’s movement’  (B. Hooks 1982: 161). Due to the impact of colonialization and racial imperialism, the issues black women faced led black feminism to deal with the social inequality that their white feminist homologous contributes to. With an ‘apartheid social structure’ (B. Hooks 1982: 163) black women had to focus on themselves from the demonic grounds as Sylvia Wynter (1990) would state.

The direction of dominant feminism had a destination where it did not image the black woman as they refused to recognize the racial oppression they faced and which they contributed to. Dominant feminism verbalized radical blandishments on resistance, revolution, and meaningful change but hypocritically pursued to establish itself and its doctrine within the elitist ‘capitalist patriarchal system which is essentially corrupt’ (B. Hooks 1982: 191). Such radical blandishment masked the true intention of dominant feminism, intentions ‘merely to fill the shoes of the men who block their way instead of devising alternative social structures’ (B. Guy-Sheftall & M.K. Mootry Ikerionwu 1983: 86). Hook’s concludes that the consolidated field of feminism should not just be a two-dimensional effort in tearing down male chauvinism or neither a movement that places equal footing for men and women but instead a ‘commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels - sex, race, and class...’ (B. Hooks 1982: 194) a diacritic statement which Hooks projects from the demonic grounds she operates in. Bell Hooks’s direction for the Black feminist project is a direction where black women have a presence in the feminist struggle and do not go unrecognized.

Like Bell Hooks (1982), Hotense Spiller (1987)  also take on the issue of racism as well as the issue of gendering. Spillers highlights the dehumanization of enslavement by providing accounts of ways in which the ‘deconstruction of the subject also entailed a deconstruction of gendered categories’ (B. Bakare-Yusuf c1999 on Spillers: 311 ). She argues, through all the ways in which the Black women’s bodies were treated during the capture of enslavement and indeed named, Black women were in fact ungendered as a consequence of enslavement, during and after. As she famously states, ‘I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name. “Peaches” and “Brown Sugar,” “Sapphire” and “Earth Mother”...’ (H. Spillers 1987: 64). Named and desubjectified, the torture of enslavement that Hortense Spillers (1982) highlights further adds to Bell Hooks (1982) arguement of dominant feminism disregarding the vile impact of colonization and racial imperalism which is embedded in our societies. In addition to reinforcing Sylvia Wynter’s statement of black feminism being Demonic and diacritical. Due to colonial persecutions, when you introduce the figure of the black woman to the consolidated field of feminism, it therefore becomes diacritical as well as demonic as the direction and prior destination of feminism has changed.

The direction Spillers takes us on is a direction where we must look back to move forward. One must understand the tribulations of enslavement that has led to the figure of the black woman being beyond Miranda’s meaning. Spillers (1987) stressed how the Middle Passage rendered the black woman ‘the quintessential “slave”’ (H. Spillers 1987: 73). Sexism as well as racism has been deconstructing her subjecthood forcing the black woman to occupy less room through the Middle Passage as she was seen as less of a “product” than her fellow black man. Hortense Spillers (1987) wants us to recognise the plot of her undoing.  Spillers (1987) commentary on dominant feminism is found in her description of enslavement and its afterlife. Even though the ‘captive flesh/body has been “liberated”...the ruling episteme that releases the dynamics of naming and valuation’ (H. Spiller 1987: 68) still run amok, captivity and the maiming of colonization has taken a new form, whether it be the negative stereotyping of nominal categories or policies and ‘welfare reforms’ (D.A. Davis c2006) put in place to reinforce structural inequality. Spillers (1987) alludes to how the black woman's captivity has moved from the slave ship's main deck to the ‘wake’ (C. Sharpe 2016) of the ship, even though there is space ‘to generate presence in absence’ (G. Lewis 2017: 4) within the wake, Hortense Spillers (1987) reminds us that the hauntings of the slave ship and the Middle Passage have rendered the Black woman still the quintessential slave. This is an issue dominant feminism refuses to address or consider, claiming it corrupt like Bell Hooks (1982) argued. By acknowledging the existence of enslavement and its afterlife, the presence of the black woman therefore becomes the diacritical marker to dominant feminism giving way to a new direction, becoming demonic as Sylvia Wynter noted.

Conclusion

The figure of the black woman, the ontological being of the black woman immediately interrupts and introduces a problematic into the consolidated field of feminism.  It introduces a new subject with her own concerns, this is a subject who, because she is demonic or comes from demonic grounds is both unknown but also the outcome of introducing her is uncertain. So the black Feminist project becomes uncertain, the accent changes because she begins to articulate from the silenced ground that she came from, she articulates another voice. Black feminism has managed to introduce the silenced voices outside the universal category of ‘Woman’ through the intersectional lens of racism, sex and gender. A feat that dominant feminism could not achieve as it denied and refused the existence of these silenced voices.
This is evident in both Bell Hooks (1982) and Hortense Spillers (1987) essays on black feminism, giving way to a new direction for feminism to take, changing dominant feminisms from its prior corrupted route that led to a destination where the black woman would not be imagined. Sylvia Wynter was right to characterise black feminism as demonic and diacritical as such traits have managed to uncover many underlying issues that have rooted itself into civil society and fields of knowledge production. Like Sylvia Wynter (1990) I agree that black feminism being demonic and diacritical has led the black feminist project on a course different from domninant femininsm but on a course that will provide an alternative social structure where the figure of the black women is no longer beyond Miranda’s meaning. This will require a lot of labour, emotional labour as well as spiritual labour but labour that will be worth every hour.











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