by Liza Taylor
Duke University Press
12/16/2022, paperback
SKU: 9781478019152
In Feminism in Coalition Liza Taylor examines how US women of color feminists' coalitional politics provides an indispensable resource to contemporary political theory, feminist studies, and intersectional social justice activism. Taylor charts the theorization of coalition in the work of Bernice Johnson Reagon, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, the Combahee River Collective, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and others. For these activist-scholars, coalition is a dangerous struggle that emerges from a shared political commitment to undermining oppression and an emphasis on self-transformation.
Taylor shows how their coalitional understandings of group politics, identity, consciousness, and scholarship have transformed how activists and theorists build alliances across race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, and ethnicity to tackle systems of domination. Their coalitional politics enrich current discussions surrounding the impetus and longevity of effective activism, present robust theoretical accounts of political subject formation and political consciousness, and demonstrate the promise of collective modes of scholarship. In this way, women of color feminists have been formulating solutions to long-standing problems in political theory. By illustrating coalition's vitality to a variety of practical and philosophical interdisciplinary discussions, Taylor encourages us to rethink feminist and political theory.
Reviews:
"Too often, even today, women of colors' work is used to illustrate, rather than to theorize. Liza Taylor avoids this trap; she honors and theorizes with women of colors' theories. Urgently calling for coalitional politics and providing a rarely considered perspective on US women of color texts, theories, and practices, Taylor offers a refreshing, much needed analysis that can open up identity politics. This book will invite a broad audience of feminist scholars in a range of fields." -- AnaLouise Keating, author of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook
About the Author:
Liza Taylor is Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.