Angela Davis
Race, class and gender work together as one system of domination, and prisons hide social problems rather than solving them.
Placement
Philosopher and activist, imprisoned 1970–72 and acquitted: race, class and gender form one system of domination; the prison does not solve social problems but hides them.
Key ideas
- Women, race and class
- Prison abolition
- Intersecting oppressions
Teachers: Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno
Influence
Influenced by 7
Frederick Douglass
influenced by
In her Lectures on Liberation (UCLA, 1969) Davis read Douglass’s Narrative (1845) as the slave’s path from awareness of bondage to resistance and self-liberation. A. Y. Davis, Lectures on Liberation (UCLA, 1969); F. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845); A. Y. Davis (ed.), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: A New Critical Edition (2010), with the 1969 lectures
Evidence: AI draft
Frederick Douglass › 1818–1895
Karl Marx
influenced by
In Women, Race & Class (1981) Davis analysed slavery and domestic labour in Marxist terms, arguing that socialising housework could free working-class women. A. Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (1981), “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective”
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Ida B. Wells
influenced by
In Women, Race & Class (1981) Davis drew on Wells’s anti-lynching pamphlets (1892–95) to expose the myth of the Black rapist as a pretext for racist terror. A. Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (1981), “Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist”; I. B. Wells, Southern Horrors (1892); A Red Record (1895)
Evidence: AI draft
Ida B. Wells › 1862–1931
Zora Neale Hurston
influenced by
In Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998) Davis drew on Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935) for hoodoo and folk tales, setting Hurston beside Bessie Smith. A. Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1998); Z. N. Hurston, Mules and Men (1935)
Evidence: AI draft
Zora Neale Hurston › 1891–1960
Herbert Marcuse studied with
studied with ✓
Davis attended Marcuse’s lectures at Brandeis as an undergraduate (BA 1965) and, after her Frankfurt years, followed him to the University of California, San Diego, to work towards a doctorate under him (MA 1968). A. Davis, An Autobiography (1974)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Herbert Marcuse › 1898–1979
Theodor W. Adorno studied with
studied with
On Marcuse’s advice Davis spent 1965–67 in Frankfurt, where she attended Adorno’s lectures and seminars at the university and the Institute for Social Research, before returning to work with Marcuse in San Diego. A. Davis, An Autobiography (1974)
Evidence: AI draft
Theodor W. Adorno › 1903–1969
Claudia Jones
influenced by
Davis drew on Claudia Jones in Women, Race and Class (1981), presenting her as a dedicated communist for whom socialism alone promised liberation for Black women. A. Davis, Women, Race and Class (1981); C. Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
Claudia Jones › 1915–1964
Influenced 1
Patricia Hill Collins
influenced ✓
Collins drew on Davis’s Women, Race & Class (1981) for the forced labour and sexual exploitation of enslaved Black women (Black Feminist Thought, 1990). P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990); A. Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (1981); “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves”, The Black Scholar 3 (1971)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Patricia Hill Collins › b. 1948
Works
From slavery to the suffrage movement: how racism and class divided feminism – and why liberation must be joint.
The prison-industrial complex and the case for abolition.
Position
Davis’s thought joins the Frankfurt School’s critical theory with the Black liberation movement. “Women, Race and Class” is a history of American feminism from abolitionism onward, showing how the suffrage movement abandoned Black women, how the myth of the Black rapist served lynching, and how reproductive rights have meant something different for women subjected to forced sterilisation. From her own imprisonment she developed a critique of the “prison-industrial complex”: prisons grow not because of crime but because they absorb people whom deindustrialisation and racism have made surplus, and they make social problems disappear from view. Abolition means building the institutions that would make prisons unnecessary.
Life & context
Angela Davis (born 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) studied at Brandeis with Herbert Marcuse, in Frankfurt with Adorno and Horkheimer, and in San Diego again with Marcuse. Dismissed from UCLA in 1969 for her membership of the Communist Party, she was placed on the FBI’s most-wanted list in 1970, imprisoned for sixteen months and acquitted of all charges in 1972. She taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, until 2008.
Further main works
- Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (2016)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Thinking Freedom’ · Stop 7 of 9
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