Womanist and feminist aesthetics
Subtitle: a comparative review
By: Tuzyline Jita Allan.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 152
Subjects: Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941.; Drabble, Margaret, 1939- ; Walker, Alice, 1944- ; Emecheta, Buchi.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Feminist fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Feminism and literature -- History -- 20th century.; Women and literature -- History -- 20th century.; Aesthetics, Modern -- 20th century.
Description: Alice Walker's womanist theory about black feminist identity and practice also contains a critique of white liberal feminism. This is the first in-depth study to examine issues of identity and difference within feminism by drawing on Walker's notion of an essential black feminist consciousness.

Allan defines womanism as a "(r)evolutionary aesthetic that seeks to fully realize the feminist goal of resistance to patriarchal domination," demonstrated most powerfully in The Color Purple. She also recognizes the complexities and ambiguities embedded in the concept, particularly the notion of a fixed and unitary black feminist identity, separate and distinct from its white counterpart. Woolf's Mrs.

Dalloway and Drabble's The Middle Ground, she argues, do not allay Walker's concerns about white liberal feminist practice, but they reveal signs of struggle that complicate the womanist/feminist dichotomy. Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, an ostensibly womanist text, fails to fit the race-restrictive womanist paradigm, and Walker's own aesthetic trajectory - before The Color Purple - places her outside womanist boundaries.

Finally, Allan's intertextual reading reveals significant commonalities and differences. In the current debate among competing feminisms, this critical appraisal of womanist theory underscores the need for new thinking about essentialism, identity, and difference, and also for creative cooperation in the struggle against domination.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [137]-148)  and index.