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The Angela Y. Davis Reader
For three decades, Angela Y. Davis has written on liberation theory and democratic praxis. Challenging the foundations of mainstream discourse, her analyses of culture, gender, capital, and race have profoundly influenced democratic theory, antiracist feminism, critical studies and political struggles.
Even for readers who primarily know her as a revolutionary of the late 1960s and early 1970s (or as a political icon for militant activism) she has greatly expanded the scope and range of social philosophy and political theory. Expanding critical theory, contemporary progressive theorists - engaged in justice struggles - will find their thought influenced by the liberation praxis of Angela Y. Davis.
The Angela Y. Davis Reader presents eighteen essays from her writings and interviews which have appeared in If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Black Women and the Blues as well as articles published in women's, ethnic/black studies and communist journals, and cultural studies anthologies. In four parts - "Prisons, Repression, and Resistance", "Marxism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism", "Aesthetics and Culture", and recent interviews - Davis examines revolutionary politics and intellectualism.
Davis's discourse chronicles progressive political movements and social philosophy. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary political philosophy, critical race theory, social theory, ethnic studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural theory, feminist philosophy, gender studies.
Even for readers who primarily know her as a revolutionary of the late 1960s and early 1970s (or as a political icon for militant activism) she has greatly expanded the scope and range of social philosophy and political theory. Expanding critical theory, contemporary progressive theorists - engaged in justice struggles - will find their thought influenced by the liberation praxis of Angela Y. Davis.
The Angela Y. Davis Reader presents eighteen essays from her writings and interviews which have appeared in If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Black Women and the Blues as well as articles published in women's, ethnic/black studies and communist journals, and cultural studies anthologies. In four parts - "Prisons, Repression, and Resistance", "Marxism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism", "Aesthetics and Culture", and recent interviews - Davis examines revolutionary politics and intellectualism.
Davis's discourse chronicles progressive political movements and social philosophy. It is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary political philosophy, critical race theory, social theory, ethnic studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural theory, feminist philosophy, gender studies.
379 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 1998
17 people are currently reading
2123 people want to read
About the author
Angela Y. Davis
127 books7,597 followersAngela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.
Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 21, 2020
Loved this so much. It's hard to find political theory that synthesizes gender, race, and economics so successfully.
November 21, 2016
Some of the highlights for me were:
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.
August 30, 2014
I had to digest this in small chunks, because I don't have the most academic of backgrounds and parts were pretty dense, but it was so worth it. Angela Davis is phenomenal as both an academic and an activist.
August 13, 2007
Angela Davis explains the reasons for not idolizing the work of activists in the 60's. She gives a good history of female involvement in the black panther party, and the rebirth of slavery in the united states.
January 8, 2008
angela davis. always on point.
February 28, 2008
Angela Davis disects the connections between sexism, racism, capitalism. Interesting and important stuff.
June 12, 2017
Wish I read it five years ago. Something I'll be going back to for a long time. Some, of many, still quotes that still stick to this American moment:
“Political Prisoners, Prisoners, and Black Liberation” (1971)
"Official assertions that meaningful dissent is always welcome, provided it falls within the boundaries of legality, are frequently a smokescreen obscuring the invitation to acquiesce in oppression." 39
"Likewise, the significance of activities which are pursued in the interests of liberation today is minimized not so much because officials are unable to see the collective surge against oppression, but because they have consciously set out to subvert such movements." (43)
"Whenever blacks in struggle have recourse to self-defense, particularly armed self-defense, it is twisted and distorted on official levels and ultimately rendered synonymous with criminal aggression. On the other hand, when policemen are clearly indulging in acts of criminal aggression, officially they are defending themselves through ‘justifiable assault or ‘justifiable homicide’."(43)
"Contained in the very concept of property, crimes are profound but suppressed social needs which express themselves in anti-social modes of action." (45)
"If one-third of America’s white youths were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism." (48)
“Unfinished Lecture on Liberation – II” (1969)
"One of the striking paradoxes of the bourgeois ideological tradition resides in an enduring philosophical emphasis on the idea of freedom alongside an equally pervasive failure to acknowledge the denial of freedom to entire categories of real, social human beings.” (53)
“From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison” (1998)
"When the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865, thus legally abolishing the slave economy, it also contained a provision that was universally celebrated as a declaration of the unconstitutionality of peonage. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added). That exception would render penal servitude constitutional – from 1865 to the present day.”
"Cheryl Harris argues that a property interest in whiteness emerged from the conditions of slavery and that 'owning white identity as property affirmed the self-identity and liberty of whites and, conversely, denied the self-identity of blacks'." (83)
“Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”
“If, as Foucault insists, the locus of the new European mode of punishment shifted from the body to the soul, black slaves in the US were largely perceived as lacking the soul that might be shaped and transformed by punishment.” (99)
"There was no reference to imprisonment in the US Constitution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment declared chattel slavery unconstitutional." (99)
“JoAnne Little: The Dialectics of Rape” (1975)
"The social incentive given to rape is woven into the logic of the institutions of this society. It is an extremely efficient means of keeping women in a state of fear of rape or of the possibility of it. It is, as Susan Griffin wrote, “a form of mass terrorism.” 158
“The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” (1981)
"For black women today and for all their working-class sisters, the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized—and all these services should be readily accessible to working-class people" (199)
“Political Prisoners, Prisoners, and Black Liberation” (1971)
"Official assertions that meaningful dissent is always welcome, provided it falls within the boundaries of legality, are frequently a smokescreen obscuring the invitation to acquiesce in oppression." 39
"Likewise, the significance of activities which are pursued in the interests of liberation today is minimized not so much because officials are unable to see the collective surge against oppression, but because they have consciously set out to subvert such movements." (43)
"Whenever blacks in struggle have recourse to self-defense, particularly armed self-defense, it is twisted and distorted on official levels and ultimately rendered synonymous with criminal aggression. On the other hand, when policemen are clearly indulging in acts of criminal aggression, officially they are defending themselves through ‘justifiable assault or ‘justifiable homicide’."(43)
"Contained in the very concept of property, crimes are profound but suppressed social needs which express themselves in anti-social modes of action." (45)
"If one-third of America’s white youths were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism." (48)
“Unfinished Lecture on Liberation – II” (1969)
"One of the striking paradoxes of the bourgeois ideological tradition resides in an enduring philosophical emphasis on the idea of freedom alongside an equally pervasive failure to acknowledge the denial of freedom to entire categories of real, social human beings.” (53)
“From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison” (1998)
"When the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865, thus legally abolishing the slave economy, it also contained a provision that was universally celebrated as a declaration of the unconstitutionality of peonage. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added). That exception would render penal servitude constitutional – from 1865 to the present day.”
"Cheryl Harris argues that a property interest in whiteness emerged from the conditions of slavery and that 'owning white identity as property affirmed the self-identity and liberty of whites and, conversely, denied the self-identity of blacks'." (83)
“Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”
“If, as Foucault insists, the locus of the new European mode of punishment shifted from the body to the soul, black slaves in the US were largely perceived as lacking the soul that might be shaped and transformed by punishment.” (99)
"There was no reference to imprisonment in the US Constitution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment declared chattel slavery unconstitutional." (99)
“JoAnne Little: The Dialectics of Rape” (1975)
"The social incentive given to rape is woven into the logic of the institutions of this society. It is an extremely efficient means of keeping women in a state of fear of rape or of the possibility of it. It is, as Susan Griffin wrote, “a form of mass terrorism.” 158
“The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” (1981)
"For black women today and for all their working-class sisters, the notion that the burden of housework and childcare can be shifted from their shoulders to the society contains one of the radical secrets of women’s liberation. Childcare should be socialized, meal preparation should be socialized, housework should be industrialized—and all these services should be readily accessible to working-class people" (199)
January 19, 2021
This book has SO MANY GEMS in it. I literally went through with a highlighter like in college. However, also like college reading, it can be quite dense! But if you’re fine with that (or break it up into smaller bits), there is certainly a lot of mind blowing wisdom here.
August 27, 2020
This is comprehensive insight into black and brown lives and the mechanics of their subjugation. It is a sobering read to be frank.
February 5, 2017
The writing in this book emotionally charged me up in so many ways-racism, sexism, the court systems, roots of black people's current daily struggles emanating from violent slavery history...
Next on my list will be her autobiography. Below are two quotes that very relevant today
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. "
"I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement." Angela Davis
Next on my list will be her autobiography. Below are two quotes that very relevant today
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. "
"I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement." Angela Davis
January 17, 2008
awesome
Read
October 24, 2022Good mix of historical information and philosophical/ ideological analysis of race, gender and class. Includes Angela Davis' opening defense statement.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews