Inside the Body of Black Feminism

Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Material and Metaphor 1 Part I. Bones and Blood: Black Feminist Thought and the Interior Infrastructures of History 1. Bones: Black Feminism and the Metaphor of History 25 2. Blood: Your Mother's Hematology 47 Part II. Brains and Hearts: Reimagining the Pedagogies of Dissent 3. Brains: Thinking Reparation and the Antiracist Cure 77 4. Hearts: Reading Racial Feeling and the Politics of Circulation 95 Part III. Guts and Wombs: Black Feminism after Autonomy 5. Guts: Metabolizing Racial Violence, Making the Black Feminist Self 119 6. Wombs: Reproducing Black Feminism and the Knot of Autonomy 145 Conclusion. Tender: On Black Feminist Method 169 Notes 173 Bibliography 185 Index

"In asking what the truth of the interior parts of a Black 'self' might reveal, Samantha Pinto contests assumptions about proper objects, investigates the boundary of metaphor and its constraints, and pushes us to reevaluate what's at stake in a particular kind of Black Feminist critique."-Sharon P. Holland, author of an other: black feminist consideration of animal life "With a deep commitment to material and metaphor, Pinto takes us through the thoroughly racialized history of the black body-organ by organ. Weaving and reweaving the grammar and narrative of flesh and bones, this is an interdisciplinary tour-de-force! A must read for our times."-Banu Subramaniam, author of Botany of Empire