Black Feminist Thought

A study by an American sociologist, subtitled Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Collins argues that Black women in the United States have produced a body of thought, found in the work of intellectuals but also in blues, literature and everyday wisdom, that is excluded from the academy. She describes Black women as outsiders within, placed inside white institutions such as domestic service and universities without belonging to them, which gives them a distinct angle of vision. Part of the book analyses the controlling images, such as the mammy, the matriarch, the welfare mother and the jezebel, that justify Black women's oppression. Further chapters cover work, family, motherhood, sexuality, love and activism. She sets out a Black feminist epistemology that values lived experience, dialogue, an ethic of caring and personal accountability. Oppressions of race, gender and class, she argues, interlock within a matrix of domination, a theme expanded in the 2000 edition.

It is a foundational work of intersectional theory, and its ideas of the matrix of domination and controlling images are widely used across philosophy, sociology and politics.