Rev. Victoria M. Peagler, Ph.D, Fuller Theological Seminary,
School of Intercultural Studies, Pasadena, USA.
E-mail:
VPeagler@HFHI.org
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Abstract
Genderstroika: A New Missiological and Epistemology
Paradigm Proposal to
Womanist Theology
This paper seeks to awaken the consciousness of black women in
America, and ultimately, all black women irrespective of geography to move
beyond thinking from an ontological perspective to developing a new paradigm for
thinking about issues that affect black women’s personhood. In reaction to
patriarchy, and further, in an attempt to overcome the socially constructed,
dichotomous margin-centre paradigm that the feminist movement sought to overcome,
but currently works from within, the feminist movement did not reconcile the
tri-dimensional relationships of race, sex and class. This writer does not
totally embrace the tenets fostered by praxis Womanist theology, under the
pretence that they have the right agenda, simply because they are in opposition
to ‘feminist theology,’ which is viewed as white and racist. Rather, I pose
poignant questions that will elicit conceivable and attainable solutions that
can facilitate Womanist theology in transcending the multiplicity of
uncertainties that are couched within the idiom of ontological blackness - a
historical dilemma.
William Strickland (1990: 19), in an article that focused on Jesse Jackson and
the African American Agenda, used Gorbachev’s concept of “Perestroika” by
stating that there was “A need for ‘Black Perestroika’ (new thinking) regarding
America and the Intellectual Chaos.” I submit that such intellectual chaos is
but a fragment of the ongoing black dilemma in the USA. In this paper I
introduce the concept of “Gender Perestroika,” hereinafter articulated ‘Genderstroika,’
as a means of dealing with black female tri-dimensional aspects of oppression:
racism, classism and sexism. It is my hope that a global look at this ‘old but
new’ concept will lead to new impulses and liberational structures. Such
structures are indispensable elements for black women to move beyond the
challenges, hitherto maintained by white hegemony, feminism and white as well as
black male chauvinistic habitudes, in the new millennium.
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