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Representative Women: Slavery, Citizenship, and Feminist Theory in Du Bois's "Damnation of Women"
- Hypatia
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 20, Number 3, Summer 2005
- pp. 127-148
- 10.1353/hyp.2005.0096
- Article
- Additional Information
In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.