Ain't I a Womanist, Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought

11 Aesthetic Pragmatism and a Third Wave of Radical Politics

11 Aesthetic Pragmatism and a Third Wave of Radical Politics Sharon D. Welch In 1998, the sociologist Patricia Hill Collins sounded a clarion call for the revitalization of visionary pragmatism, a tradition deeply rooted in the African American tradition, but largely absent in many urban African American communities and sorely needed in progressive politics and in our common life. Collins advocates moving from the reactive stance of critique to the creative task of shaping policies and practices. She claims that “visionary pragmatism” cannot be reduced to a “predetermined destination,” but signifies participation in a larger, ongoing collective struggle: “Black women’s visionary pragmatism points to a vision, it doesn’t prescribe a fixed end point of a universal truth. One never arrives but one constantly strives.” Collins extols a pragmatism grounded in “deep love, intense connectedness and a recognition that those in the future will face struggles and challenges that we can neither imagine nor forestall.”1 The visionary pragmatism described by Collins is essential for our work in this time of third wave political engagement, an era of activism that builds on the first two waves of radical politics and yet has its own energy, dynamics, and challenges. The first wave of revolutionary politics was the forceful denunciation of the manifold forms of social injustice—slavery, the oppression of workers, and the secondary status of women—all forms of oppression defended for millennia as divinely ordained or part of the natural order of things.2 These struggles for social justice have been augmented by a second wave of activism, the work of identity politics, the resolute claim for the complex identities and full humanity of all groups marginalized and exploited by systemic oppression and silenced through cultural imperialism, such as people with disabilities, those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, ethnic, 175 racial, and religious minorities, and all deprived of cultural respect and full political participation. Within these two waves of political activism, people have exposed and denounced with power and courage the five forms of social injustice identified by the political philosopher Iris Marion Young: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.3 While the critical work for social justice and for the full recognition and human rights for all peoples goes on, these tasks now occur within a third paradigm. Third wave radical politics is a response to the first two waves—to powerful declarations of defiance, rage, and joyous self-affirmation. Once we recognize that a situation is unjust, once we grant the imperative of including the voices and experiences of all peoples, how then do we work together to build just and creative institutions? As we take up this creative task, we have much to learn from the visionary pragmatism analyzed by Patricia Hill Collins and manifest in the leadership of those who have led significant social change in the past (Nelson Mandela and Ronald Dellums, former Congressman and current mayor of Oakland) and in the leadership of one who may bring about significant social change in the present and future, President Barack Obama. The leadership of Dellums, Mandela, and Obama is fueled by the intense connections highlighted by Collins, and by a lifelong commitment to human flourishing. What is remarkable, however, about the trajectory of the work of Dellums and Mandela is not only the depth of commitment but the duration of that commitment. When Mandela became one of the leaders of the African National Congress, the struggle for freedom in South Africa had been taking place for fifty years. His own work, from his first political involvement in the 1940s to his election as President in 1994, also spanned more than fifty years, including almost three decades spent in prison. In his autobiography, Mandela recounts the amount of creativity and time it took for even the most basic changes within the prison system, fifteen years to obtain the right to food that was equal in quality to that given white prisoners, twenty-six years to obtain access to newspapers.4 In his work for social justice within the United States and internationally, Congressman Dellums was a stalwart supporter of the freedom struggle in South Africa, and worked for sixteen years before he was able to lead the U.S. in participating in the international pressure of sanctions that played a key role in the collapse of apartheid.5 In the case of President Obama, his leadership has just begun. 176 | Ain't I a Womanist, Too? [18.116.239.195] Project MUSE...