Intersections of the knowledge-power nexus as a precursor to (dis)empowerment and resistance in the poetry of Maya Angelou
Keywords:
empowerment, intersections, knowledge, power, resistance, social contextAbstract
This article investigates how knowledge and its recursive relation with power is manifested in the poetry of Maya Angelou. It analyses how various contexts, such as the social, political, cultural and historical, inform knowledge production and how the Foucauldian concept of the knowledge/power nexus is employed as a strategy of (dis)empowerment and resistance by marginalized persons in her poetry. It also, explores how Angelou’s poetry utilises the female body as the site of the manifestation of the knowledge/power nexus and resistance. The article utilises textual data obtained through critical reading and analysis of poems from The Complete Collected Poetry of Maya Angelou. In its analyses, it makes use of three poems; Men and Phenomenal Woman and Seven Women’s Blessed Assurance. It concludes that the knowledge/power nexus as manifested in her poetry is representative of a vantage point from which one stands empowered to re-examine their social situation and re conceptualize ways in which to subvert domination.
Downloads
References
Angelou, M. (1994). The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House.
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Bratianu, C. (2015). Organizational Knowledge Dynamics: Managing Knowledge Creation, Acquisition, Sharing, and Transformation. New York: Basic Books.
Brown, C. (2011). The Black Female Body in African American Literature and Art: Performing Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1995). Subjection, Resistance and Resignation. In J. Rajchman, The Identity in Question (pp. 229-250). New York: Routledge.
Carroll, N. (2009). The Grotesque Today: Preliminary Notes Toward a Taxonomy . In F. S. Connelly, Modern Art and the Grotesque. Cambridge (pp. 291-311). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Though: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York.: Routledge.
Collins, P. (1986). Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought. Social Problems , 33(6), 14-32.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge. New York : Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish and the Birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.
Gamson, W. (1992). Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hooks, B. (1981). Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston. Massachettes: South End.
Jenkins, A. M. (2015). Agency and accountability: Facilitating Women’s Participation in Peace Building. Feminist Economics, 22(1).
Johnson, R. (1983). Really Useful Knowledge’: Radical Education and Working-class Culture, 1790-1848: Richard Johnson. New York: Routledge.
Lilja, M. A. (2014). S. Sovereign Power, Disciplinary Power and Biopower: Resisting What Power with What Resistance. Journal of Political Power, 7(1).
Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of Exclusion: Societies and Difference in the West. New York: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak. In C. N. Grossberg, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271-313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Stowie, H. B. (2009). Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly. Cambridge: The Beknap Press of Havard University.
Wallace-Sanders, K. (2005). Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Teresia Kaberia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
