Abstract

The article attempts to demonstrate the necessity of acknowledging the body when considering the current Black Lives Matter movement, give an account of Black female and trans erasure, and ultimately (re)affirm the lived embodiment of Black, female, and trans bodies, all through an atheistic lens. Atheism here, while indeed denying the existence of gods, has as its primary concern affirming life. Too often is theology, as theologian Anthony Pinn says, “a theology of no-body”; thus atheistic feminist Blackness, as understood here, seeks to entrench the body rather than abstract it. Atheistic feminist Blackness reinscribes and affirms the subjectivity and humanity of Black, female, and trans bodies, countering hegemonic discourse that explicitly and implicitly states otherwise. The article’s emphasis of an atheistic posture stems from the prescient words of Catherine Keller: “atheist or agnostic feminists ignore the God-word at their own peril.” Therefore, the Black feminist ideological argument takes the “God-word” seriously, reckons with it, and offers an alternative to a theological tradition that often imbues the body with inherent flaw (sin), abstraction (soul), and erasure of the ontological value of Black, female, and noncisgendered bodies.

Recommended Citation

Bey, Marquis. 2015. "She Had a Name That God Didn’t Give Her: Thinking the Body through Atheistic Black Radical Feminism." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 9 (Fall): 1-17. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol9/iss9/2