“That was my occupation”: Oral narrative, performance, and black feminist thought

Abstract

Black feminist thought supports the interdependence of what are called “theories of the flesh” and “specialized knowledge.” Theories of the flesh reflect the distinctive interpretations of the world carved out of the material realities of a group's life experiences. Specialized knowledge infuses elements and themes of black women's culture and traditions with critical interventionist thinking to provide black women with new tools of resistance. The oral narrative of Mrs. Alma Kapper, who worked as a domestic and sharecropper in the black belt of Mississippi, is illuminated through the joining of black feminist thought and the performance paradigm. As a result, black feminist thought and the performance paradigm augment each other as analytical constructs in unveiling the many ways people “lettered” and “unlettered” theorize themselves.