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A review by brice_mo
Where We Stand by Djamila Ribeiro
5.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Yale University Press for the ARC!
Djamila Ribeiro’s Where We Stand is a call to rethink feminism from the ground-up in order to decenter whiteness and recognize Black women as subjects, specifically through the concept of “speaking place.”
I love this book. It touches on so many complex themes while remaining incredibly accessible, thanks in no small part to the way Padma Viswanathan’s impeccable translation dances with Ribeiro’s original text. The author walks readers through the work of writers like bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir, synthesizing key concepts so that they are prepared for how writers like Grada Kilomba can speak to the Brazilian context.
The book’s main contribution is the idea of “speaking place,” which, as I understand it, is essentially rooted in the idea that different communicative registers adopt different means of seeking truth—for example, a popular magazine is epistemologically doing the the same thing as academic research, albeit in a different medium. Ribeiro points out that access and stigma are woven together, so that even Black women with a platform may go unrecognized because they are underrepresented as a whole. Individual experience is not the metric; it’s collective and structural positionality that matters. Ribeiro writes, “To speak is not merely to emit words; it is to assert one’s place in the world—to assert one’s write to exist, to be.”
Ultimately, this focus resists superficial ideas of universality and intersectionality. Rather than framing all oppression as qualitatively similar or creating an artificial hierarchy, it opens discourse to the nuance of position, and it complicates notions of access—allowing someone into a structure that isn’t built for them accomplishes nothing. Furthermore, Ribeiro notes, real access warrants structural changes that instigate discomfort when white people must listen and accept knowledges that differ from those that they have have unnaturally elevated. In the end, she calls for what feels like a celebration of subjectivities.
Where We Stand is the kind of scholarship that leaves readers buzzing, and I really hope it means we get more English translations of Djamila Ribeiro’s work in the near future.
Djamila Ribeiro’s Where We Stand is a call to rethink feminism from the ground-up in order to decenter whiteness and recognize Black women as subjects, specifically through the concept of “speaking place.”
I love this book. It touches on so many complex themes while remaining incredibly accessible, thanks in no small part to the way Padma Viswanathan’s impeccable translation dances with Ribeiro’s original text. The author walks readers through the work of writers like bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir, synthesizing key concepts so that they are prepared for how writers like Grada Kilomba can speak to the Brazilian context.
The book’s main contribution is the idea of “speaking place,” which, as I understand it, is essentially rooted in the idea that different communicative registers adopt different means of seeking truth—for example, a popular magazine is epistemologically doing the the same thing as academic research, albeit in a different medium. Ribeiro points out that access and stigma are woven together, so that even Black women with a platform may go unrecognized because they are underrepresented as a whole. Individual experience is not the metric; it’s collective and structural positionality that matters. Ribeiro writes, “To speak is not merely to emit words; it is to assert one’s place in the world—to assert one’s write to exist, to be.”
Ultimately, this focus resists superficial ideas of universality and intersectionality. Rather than framing all oppression as qualitatively similar or creating an artificial hierarchy, it opens discourse to the nuance of position, and it complicates notions of access—allowing someone into a structure that isn’t built for them accomplishes nothing. Furthermore, Ribeiro notes, real access warrants structural changes that instigate discomfort when white people must listen and accept knowledges that differ from those that they have have unnaturally elevated. In the end, she calls for what feels like a celebration of subjectivities.
Where We Stand is the kind of scholarship that leaves readers buzzing, and I really hope it means we get more English translations of Djamila Ribeiro’s work in the near future.