Talkin' Shit, Pouring Libations, and Building Community: Exploring Podcasts as a Contemporary Site of Black Feminist Knowledge Production and Activism

Abstract

Black women in the US have long articulated a unique consciousness about their experiences of and resistance to interlocking systems of oppression (Collins, 2009). Their intellectual contributions to this work, both academic and everyday, are often expressed as Black feminist thought (BFT). BFT is a critical social theory developed to empower Black women through self-definition and other forms of collective action to resist domination (Collins, 2009). As the manifestations of Black women’s oppression have shifted throughout time, so too have the locations of Black feminist knowledge production and resistance. The media has served in a historic and contemporary capacity to publicly diminish the images of Black women. Digital mass media, largely controlled by elite, White men, pervasively disseminates hegemonic, denigrating images of Black women (Collins 2009; hooks 2014). Many scholars, however, are exploring the myriad ways Black women are utilizing media spaces to challenge these practices and cultivate new knowledge about their experiences (Cheers, 2018; Garcia et al., 2020; F. Jones, 2019; Steele, 2016). There is a wide array of scholarship exploring the use of the internet, broadly, as a vehicle for this labor. Podcasts, a newer digital space, serve as a relatively under-explored medium for this type of knowledge production and resistance work. This study investigates the understanding and impact of BFT on podcasts in the "Black Baddie Brigade” (BBB), an informal collective of podcasts, as well as the ways in which the shows speak back and contribute to Black feminist knowledge production and activist traditions. Drawing on multiple Black women-centered methodological approaches, this study employed textual analysis to examine 32 episodes across the BBB. Further, this study utilized a qualitative online survey to invite the hosts across the BBB to participate as collaborators. This draws on Black feminist tenets and epistemology, recognizing and centering Black women as the experts of their own experiences. Across the shows, hosts engaged in storytelling and drew on their lived experiences to engage with a number of themes central to BFT including self-definition; intersectional consciousness and political analysis, self-care and mental wellness; oppression and marginalization, sex and sexuality; and community building, celebration, and uplift. Further, they grappled with and critiqued hegemonic representations of Black women in the media, using their own experiences to offer more nuanced and complex counternarratives. These findings suggest that podcasts can and do function as sites wherein new Black feminist knowledge and activism are created and enacted when their hosts intentionally ground their work in centering and amplifying marginalized voices both literally and figuratively. Moreover, these findings have implications for more expansive podcasting research which focuses on content and centers minoritized voices.