Resistance and Liberation: black women's political agency

Abstract

This article examines the concept of freedom developed by Angela Davis grounded in the historical experience of Black women in the struggle against multiple forms of oppression. In contrast to the Western philosophical tradition, which defines freedom as a universal and abstract attribute, Davis proposes understanding it as a historical and collective process of liberation, forged in everyday practices of resistance. The Black woman, through organizing networks of care, solidarity, and insubordination, emerges as a foundational subject of this new formulation of freedom. The analysis focuses on Davis’s works from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, highlighting how her philosophy articulates theory, political practice, and militancy, while offering a radical critique of the criminalization of resistance and the social order that sustains exclusion. By shifting the concept of
freedom from abstraction to the lived experiences of those historically denied it, Davis proposes a liberation philosophy rooted in Black women's insurgent praxis.