Troubling "Wellness": Self-Care as Black Feminist Resistance

• In Event: Feminist Revolution, Resistance, and the Idea of Solidarity

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that feminist critiques of self-care are often undergirded by constructs of self that do not map onto Black feminist traditions or Black women’s lived experiences. In particular, the conditions under which the political qualities of the self are analyzed shift profoundly when “the self” is the very site of domination, exclusion, and erasure. On the one hand, it is easy to criticize neoliberal mobilizations of terms like feminism, empowerment, and freedom for the purposes of marketing luxury items to white wealthy women. Similarly, the construct of “wellness” is fully in-keeping with neoliberal principles by placing responsibility for health squarely on the shoulders of individuals, rather than the state. On the other, dismissing the political qualities of self-care altogether is a failure to account for its radical dimensions within Black feminist traditions. I argue that Black women have been practicing self-care as a mode of resistance to white domination since slavery, a reality that is often obscured both by the commodification of self-care in the economy and hegemonic white constructs of self in the academy.

Author

• Lena K. Zuckerwise, Simmons University