Onto‐plasticity and Africana womanist intersubjectivity

This essay introduces the concept of onto‐plasticity as a framework for understanding Africana women's intersubjectivity within Western modernity, shaped by race and gender. Building on Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's concept of ontological plasticity, Hortense Spillers's distinction between body and flesh, and Africana Womanist thought, I argue that Black women are constantly shaped and reshaped by racial, sexual, legal, and knowledge systems. Onto‐plasticity describes this forced flexibility but also points to something beyond being treated as interchangeable: the ability to take part in shaping and reshaping oneself. Through practices such as fugitivity, testimony, pleasure, joy, and rest, Africana women resist the categories imposed on them and define themselves. Looking at these practices from Black feminist and Africana philosophical perspectives, I suggest that Africana womanist intersubjectivity is more than just surviving in an anti‐Black world. It is a way of being that lets Africana women refuse imposed labels and imagine new ways of living.