ABSTRACT
This chapter asks how feminist scholars should approach Truth (the historical figure) and truth (as a philosophical concept). The notion of ‘travelling truths’ is introduced as an epistemological and historiographical framework. Approaching feminist knowledges as travelling truths means an investment in the importance of holding on to a notion of ‘truth’ for feminist scholarship—yet an understanding of truth that is not absolutist or universalistic, but rather plural and open. After introducing travelling truths as an epistemological perspective, the framework is put in practice through an analysis of the historical scholarship on Sojourner Truth. The analysis draws attention to the racialized power dynamics and processes of mediation that play a role in the version of the story that has become known today. Employing the epistemological perspective of travelling truths, I show that the historical research gives one access point to understanding the story of Sojourner Truth that is necessary but not sufficient to understand the role that the story of Sojourner Truth plays for intersectional feminism today. Instead of constructing a rivalry between the historical Truth and the symbolic Truth, the chapter demonstrates that each of these ‘Truths’ has their value, and that in fact they inform one another.
