Social Theory: bell hooks
6th Dec 2022 by Ruba Ali Al-Hassani
Now when I ponder the silences, the voices that are not heard, the voices of those wounded and/or oppressed individuals who do not speak or write, I contemplate the acts of persecution, torture—the terrorism that breaks spirits, that makes creativity impossible. I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanisation and despair (hooks 1986).
In her long legacy of written work and teaching, bell hooks believed that the act of speech, of ‘talking back’, was not a mere gesture of empty words or posturing, rather the expression of one’s movement from object to subject—the liberated voice. Agency was crucial to how one led their life and assisted others towards self-determination. This was reflected in every aspect of her life, including her own pen name.
Scholar and activist Gloria Jean Watkins was born in September 1952 in Kentucky, United States of America. She grew up in a segregated community of the American south, educated in racially segregated public schools, and later moved to an integrated school in the late 1960s. A gifted child, she enjoyed the poetry of William Wordsworth, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Gwendolyn Brooks. At age 19, she began writing what would become her first full-length book, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981. In this ground-breaking book, she grounded her feminist theory in the struggles of Black women, highlighting the wounds of Black female slavery and how they affect Black women in the present. With a scholarship, she studied English literature at Stanford University, then earned a Master of Arts at the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her doctoral dissertation on Toni Morrison was titled, Keeping a Hold on Life: Reading Toni Morrison’s Fiction. She taught English and ethnic studies at the University of Southern California from the mid-1970s, African and Afro-American studies at Yale University during the 1980s, women’s studies at Oberlin College, and English at the City College of New York during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004, she became a professor in residence at Berea College in Kentucky where she founded the bell hooks Institute in 2014. She passed away in December 2021. She leaves behind a long legacy of prolific work, having published forty books which have been translated into fifteen languages, reaching a global Black diaspora with her messages of resistance, feminist revolution, and love (Froio 2021).
When the feminist movement was at its zenith in the late 1960 and early 1970s, there was a move away from the idea of the person with a greater focus on the person’s contributions. Among many who took the name of their female ancestors, Watkins assumed her great-grandmother’s name as her own pseudonym or pen name to honour her and to debunk the notion that she—Gloria Jean Watkins—was a unique and exceptional woman, rather a product of the women before her (Lowens 2018). The unconventional lower-casing of the name was part and parcel of this shedding of her ego in a strive for a greater struggle that she found not only personal, but political. The fine line between the personal and political was central to her long legacy of work.
Intellectual Context
hooks wrote on a wide range of topics that were rooted in gender, African-American resistance, pedagogy, and entertainment media. When asked about this, she replied, ‘I think part of Western metaphysical dualism is, we’re always being asked to choose one over the other. I’m lucky. I think it’s good that I have a body of work that addresses different things in different ways’ (Lowens 2018). hooks wrote in simple prose with the goal of reaching a wide audience and making knowledge accessible to all, especially Black women in the U.S. and beyond who were often denied access to higher education. She continuously challenged a system of academic writing that historically belittled and ignored the work of Black scholars. She eschewed footnotes, refusing the academy’s standards, maintained her lowercase name, and wrote in a deeply personal style, often carved from her own experiences (Thompson 2021). While doing so, her ideas were relentlessly rigorous and full of citations.
Greatly influenced by Paulo Freire and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh whom she described as the two ‘teachers’ who had touched her deeply with their work, hooks believed that pedagogy was everywhere to be found, even in popular culture (hooks 1994). It was Freire’s insistence that education could be the practice of freedom, awareness, and engagement in the classroom that encouraged her to create strategies for what he called ‘conscientization’ (Freire 1972). Translating his term to critical awareness and engagement, hooks entered classrooms with the conviction that active participation was crucial for both educator and student, and that students should not be passive consumers. Influenced by Freire, hooks believed that education can only be liberatory when everyone claims knowledge as a field in which everyone labours. This notion of labour was affirmed by Thich Nhat Hanh’s philosophy of engaged Buddhism—the focus on practice in conjunction with contemplation. Here, both Freire and Hanh shared the emphasis on “praxis—action and reflection upon the world in order to change it” (hooks 1994, 14). hooks adopted Hanh’s focus on a holistic approach to learning and spiritual practice as it enabled her to overcome years of socialization in both the racial and pedagogical sense. This socialization had taught her to believe a classroom was diminished if students and professors regarded each other as ‘”whole” human beings, surviving not just for knowledge in books, but knowledge about how to live in the world’ (ibid). This holistic approach to education demanded mindfulness of one’s positionality and emphasized well-being. This meant that educators must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being if they were to teach in a manner that empowers students. Distinguishing between the ego and self, hooks rejected the objectification of educators within bourgeois educational structures that denigrated notions of wholeness and upheld the idea of a mind-body split; one that promotes and supports compartmentalization. Much like Edward Saïd, who rooted his work in acknowledging one’s “contemporary reality” or “personal dimension” (Saïd 1978; also see the Edward Saïd chapter of this volume), hooks was mindful of her positionality in the classroom and written work.
Key Argument
Emerging from the segregated American south, bell hooks was mindful of not only her position in society as a Black woman, but of the blurry lines between the political, cultural, and personal. Her work explicitly reflected this. Among her greatest scholarly contributions was the unearthing of cultural difference, race, and knowledge within feminism, as well as the exploration of intersections between race, gender, and class. Her work explored how darker women are marginalized by social power structures and by White feminists who purport to speak about the universal struggle of all women. A vocal critic of mainstream feminism, hooks argued it silences experiences of race, ethnicity, and class and overlooks, if not directly causes, nuanced harms imposed on non-White women (hooks 1984a).
While White women insisted gender was the determinant of success in their society, for the Black community, shade of colour was the real determinant. hooks explored how the colour-caste system determined that people of darker skin tones had less access and opportunity, while those lighter in skin tone were more likely to integrate into a White-dominated society. ‘To be born light meant that one was born with an advantage recognized by everyone. To be born dark was to start life handicapped, with a serious disadvantage’ (hooks 1994a, 204). This shadeism led to internalized racism within the African-American community, leading to behavioural change that would allow personal and professional integration into a White-dominated society. Most notably, White notions of beauty determined Black women’s employment and portrayal in popular culture that lasts till this day. For instance, hooks discussed the ‘Sapphire’ stereotype, where ‘images of black female bitchiness, evil temper, and treachery continue to be marked by darker skin…no light skin occupies this devalued position’ (ibid 209). As such, Black women were pushed into a constant struggle to transform themselves to fit into greater society. hooks emphasized the need for Black psychologists and psychiatrists to address the psychological wounds in children and adults alike, and the detrimental effects of the colour-caste system on them. While hooks explored the representation of race in popular culture and how it affects social relations and public education in her Cultural Transformation video series, she explained the importance of critical thinking for women and for racial justice.
Critical of this systemic demand of assimilation by Black people to be part of greater society, hooks noted how it undermines subversive oppositional ways of seeing blackness. Racial integration meant that many Black people were rejecting the ethic of communalism that had been a crucial survival strategy when racial apartheid was the norm and embracing liberal individualism instead. ‘Being free was seen as having the right to satisfy individual desire without accountability to a collective body’ (hooks 1994a, 206). As a result, hooks argued that black critical thinkers began to constitute a subculture, and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. were whitewashed; passionate critiques of militarism and capitalism went unnoticed. This led to hooks’ significant work on feminism.
While feminism had started as a movement to end sexist oppression, hooks argued it would ‘be better defined as the movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression without neglecting other forms of oppression such as racism, classism, imperialism and others’ (hooks 1994b, viii). She identified the patriarchy as a socio-political system where males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence (ibid 26). hooks’ notion of patriarchy is reminiscent of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s ‘intersectionality’ (2015; see the Crenshaw chapter in this volume) as it points to ‘interlocking webs of oppression’ and Crenshaw stresses ‘the intersectionality of race and sex that both play roles in the systems of discrimination’. hooks condemned the legacy of liberal feminism which has made women’s liberation synonymous with gaining social equality with men (hooks 1994b, 67). Excluding men from feminist mobilization reinforces sexism and implicates that women’s empowerment comes at men’s expense. Approaching the patriarchy from a non-intersectional and anti-male angle isolates men and women in their struggles and denies them cross-gender solidarity within socio-economic classes or ethnic groups. Therefore, hooks posited that the feminist movement must clarify an anti-sexism, not anti-male, stance. Such clarity reminds people that both men and women ‘have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action’ (ibid, viii).
hooks also argued that, much like women, men are socialized into passively accepting sexist ideology, and that all are hurt by rigid sex roles (hooks 2004, 32). hooks argues that patriarchal ideology brainwashes men to believe their domination of women is beneficial when it is not. It has boys and men believing in a masculinity that denies them access to full emotional well-being. Relative to women, men thus lack the emotional intelligence necessary for their personal and social fulfilment. Sara Ahmed notes that this ‘Psychological patriarchy’ is a valuing system that defines ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, exalting half of our human traits while devaluing the other (2004, 36). Both men and women participate in it. Men are constantly concerned with the contradiction between the notion of masculinity they have been taught and their inability to live up to that unrealistic notion. They are alienated, frustrated, insecure, and direct their aggression—a privilege afforded to them by the patriarchal system—towards women and girls. Their capacity to assert control over their female counterparts is neither rewarding nor fulfilling. Therefore, the crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, rather the crisis of patriarchal masculinity (ibid). As long as men equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege, they do not realize the patriarchy’s damage to themselves and others, and do not rebel against it. Acknowledging this male suffering does not negate or diminish male responsibility for the exploitation of women or male enjoyment of gender-based privileges. Male oppression of women and male suffering from a sexist system can coexist as two connected realities. hooks argues that men who actively struggle against this sexism have a place in the feminist movement. They are women’s comrades, as feminism is ‘for everybody’ and what Sara Ahmed calls ‘…a sensible reaction to the injustices of the world’ (ibid; Mehra 2017).
In Application
As bell hooks’ feminism calls for the collective struggle of men and women together, it feeds into larger conversations about social movements taking place around the world. Inviting men and women to join forces against patriarchal structures creates greater momentum to overcome them than isolating women in their own struggles. Since practically all forms of oppression are gendered, social and political movements fighting patriarchal institutions tend to have a feminist nature. For instance, while Iraq’s Tishreen Movement was not launched with a feminist agenda, women have been at its core and use the movement to further their causes. The movement witnessed a shift in how young men perceived their female counterparts, inviting them to lead protests and even calling the revolution ‘feminine’ (Al-Hassani 2020; 2023). Challenging ethnosectarian consociationalism, many protestors and activists were aware of its sextarian nature (Mikdashi 2018); that it impacts both men and women, though with women suffering more. In an ethnoconfessionally pluralistic Iraq, intersectionality is crucial. There’s a discrepancy in experience between Yazidi and Muslim women; displaced and non-displaced people; Muslim women and men; Afro-Iraqi men and fair-skinned men, etc. Intersectionality helps expose the various forms of socio-political discrimination, and Tishreen’s activists understood this when they used the protest momentum to call for the release of Yazidi women from ISIS control. In the current Iranian context, women went out to protest the death of Mahsa Amini and a misogynistic system that controls their bodies. However, those protests have grown as men joined protests, supported women activists, and understood how the system aims to control their agency as well. Because of Amini’s Kurdish identity, public discourse engaged in the intersectional oppression of minoritized women. In both contexts, the streets were the space for public pedagogy—women and their allies dropped their egos, brought in their mindful selves, and engaged in active, holistic storytelling for awareness and change. bell hooks’ use of storytelling and active engagement as social theory continues to resonate in popular movements, even when not directly acknowledged. Her work particularly resonates among Black women in the West and the diaspora.
Issues to Be Aware Of
bell hooks faced several critiques, the most notable of which was that her voice speaks only to the Black experience in the United States despite her claim to harness multiple voices and cross borders. She neglects a cultural critique of non-Black experiences, though she refers to ‘Black’ as ‘a collective experience of all those who suffer, all those who are oppressed’ (Biana 2020, 26). Another critique is that hooks fails to draw a connection between women of varying backgrounds. The experience of women in the West could make use of cultural criticism from women in other parts of the world who also suffer from similar systems of oppression (ibid). Noting such criticisms, hooks later expanded those definitions to identify the ‘imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (ibid, 20). A third critique responds to hooks’ invitation to mindful self-critique. It questions whether oppressors would actually interrogate themselves and their reinforcement of dominating systems. She proposes a three-prong strategy which includes honest confrontation, dialogue, and reciprocal interaction (ibid). However, it does not guarantee that those who privilege from oppressive systems would engage in self-critique and be mindful of their positionality. On a related note, Spivak claims that the oppressed are not really capable of ‘talking back’ (ibid, 26). The colonizers, in particular, always speak and interpret for the colonized. Orientalism demands domination over knowledge-formation around the Orientalized (Saïd 1978). However, none of this means that the colonized and Orientalized allow their oppressors to speak for them. They continue to talk back, engaging in their own pedagogy inside and outside classrooms, bringing in their holistic selves, action, and reflection upon the world to change it, much like hooks learned from Freire and Hanh.
Conclusion
Exploring the intersecting oppressions of gender, race, and class, bell hooks’ writings reflected her concerns with issues related to not only politics, but art, history, sexuality, psychology, and spirituality that she wanted to guide discourse and pedagogy. Employing her academic background to write for a general audience, hooks intended to change how people think of their political realities, engage in cultural criticism, and illuminate what is already known with holistic, loving labour and engagement. Indeed, she has left a lasting impact, especially on Black women who feel empowered by her work. hooks has been able ‘…to educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn…to teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin’ (1994b, 13).
Suggested Readings
hooks, bell. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Pluto Press.
hooks, bell. (1986). Talking Back. Discourse, 8, 123. https://www.proquest.com/openv...
hooks, bell. (1994a). Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge.
hooks, bell. (1994b). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom—1st Edi. Routledge.
hooks, bell. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Atria Books.
hooks, bell. (2008). Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. Routledge.
References
Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Second). Edinburgh University Press.
Al-Hassani, R. A. (2020, April 24). Maintaining the Feminist Spring of Iraq’s October Revolution (Part III of III). Inside Arabia. https://insidearabia.com/maint...
Ali Al-Hassani, R. (Forthcoming 2023). Iraq’s October Revolution: Between Structures of Patriarchy and Emotion. In The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa. Springer International Publishing.
Biana, H. T. (2020). Extending bell hooks’ Feminist Theory. 21(1), 13–29.
Crenshaw, K. (2015). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1). https://chicagounbound.uchicag...
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder.
Froio, N. (2021, December 17). Bell hooks left an impact on feminist thinkers around the world. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/n...
hooks, bell. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Pluto Press.
hooks, bell. (1986). Talking Back. Discourse, 8, 123. https://www.proquest.com/openv...
hooks, bell. (1994a). Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge.
hooks, bell. (1994b). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom—1st Edi. Routledge.
hooks, bell. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Atria Books.
Lowens, R. (2018, February 14). How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks. Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. https://blackrosefed.org/inter...
Mehra, N. J. (2017, July 17). Sara Ahmed: Notes from a Feminist Killjoy. Guernica. https://www.guernicamag.com/sa...
Mikdashi, M. (2018). Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State. In A. Ghazal & J. Hanssen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History. Oxford University Press.
Saïd, E. W. (1978). Orientalism (First edition). Pantheon Books.
Thompson, L. B. (2021, December 17). With the death of bell hooks, a generation of feminists lost a foundational figure. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/17...