bell hooks.pdf

QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / August 2002

Valdivia /ETHICS FROM THE MARGINS

bell hooks: Ethics From the Margins

Angharad N. Valdivia

University of Illinois

Thisarticleexploresmuchofthebodyofbellhooks’swork.Itanalyzesherlongtrajectory

from her opening salvo, Ain’tIaWoman , to her latest books and essays in a framework

thatcontextualizesherexplicitandimplicitethicalstancesintermsofissuesofmulticul-

turalism, feminism, and the media. Using a multipronged approach that questions cen-

tral ethical questions of community, autonomy, voice, inclusion and exclusion, access,

and representation, bell hooks challenges us to construct a transnational, feminist, and

multiculturalistprojectthatwillallowustointerpretandcriticizethecontemporarysit-

uationanditspopularculture.bellhooksstandsoutasanunflinchingcriticandcontrib-

utortoabodyofworkthatremindsusthatmuchofourreceivedintellectualtraditionsas

well as new and current scholarly work, popular debates, and mass media products

remainembeddedinaframeworkofanalysis,production,andrepresentationthatserves

to oppress and not to liberate.

When intellectual work emerges from a concern with radical social and

political change, when that work is directed to the needs of the people, it

bringsusintogreatersolidarityandcommunity.Itisfundamentallylife-

enhancing.

—hooks and West (1991, p. 164)

Ido,however,wishtohelpmakeaworldwhereinscholarshipandwork

by black women is valuedso that we will be motivatedto do such work,

so that our voices will be heard. I wish to help make a world where our

workwillbetakenseriously,givenappreciation,andacclaimed,aworld

in which such work will be seen as necessary and significant.

—hooks (1989, p. 48)

In the vast andever-growing arena of feminist, transnational, multicul-

tural studies, bell hooks 1 stands out as a prolific and vocal contributor. Con-

temporary scholars of this wide-ranging area delve into global, race, ethnic,

class, andsexuality issues in relation to culture, politics, andeconomics, in

sum the global/local situation that envelops us all (Grewal, 1996; Ong, 1999;

Author’sNote:TheauthorwouldliketothankMarieClaireLegerandDiem-myBui,as

well as Sharon Bracci, CliffordChristians, andCameron McCarthy for their insightful

comments.

Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 8 Number 4, 2002 429-447

429

430

QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / August 2002

Shohat, 1998). Given the wide reach of new telecommunications technolo-

gies, as well as the continuedproliferation of U.S. media andour location as

students and scholars within the beast, as it were, issues of identity and

oppression must remain at the forefront of our research andactivist agenda.

Feministscholarswhoseanalysisofgenderoppressioniscarriedouttoendit

inevitably play an activist role. Similarly, scholars of race andethnicity pur-

sue their studies to reveal the explicit and implicit discriminations and dis-

cursivestrategiesthatservetoprivilegeWhitenessaswellastheconstructed

nature of the concept and deployment of race. Thus, by definition, ethical

questions of community, autonomy, voice, inclusion andexclusion, access,

andrepresentation challenge us transnational, feminist, multiculturalist

scholarstocomplicateourfutureutopiasandourpresentcriticism.bellhooks

stands out as an unflinching critic and contributor to a body of work that

reminds us that much of our received intellectual traditions as well as new

and current scholarly work, popular debates, and mass media products

remain embedded in a framework of analysis, production, and representa-

tion that serves to oppress and not to liberate.

Inavolumesuchasthisone—devotedtoissuesofethicsandcommunica-

tions—bell hooks is all the more relevant. Not only has hooks contributedto

feminist discussions about ethics in her prolific writing (Sanders, Cannon,

hooks, Townes, & Copeland, 1989), but she has explicitly confronted ethical

issues in her own essays (hooks, 1984, 1989). Her engagement with ethical

issues is more of a diffuse treatment rather than a philosophical probing. In

what is almost a politicization of ethics, she relates issues of representation,

media production, and identity formation to Black people and people of

color. For bell hooks, as for many contemporary activists of civil rights and

thebroad-rangingfeministmovement,issuesofethicsandrepresentationare

centraltocontemporarystrugglesaboutrepresentationandbecometheorga-

nizing andmobilizing issues of force for a minority politics of ethics in the

UnitedStates(see“Let’sGetRealAboutFeminism,”1993),whichoughtto,in

turn,inform,change,andrevolutionizethemainstream.Thisarticleexplores

feminist discussions as they overlap with some of the major concerns hooks

expresses in her essays. It situates the implicit politics of ethics suggestedby

hooksinhervastcorpusofculturalcritiqueasitrelatestothefeministthemes

of voice, authority, andappropriation. Finally, it illuminates how hooks has

applied this politics of ethics to her analysis of the media.

In particular, bell hooks’s work has varied(andcontinues to evolve)

betweentestimonial,academicprose,andsocialcriticism,withagreatdealof

overlapandhybridity.Latelyshehasevenventuredintochildren’sliterature

(hooks, 1999a) similarly to Gloria Anzaldúa, roughly her counterpart in

Latina/Latino studies. What remains unchanged, throughout her corpus, is

her commitment to a politics that foregrounds gender, race, sexuality, and a

critiqueofcapitalismbasedonaMarxiananalysisthatneverforgetsissuesof

class (hooks 2000b), both on a local andon a global level. She is one cultural

Valdivia /ETHICS FROM THE MARGINS

431

critic who continues to use the concepts of colonialism andimperialism to

describe the contemporary situation. Moreover, drawing on Tony Cade

Bambara’s(1970)work,hookswasoneoftheearliestvoiceswithinthesecond

wave of the women’s movement to speak out against the racism within that

movement as well as being a similarly early critic of the sexism within the

civil rights movement. An increasingly influential voice within feminism,

socialism,AfricanAmericanstudies,andculturalstudies,neverabandoning

any of them nor desisting from their sharp critique, she stands out as a long-

timecontributortoissuesofmediaingeneralandfilminparticular.Herwork

can all be seen as implicit andexplicit attempts to expandanddeconstruct

mainstream ethics.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, bell hooks grew up in segregatedKen-

tucky in a nuclear family of five sisters, a brother, a mother anda father, with

nearby extended family. She deems the composition of her family important

tonoteasitchallengessomeofthesociologicalandmostpopularculturerep-

resentations of the Black family as dysfunctional due to missing men in gen-

eral andthe absent father figure in particular. Important to her life were both

religion—as her family were members of a Black Baptist church—andthe

written word, which throughout all the stages of her writing career have

translated into spiritually guided prose. In a childhood described as painful

andalienating as well as self-enhancing, hooks claims to have foundsolace,

comfort, andliberation through the written word, whether secular or reli-

gious.Shebegantodevelopherkeensenseandtheoryofjusticeandprivilege

as a young girl watching both her father andher brother enjoy a dispropor-

tionate authority andcontrol in family andcommunity matters as well as

learning from her grandfather’s more just ways.

Avocalyoungsterwithabrilliantintellectualcuriosity,sheexcelledinher

studies and attended Stanford University as an undergraduate in the 1970s.

As she encountered women’s studies, other radical movements of the time

andin that geographic area, andher first dose of living in a White elitist set-

ting,hookspennedherfirstofmanybooksinherstillprolificcareerunderthe

lowercase pseudonym of her great-grandmother’s name. 2 Ain’tIaWoman:

BlackWomenandFeminism (hooks,1981)wasnotonlywrittenwhenshewasa

19-year-old undergraduate but was also listed by Publishers’ Weekly in 1992

among the 20 most important women’s books in the past 20 years

(www.artculture.com). Her continuing studies led her to pursue a doctorate

in English at the University of Wisconsin, andher first faculty appointment

was in English and Black studies at Yale University.

Despite this elite academic trajectory, hooks has maintained a strong and

continuingdedicationtohaveherworkbeaccessibletoawiderangeofaudi-

432

QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / August 2002

ences. This was the reason that her first book andmost of her other works do

not have endnotes and sometimes also not a bibliography. In an interview

withCornelWest(hooks&West,1991),sheclaimedthatshecarefullythought

through this code of publication as she surveyed different working-class

communities as to their reaction to endnotes. Her finding that they immedi-

ately thought that an endnoted book was not meant for them to read guided

herdecisionnottohaveendnotesinherbooks.Itisimpossibletotellwhether

this move is solely responsible for the longevity andpopularity of her work,

onethatisunparalleledbythatofnearlyanyothercontemporaryintellectual.

Afterteachingwomen’sstudiesatOberlinCollege,bellhooksmovedtoCity

College of New York, where she is a DistinguishedProfessor of English, and

she currently resides in New York City. Her most current books (and by the

time of publication, this is boundto be an outdatedlist) include Happy To Be

Nappy and Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work ,bothpublishedin1999,as

wellas AllAboutLove and WhereWeStand publishedin2000. 3 Thislatterbatch

of written work signals an ever-increasing productivity as well as a turn to

more reflective writing.

LESSONS FROM FEMINIST ETHICS

As Steiner (1989) reminded us, the feminist project, as heterogeneous as it

may be, sets out to challenge oppression andtherefore is implicitly and

explicitly an ethical project. In the proposed change and/or eradication of

presentpatriarchalsystemsanddiscursivestructures,weneedtoaimfordif-

ferent norms andvalues. In sum, we needto come up with a revisedor alto-

gethernewethicaltheory.Ifwedefineethicaltheoryas“anefforttoarticulate

moral obligation within the fallible andirresolute voices of everyday life”

(Christians,1999,p.76),especiallyonethatissensitive,andindeedguidedby

the gender, racial, and class diversity of any given culture in the contempo-

rarysetting(Brennan,1999;Christians,1997),thenbellhooksbecomesacen-

tral voice and theorist in our pursuit to develop a new paradigm of morality

capable of delivering our popular culture from persistently racist, sexist,

homophobic, imperialist, and classist normative ideals.

Just as we cannot say there is only one feminism (something that bell

hooks has been instrumental in foregrounding), nor can we say that there is

only one approach to feminist ethics. Although feminists can largely agree

that feminism is a project that seeks to understand, analyze, and end the

oppressionofwomen,thereisnonecessaryagreementonhowtoachievethat

goal. However, by the year 2001, feminist ethics is a well-trodden path often

overlapping with other intellectual movements such as liberalism,

poststructuralism, andpostmodernism. Whereas feminist theory is commit-

tedtoamoralviewthatwomenareworthwhilebeings(Lugones&Spellman,

1983), feminist ethics seeks to position women as moral agents andtherefore

Valdivia /ETHICS FROM THE MARGINS

433

account for women’s moral experience (Brennan, 1999). At the very least,

feministethicscanbeginbycriticizingtheexclusivelymalecanonatthelevel

ofartifactandtheexclusionofwomenandgenderattheleveloftheory.Only

recently have scholars such as Alison Jaggar, Seyla Benhabib, Sandra Har-

ding, and Iris Young, among others, been included in overviews of contem-

porary ethics. In fact, although Carol Gilligan’s (1982, 1987) ethics of caring

may have solidified the notion of gender difference, it was undoubtedly one

of the first feminist interventions in a then purely male andmasculinist field

of ethics (Brennan, 1999; Steiner, 1989). Still in most generalist ethics over-

views,feministapproachesareincludedasanaddition,notasacoreorganiz-

ing principle of the field. Brennan (1999) suggested that

feminist ethics as an academic pursuit begins with the claim that traditional or

mainstream ethics, as practiced largely by white middle- and upper-class men,

has constructedethical theories which reflect the experiences of this group and

leaveout,ormakeitimpossibletomakesenseof,theexperiencesofwomenand

others. (pp. 860-861)

As such, feminist ethics challenges the principles anduniversality of main-

stream ethics.

Fromastandpointofrace,mostcontemporaryscholarsagreethatraceisa

socially constructedcategory, which nonetheless serves to structure contem-

porary life (Lopez, in press). Although ethnicity is often appliedto culture

andracetobiology,thistheoreticaldistinctiondoesnotneatlytransfertopol-

icy andmedia representation. If we share a commitment to universal princi-

plesofjustice,raceprejudiceanddiscrimination—whatW.E.B.DuBoiscalled

“thecolorline”in1903—issuesofraceandethnicityremainsomeofthemost

relevant andpressing issues facing us today (Hill Collins, 2000). Differenti-

atingandassumingsuperioritybasedonasociallyconstructedracialsystem

challenges the “logic of universalistic morality of mutual respect among all

human beings, a morality that presupposes our equality as human beings”

(Appiah & Gutmann, 1996, p. 164). Race is a socially constructedcategory

whose contradictory presence cannot be denied. Race accords value and

worth in our social structure, rendering some superior and others inferior.

Although the race line may be complex, dynamic, and self-preserving, this

doesnotmeanthatwearereadytothrowthelanguageandlawofraceoutthe

window while strategizing to leave racism behind us (Lopez, in press).

Contemporary ethical issues, many of these in health andscience with

immediate life and death ramifications, such as abortion (Brennan, 1999);

healthtrials,especiallyinAIDSresearch(Rothman,2000);anddoctor-patient

privacy (Shildrick, 1997), point to the absolute necessity to continue our

efforts to develop ethical theories that are inclusive and have the potential of

promoting the common good. What feminist scholars and activists strive for

is an inclusion of the position of, consequences for, andopportunities for

womenandthereforeforhumankind.Aretheories,laws,andstudiesofabor-

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: