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Outlaw Culture
According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore bell hooks' electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a 'powerful site for intervention, challenge and change'. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
bell hooks
162 books14.3k followersbell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.
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December 23, 2021
I really didn’t expect this book to be nearly as clear or readable as it turned out to be. The more I think about that, the more it seems to me to be a real indictment of general academic writing – particularly progressive writing that is seeking to provide tools for some kind of liberation of the oppressed. By making what is said utterly incomprehensible to those most in need of those words we are doing them a double disservice. Denying them access even to the puny amount of hope our ideas might offer them.
But it is not just that this book is clear that is its only virtue. It also provides useful ideas and reminders that we live in a society that is dominated by a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and that this system can only exist by reproducing itself and making ‘normal’ what ought never to be conceived as normal. This book is a working through of many of the issues that confront oppressed groups in our society, it is based on the idea that those who are to speak in the name of others must constantly beware that their life-experiences and prejudices are not standing in the way of what they are trying to do. As she says:
“Those of us who speak, write, and act in ways other than from privileged class locations must self-interrogate constantly so that we do not unwittingly become complicit in maintaining existing exploitative and oppressive structures. None of us should be ashamed to speak about our class power, or lack of it. ” Page 179
This isn’t a book, really, but rather a series of essays. I guess that means it could be worth just dipped into – although, I think I would recommend reading this from beginning to end, as there does feel like there is a developing argument to these pieces and a logic to their ordering.
I’m doing my PhD on how images of particular groups of students (as represented in school marketing materials) might say something about which students are seen as ‘belonging’ at school and which are seen as not. A lot of what I’m trying to do is to look at the role of stereotypes and stereotype formation in photographic images and how these impact on how students are likely to identify with those stereotypes (positive and negative).
As she says, ““Malcolm X admonished black folks: ‘Never accept images that have been created for you by someone else. It is always better to form the habit of learning how to see things for yourself: then you are in a better position to judge for yourself’”. Page 181
She talks about how images of blacks are often constructed to deprave them of agency. I have recently reviewed a remarkable book called Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography which documented how civil rights images of powerless blacks were used to frame how whites in the Northern States of the US saw the civil rights movement. She makes it clear that little has changed:
"In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Richard Dyer describes the way in which Hollywood manipulates the black image with the intent to render it powerless.
‘The basic strategy of these discourses might be termed deactivation. Black people’s qualities could be praised to the skies, but they must not be shown to be effective qualities active in the world. Even we portrayed at their most vivid and vibrant, they must not be shown to do anything, except perhaps to be destructive in a random sort of way.’” Page 189
And a lot of this book is about precisely that. Not just about how women and Blacks and the poor are represented in US culture, but also the impact this has on how they are then ‘seen’ and how they see themselves. This is the terrifying aspect of this book – and one that has made me realise I’ve been going far too gently in my thesis. The recurring thought throughout this book (and now I’m not even sure if this is even mentioned in the actual text) was the experiments by Kenneth and Marnie Clarke with black children and their preference for white dolls. If you don’t know of this you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_... - note also that these experiments were repeated in 2006 with exactly the same results. If that doesn’t make you weep, you have no soul.
As hooks says right at the start of the book: “Significantly, only ‘white’ –skinned females could be imagined as innocent, virtuous, transcendent.” Page 21
Or: “As any white racist / sexist stereotypes in mass media representations teach us, scratch the surface of any black woman’s sexuality and you find a ‘ho—someone who is sexually available, apparently indiscriminate, who is incapable of commitment, someone who is likely to seduce and betray.” Page 65
What is most interesting about this book is that she doesn’t try to say that capitalism is the problem or the patriarchy is the problem or that white supremacy is the problem – they are all the problem and an interrelated network that is used to justify and undermine struggles for equity and justice, often by promising favours to one group of oppressed in the form of oppression of other groups of oppressed.
She gives various examples, but particularly of middle class ‘feminist’ writers (Paglia, Wolf and Roiphe) who are keen to seek ‘liberation’ for white middle class women (that is, economic equality with white middle class men) but that are utterly uninterested or aggressively opposed to extending this to any other kind of liberation for black or working class women.
“Paglia and her followers make feminism most palatable when they strip it of any radical political agenda that would include a critique of sexism and a call to dismantle patriarchy, repackaging it so that it is finally only about gender equality with men of their class in the public sphere.” Page 100
“These same strategies were used by Wolf when she appeared on the Charlie Rose talk show to discuss date rape. Appearing on a panel with women and white men, she seemed to find it easier to aggressively interrupt the black woman speaker while patiently listening to the words of white male speakers. A critical examination of this video would be a useful way to illustrate the practice of ‘power feminism’.” Page 111
And she asks of Roiphe the devastating question: “No interviews with Roiphe that I have read ask the author if she has critically interrogated the reason her work has received so much attention, or if she sees any connection between that attention and the antifeminist backlash.” Page 125
Since reading Said’s Orientalism, I am a bit obsessed with the whole notion of essentialism – and it is really nice to read someone who is equally obsessed. “I wonder about this need to trash black women writers and critical thinkers who have been among those who have worked hardest to challenge the assertion that the word ‘woman’ can be used when it is the specific experience of white females that is being talked about, who have argued that race and class must be considered when we develop feminist thought and theory.” Page 126
This is made clear later in the book when she writes:
“Years ago certain ideas were prevalent in the feminist movement, such as ‘Women would be liberated if they worked’. And I was thinking, ‘Gee, every black woman I’ve ever known has worked (outside the home), but this hasn’t necessarily meant liberation’. Obviously, this started me posing questions: ‘What women are we talking about when we talk about ‘women’?” Page 274
Feminists are often constructed as being fun-police – constructed as being opposed to sex and sexuality. But hooks has many interesting things to say about sex and eroticism. I found this particularly interesting:
“The eroticization of sex as degradation, especially dick-sucking, and the equation of that chosen ‘degradation’ with pleasure is merely an unimaginative reworking of stale patriarchal, pornographic fantasies that do not become more exciting or liberatory if women are the agents of their projection and realisation. Most of the women quoted in Esquire display a lack of sexual imagination, since they primarily conceive of sexual agency only by inverting the patriarchal standpoint and claiming it as their own.” Page 94
And this: “Concurrently, when heterosexual women are no longer attracted to macho men, the message sent to men would at least be consistent and clear. That would be a major intervention in the overall effort to transform rape culture.” Page 133
There is a fantastic analysis of gangsta rap – particularly focused on its misogyny and violence. I’m going to just quote large parts of what she has to say on this:
“Defining the turf, Staples writes, ‘For those who haven’t caught up, gangster rap is that wildly successful music in which all women are ‘bitches’ and ‘whores’ and young men kill each other for sport.’ No mention of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in this piece. Not a word about the cultural context that would need to exist for young males to be socialised to think differently about gender. No word about feminism. Staples unwittingly assumes that black males are writing their lyrics off in the ‘jungle,’ far away from the impact of mainstream socialization and desire. At no point does he interrogate why it is huge audiences, especially young white male consumers, are so turned on by this music.” Page 136
“Rather than seeing it (gangsta rap) as a subversion or disruption of the norm, we would need to see it as an embodiment of the norm.” Page 137
“These are the audiences who feel such a desperate need for gangsta rap. It is much easier to attack gangsta rap than to confront the culture that produces that need.” Page 143
And this discussion of gangsta rap reminded me of Robert Hughes’s discussion of the gulags, and the worst of the convict prisons in early Australia. How he pointed out that these extremes were necessary for the entire system to work. They were extremes, but without those extremes hanging over the heads of all convicts the system itself would have been unsustainable. It is easy for certain groups in our society to say that the patriarchy exists because of genetic predispositions in males that exclude the possibility of female power – but once you start seeing the celebration of rape culture throughout our society (not just in gangsta rap) you also see how people are held in place. How, as Bourdieu says, you learn to not want what you cannot have.
There is a kind of double-speak that affects our culture. Where what is opposite of the truth is presented as obviously true. The rich and the white are presented as endlessly pure and generous – the poor as grasping and ugly. In a meritocracy the good rise to the top, while the poor are poor for very good reasons.
“Indeed, many films and television shows portray the ruling class as generous, eager to share, as unattached to their wealth in their interactions with folks who are not materially privileged. These images contrast with the opportunistic avaricious longings of the poor. … Poverty, in their minds and in our society as a whole, is seen as synonymous with depravity, lack and worthlessness.” Page 197
The second-last chapter is a long interview and I think this is possibly the best part of the whole book. I’m not going to quote very much of it, but it is such a lovely thing – almost like free-form thinking – skating and gliding over so many interesting topics – the kind of conversations you might dream of having, but that never seem to actually happen in real life.
Look at this for some of the topics mentioned:
“’Privacy’ in this country is usually just a euphemism for extreme loneliness, alienation, and fragmentation.” Page 265
“I struggle a great deal with the phone, because I think the telephone is very dangerous to our lives in that it gives us such an illusory sense that we are connecting. I always think about those telephone commercials (‘reach out and touch someone!’) and that becomes such false reality—even in my own life I have to remind myself that talking to someone on the phone is not the same as having a conversation where you see them and smell them.” 271
“In fact, if people weren’t seduced by certain forms of addiction, they might rebel! They might be depressed, they might start saying, ‘Why should any of us work ten hours a day? Why shouldn’t we share jobs and work four hours a day and be able to spend more quality time for ourselves and our families?” Page 272
“Also, many people have shown the ways in which our state and our government are linked to the bringing in of masses of drugs to pacify people—starting with drugs like aspirin which make people feel like ‘you shouldn’t have any pain in your life’ and that ‘pain means you’re not living a successful life’. And I think this is particularly hard to take. Black people and the black community have really been hurt by buying into the notion ‘If I’m in pain, I must be a miserable person’, rather than, ‘Pain can be a fruitful place of transformation.’” Page 273
“I’m really into the deinstitutionalization of learning and of experience.” Page 275
But the book ends with what I think is a great truth: “In part, we learn to love by giving service.” Page 297
This is a remarkable book. Like I said, it is an easy read while still being a challenging read. But the challenge is in the power of the ideas, rather than in the language. I didn’t agree with everything she has to say, she says stuff about Fritjof Capra that annoys me, but then, she is attracted to Buddhism and so while I can see that that makes sense, it is still not an excuse. I much prefer Pythagoras’s Trousers as a feminist critique of big-dick physics.
I will be reading more bell hooks.
But it is not just that this book is clear that is its only virtue. It also provides useful ideas and reminders that we live in a society that is dominated by a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and that this system can only exist by reproducing itself and making ‘normal’ what ought never to be conceived as normal. This book is a working through of many of the issues that confront oppressed groups in our society, it is based on the idea that those who are to speak in the name of others must constantly beware that their life-experiences and prejudices are not standing in the way of what they are trying to do. As she says:
“Those of us who speak, write, and act in ways other than from privileged class locations must self-interrogate constantly so that we do not unwittingly become complicit in maintaining existing exploitative and oppressive structures. None of us should be ashamed to speak about our class power, or lack of it. ” Page 179
This isn’t a book, really, but rather a series of essays. I guess that means it could be worth just dipped into – although, I think I would recommend reading this from beginning to end, as there does feel like there is a developing argument to these pieces and a logic to their ordering.
I’m doing my PhD on how images of particular groups of students (as represented in school marketing materials) might say something about which students are seen as ‘belonging’ at school and which are seen as not. A lot of what I’m trying to do is to look at the role of stereotypes and stereotype formation in photographic images and how these impact on how students are likely to identify with those stereotypes (positive and negative).
As she says, ““Malcolm X admonished black folks: ‘Never accept images that have been created for you by someone else. It is always better to form the habit of learning how to see things for yourself: then you are in a better position to judge for yourself’”. Page 181
She talks about how images of blacks are often constructed to deprave them of agency. I have recently reviewed a remarkable book called Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography which documented how civil rights images of powerless blacks were used to frame how whites in the Northern States of the US saw the civil rights movement. She makes it clear that little has changed:
"In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Richard Dyer describes the way in which Hollywood manipulates the black image with the intent to render it powerless.
‘The basic strategy of these discourses might be termed deactivation. Black people’s qualities could be praised to the skies, but they must not be shown to be effective qualities active in the world. Even we portrayed at their most vivid and vibrant, they must not be shown to do anything, except perhaps to be destructive in a random sort of way.’” Page 189
And a lot of this book is about precisely that. Not just about how women and Blacks and the poor are represented in US culture, but also the impact this has on how they are then ‘seen’ and how they see themselves. This is the terrifying aspect of this book – and one that has made me realise I’ve been going far too gently in my thesis. The recurring thought throughout this book (and now I’m not even sure if this is even mentioned in the actual text) was the experiments by Kenneth and Marnie Clarke with black children and their preference for white dolls. If you don’t know of this you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_... - note also that these experiments were repeated in 2006 with exactly the same results. If that doesn’t make you weep, you have no soul.
As hooks says right at the start of the book: “Significantly, only ‘white’ –skinned females could be imagined as innocent, virtuous, transcendent.” Page 21
Or: “As any white racist / sexist stereotypes in mass media representations teach us, scratch the surface of any black woman’s sexuality and you find a ‘ho—someone who is sexually available, apparently indiscriminate, who is incapable of commitment, someone who is likely to seduce and betray.” Page 65
What is most interesting about this book is that she doesn’t try to say that capitalism is the problem or the patriarchy is the problem or that white supremacy is the problem – they are all the problem and an interrelated network that is used to justify and undermine struggles for equity and justice, often by promising favours to one group of oppressed in the form of oppression of other groups of oppressed.
She gives various examples, but particularly of middle class ‘feminist’ writers (Paglia, Wolf and Roiphe) who are keen to seek ‘liberation’ for white middle class women (that is, economic equality with white middle class men) but that are utterly uninterested or aggressively opposed to extending this to any other kind of liberation for black or working class women.
“Paglia and her followers make feminism most palatable when they strip it of any radical political agenda that would include a critique of sexism and a call to dismantle patriarchy, repackaging it so that it is finally only about gender equality with men of their class in the public sphere.” Page 100
“These same strategies were used by Wolf when she appeared on the Charlie Rose talk show to discuss date rape. Appearing on a panel with women and white men, she seemed to find it easier to aggressively interrupt the black woman speaker while patiently listening to the words of white male speakers. A critical examination of this video would be a useful way to illustrate the practice of ‘power feminism’.” Page 111
And she asks of Roiphe the devastating question: “No interviews with Roiphe that I have read ask the author if she has critically interrogated the reason her work has received so much attention, or if she sees any connection between that attention and the antifeminist backlash.” Page 125
Since reading Said’s Orientalism, I am a bit obsessed with the whole notion of essentialism – and it is really nice to read someone who is equally obsessed. “I wonder about this need to trash black women writers and critical thinkers who have been among those who have worked hardest to challenge the assertion that the word ‘woman’ can be used when it is the specific experience of white females that is being talked about, who have argued that race and class must be considered when we develop feminist thought and theory.” Page 126
This is made clear later in the book when she writes:
“Years ago certain ideas were prevalent in the feminist movement, such as ‘Women would be liberated if they worked’. And I was thinking, ‘Gee, every black woman I’ve ever known has worked (outside the home), but this hasn’t necessarily meant liberation’. Obviously, this started me posing questions: ‘What women are we talking about when we talk about ‘women’?” Page 274
Feminists are often constructed as being fun-police – constructed as being opposed to sex and sexuality. But hooks has many interesting things to say about sex and eroticism. I found this particularly interesting:
“The eroticization of sex as degradation, especially dick-sucking, and the equation of that chosen ‘degradation’ with pleasure is merely an unimaginative reworking of stale patriarchal, pornographic fantasies that do not become more exciting or liberatory if women are the agents of their projection and realisation. Most of the women quoted in Esquire display a lack of sexual imagination, since they primarily conceive of sexual agency only by inverting the patriarchal standpoint and claiming it as their own.” Page 94
And this: “Concurrently, when heterosexual women are no longer attracted to macho men, the message sent to men would at least be consistent and clear. That would be a major intervention in the overall effort to transform rape culture.” Page 133
There is a fantastic analysis of gangsta rap – particularly focused on its misogyny and violence. I’m going to just quote large parts of what she has to say on this:
“Defining the turf, Staples writes, ‘For those who haven’t caught up, gangster rap is that wildly successful music in which all women are ‘bitches’ and ‘whores’ and young men kill each other for sport.’ No mention of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in this piece. Not a word about the cultural context that would need to exist for young males to be socialised to think differently about gender. No word about feminism. Staples unwittingly assumes that black males are writing their lyrics off in the ‘jungle,’ far away from the impact of mainstream socialization and desire. At no point does he interrogate why it is huge audiences, especially young white male consumers, are so turned on by this music.” Page 136
“Rather than seeing it (gangsta rap) as a subversion or disruption of the norm, we would need to see it as an embodiment of the norm.” Page 137
“These are the audiences who feel such a desperate need for gangsta rap. It is much easier to attack gangsta rap than to confront the culture that produces that need.” Page 143
And this discussion of gangsta rap reminded me of Robert Hughes’s discussion of the gulags, and the worst of the convict prisons in early Australia. How he pointed out that these extremes were necessary for the entire system to work. They were extremes, but without those extremes hanging over the heads of all convicts the system itself would have been unsustainable. It is easy for certain groups in our society to say that the patriarchy exists because of genetic predispositions in males that exclude the possibility of female power – but once you start seeing the celebration of rape culture throughout our society (not just in gangsta rap) you also see how people are held in place. How, as Bourdieu says, you learn to not want what you cannot have.
There is a kind of double-speak that affects our culture. Where what is opposite of the truth is presented as obviously true. The rich and the white are presented as endlessly pure and generous – the poor as grasping and ugly. In a meritocracy the good rise to the top, while the poor are poor for very good reasons.
“Indeed, many films and television shows portray the ruling class as generous, eager to share, as unattached to their wealth in their interactions with folks who are not materially privileged. These images contrast with the opportunistic avaricious longings of the poor. … Poverty, in their minds and in our society as a whole, is seen as synonymous with depravity, lack and worthlessness.” Page 197
The second-last chapter is a long interview and I think this is possibly the best part of the whole book. I’m not going to quote very much of it, but it is such a lovely thing – almost like free-form thinking – skating and gliding over so many interesting topics – the kind of conversations you might dream of having, but that never seem to actually happen in real life.
Look at this for some of the topics mentioned:
“’Privacy’ in this country is usually just a euphemism for extreme loneliness, alienation, and fragmentation.” Page 265
“I struggle a great deal with the phone, because I think the telephone is very dangerous to our lives in that it gives us such an illusory sense that we are connecting. I always think about those telephone commercials (‘reach out and touch someone!’) and that becomes such false reality—even in my own life I have to remind myself that talking to someone on the phone is not the same as having a conversation where you see them and smell them.” 271
“In fact, if people weren’t seduced by certain forms of addiction, they might rebel! They might be depressed, they might start saying, ‘Why should any of us work ten hours a day? Why shouldn’t we share jobs and work four hours a day and be able to spend more quality time for ourselves and our families?” Page 272
“Also, many people have shown the ways in which our state and our government are linked to the bringing in of masses of drugs to pacify people—starting with drugs like aspirin which make people feel like ‘you shouldn’t have any pain in your life’ and that ‘pain means you’re not living a successful life’. And I think this is particularly hard to take. Black people and the black community have really been hurt by buying into the notion ‘If I’m in pain, I must be a miserable person’, rather than, ‘Pain can be a fruitful place of transformation.’” Page 273
“I’m really into the deinstitutionalization of learning and of experience.” Page 275
But the book ends with what I think is a great truth: “In part, we learn to love by giving service.” Page 297
This is a remarkable book. Like I said, it is an easy read while still being a challenging read. But the challenge is in the power of the ideas, rather than in the language. I didn’t agree with everything she has to say, she says stuff about Fritjof Capra that annoys me, but then, she is attracted to Buddhism and so while I can see that that makes sense, it is still not an excuse. I much prefer Pythagoras’s Trousers as a feminist critique of big-dick physics.
I will be reading more bell hooks.
October 19, 2022
As a part of my reading goals this year, I've read a lot of bell hooks so far and no doubt her wisdom and teachings on a wide array of culturally relevant phenomena are invaluable. But perhaps what will stick with me the most is her understanding of pain as a fruitful place of transformation and her assertion that suffering can be redemptive.
When I first started therapy all I wanted was to stop feeling pain. I was suffering so much and I had no apparatus to understand what was happening to me. bell hooks speaks about a similar experience in this book - of realising she needed therapy, of having no frame of reference through which she could understand her pain and ultimately having to reinvent herself as a healer, as her own therapist. I wish I could invent this figure for myself too, but I am not as wise and I still need a professional. But I've come a long way and now practice acceptance and commitment therapy, and understand pain to be an integral part of the human experience. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that bell hooks steered me in this direction through her writings.
This book is a collection of essays and interviews, and so is probably amongst the most personal of all her writings. There are several pieces wherein we see her quite unguarded, out of the vantage point of academic settings that she usually writes from. Some of her essays made me giggle and a particular interview even left me a little surprised because of the solidarity she shared with the interviewer. I was going to finish my bell hooks reading with Ain't I a Woman after having finished Teaching to Transgress, but I'm glad I made a stop here and didn't skip the book like I originally intended to.
When I first started therapy all I wanted was to stop feeling pain. I was suffering so much and I had no apparatus to understand what was happening to me. bell hooks speaks about a similar experience in this book - of realising she needed therapy, of having no frame of reference through which she could understand her pain and ultimately having to reinvent herself as a healer, as her own therapist. I wish I could invent this figure for myself too, but I am not as wise and I still need a professional. But I've come a long way and now practice acceptance and commitment therapy, and understand pain to be an integral part of the human experience. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that bell hooks steered me in this direction through her writings.
This book is a collection of essays and interviews, and so is probably amongst the most personal of all her writings. There are several pieces wherein we see her quite unguarded, out of the vantage point of academic settings that she usually writes from. Some of her essays made me giggle and a particular interview even left me a little surprised because of the solidarity she shared with the interviewer. I was going to finish my bell hooks reading with Ain't I a Woman after having finished Teaching to Transgress, but I'm glad I made a stop here and didn't skip the book like I originally intended to.
August 31, 2018
In her introduction, hooks writes about finding herself at home in Cultural Studies ‘where interdisciplinary work [as opposed to the conventional specialised & periodised pedagogy she’d felt so limited by] was encouraged and affirmed’. When white male academics in the US discovered Cultural Studies, it promptly exploded, and became a glorious space where she was free to transgress the boundaries she had always pushed at, and where hoards of students excitedly engaged critically with popular culture. Yay.
However, hooks shares her view that lots of folk in the field ‘prefer to score points by remaining in the academic world and representing radical chic there’ rather than reaching out to a wider audience as she does herself. This leads to appropriative rewriting of pop culture, seeing subversive intent that isn’t really there. Cultural studies is useless when it’s ‘the movement of the insurgent intellectual mind across new frontiers’ in cultural imperialist mode. We must decolonise our minds! Hooks talks about making boundary-crossing possible for all, about working to disrupt the structures of domination we interrogate, by ‘courageously surrender[ing] participation in whatever sphere of coercive hierarchical domination we enjoy individual and group privilege’.
Consistently hooks strives to make the reader feel at home in her essays by opening with and working from anecdotes or personal reflections. The feeling you get is that she is reaching out to you, offering her work to you in a generous, inclusive spirit. Welcoming especially the black, poor, or otherwise alienated-from-academia reader, hooks practices what she advocates. Another great thing is that she tells us what to do with our politics, how to live them, wherever possible. The practical strategies she suggests are often so simple that one can individually start to carry them out. Most require solidarity, cooperation and political engagement.
Should I feel this happy reading this book??! It’s not time to get comfy and pat myself on the back as if by reading I’ve magically solved injustice (hooks warns herself against feeling that by achieving success with her writing the space for her critique exists and thus job done! This is not the case – even now I struggle to explain and even justify my political approach to entertainment forms to many folk outside the feminist bubble. this essay by Trudy at Gradient Lair really speaks to me about the lack of space for cultural criticism and how it is crushed from both sides). But I feel hooks manages to affirm that passion for working towards the world we want, and lovingly welcome us all into the struggle. From this fierce willingness flows action… I see differently and act towards people around me differently after reading. Have to start somewhere.
Here’s a chapter-by-chapter summary for ease of reference. A lot of these summaries don’t do justice to the nuance, contextualisation and precision that hooks always brings to her arguments. Also, the any quotes should not be seen as an exhaustive list of quotables. I would have to type out the entire book to provide that!
1 Power to the pussy
Hooks has absolutely no time for Madonna’s white supremacist and homophobic stereotype-mongering in Sex and exposes her ‘women in abusive relationships must dig it’ line alongside her image as the pure blond hetero white woman as the racist victim-blaming antifeminist crap that it is. On the back of this, she expertly deconstructs the idea that sexual freedom for women means having the choice whether to dominate or be dominated.
2 Altars of sacrifice
This essay is about Jean Michel Basquiat and how extremely difficult it is for a black artist/creative to work under the white gaze. Her words on the works’ achievements (communicating black pain & its sources, critiquing imperialist maleness)and limits (failure to be ‘in touch with the senses and emotions beyond conquest) are fascinating, but I can’t help but latch onto the brilliantly pointed remarks she dishes out to white critics who crudely psychoanalyse Basquiat in accordance with racist and sexist assumptions, whitesplain his work and generally obstruct his entry into the canons.
3. What’s passion got to do with it?
“In what context within patriarchy do women create space where we can protect our genius?”
This is an interview in which hooks talks diversely about pop culture but especially about transgressive relationships and portrayals of African American communities. She mentions The Bodyguard and Thelma and Louise as offering the possibility of radical love that then crashes and burns. She shows how exciting and useful this kind of examination can be. One of the points I liked was her mention of how people who are generally completely unrepresented in pop culture tend to embrace even a crumb thrown their way.
4 Seduction and Betrayal
Going further in her discussion of interracial relationships, hooks expands on the disappointing politics of The Crying Game and The Bodyguard (which transgresses class stereotypes but is regressive about IRR), deconstructing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy all the way of course
“Uncontrollable lust between white men and black women is not taboo. It becomes taboo only to the extent that [it] leads to… a committed relationship”
5 Censorship from Left and Right
With examples that reveal the problems of patriarchal attitudes among and limited platforms for black culture-leaders, hooks makes clear her position on censorship – “the core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech”. She points out that as a dissenting voice within feminist movement she was often silenced by a collective demand for harmony. “I learned that any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and in practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange and dissent”. I’m almost unwilling to share these important words for fear they will be weaponised against the already marginalised they are meant to protect, by those folks who think debating others’ testimony & humanity is their free speech prerogative, or try to shut down criticism that bites them too hard with cries that they are being silenced by abuse… We need to remember where and who these words come from.
6 Talking Sex
Hooks rehabilitates feminism as supporting liberatory heterosexuality – it was always about ‘claim[ing] the body as a site of pleasure’ after being misquoted and misrepresented in Esquire magazine, in one of those now-familiar ‘look boys the new sexy feminism is here!’ pieces that denigrate ‘man-hating’ feminists who have critiqued compulsory heterosexuality and rape culture and hail the arrival of some sister-dissing ‘pro-sex/sex-positive’ ‘new’ feminists who are actually just repackaging conservative ideas that focus on male desire, domination and ‘the patriarchal phallic imaginary’, as well as aiding white supremacy by universalising white experience in the word ‘woman’. Her contribution was constructed in a way that played on racist stereotypes of black female sexuality. Hooks comments that the piece showed ‘contempt for any radical or revolutionary feminist practice that upholds dialogue and engagement with men [and] sees men as comrades in the struggle”. She calls for feminists to document their embrace of female agency and liberatory sex lives in art literature film etc, to provide counter-hegemonic evidence to repel the phallocentric sexist media from the turf of sexuality!
7 Camille Paglia
*laughing my ass off, makes mental note to repeat this action whenever anyone mentions Paglia to me*
8 Dissident heat
Before Lean In feminism there was Power feminism courtesy of Naomi Wolf, who actually wrote that the masters tools would be able to dismantle his house *laughter resumes*
9 Katie Roiphe
An important part of the lesson is, there is always some even worse white feminist to diss. Do not waste your time scoring points off their crappyness in ways that erase & appropriate the critiques radical women, especially feminists of Colour, have already made of us since the moment they (ok we) first started our shenanigans…
10 Seduced by violence no more
“We live in a culture that condones and celebrates rape”
This is an essay about how women and men can engage with heterosexuality to undermine rape culture by repudiating phallocentrism, where hooks uses her own experience to explain how to do this.
11 Gangsta Culture – Sexism and Misogyny
Hooks is so funny when she tells how the white mainstream media is so desperate for her to issue feminist condemnation of gangsta rap & refuses to hear her assertions that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is the purveyor of its sexism – this crap does not emerge in a vacuum but is produced from what folk are fed!
After a thorough, contextualised critique of misogyny in gangsta rap, hooks turns her attention to The Piano, a thoroughly regressive and misogynistic film with a white bourgeois setting with the same values ‘cowboy, gangster, philistine’, revealing the racist agenda driving condemnation of the former and the sexism feminists must resist in both.
12 Ice Cube culture
Hooks lives her encouragement to folk to ‘talk across difference’ by chatting with rapper Ice Cube. They talk about black capitalism and the shaming hooks experienced when buying herself a decent car. A major theme is self-love – this is central to praxis for both of them. Hooks nudges him to consider this from a feminist perspective. His thoughts are really interesting. I like how he says ‘white kids are eavesdropping on my records, but they need to hear what we got to say about them’. This speaks to my own consumption of hooks’ product, which I have to keep contextualising & interrogating. I love how hooks talks about her need to be cool so that black kids particularly will see it’s possible to be an academic writing books and still be down: her coolness is enabling!
13 Spending Culture
Using Paul Fussell’s playful & v useful concept of a people who try to escape class, Xs, generally doing creative/intellectual, autonomous work & heedless of ‘popular shibboleths... an unmonied aristocracy’ hooks makes a nuanced critique of ‘opportunistic materialism’ lamenting that the commodification of blackness has made space for such attitudes and noting that interrogating class privilege is not at odds with solidarity in black liberation struggle. She sees an ‘internal colonialism' arising from American education: “complicity begins with the equation of black capitalism with black self-determination”. She notes that “the failings of global socialism have made it easier… to reject visions of communalism or of participatory economics that would redistribute society’s resources in more just and democratic ways” and problematises the way black elites discuss ‘the underclass’ and also her experiences of having her critique cast as envy on one side and appropriation on the other, depending on context.
14 Spike Lee doing Malcolm X
Problems with Lee’s film… it’s the way white supremacist capitalist patriarchy would want it. In detail.
15 Seeing and Making Culture
This essay is about the poor, particularly the African American poor, and how hooks’ upbringing involved instilling some communalist values and self respect, both of which are being cruelly undermined by increasingly neoliberal values and policies. Negative representations of the poor astonished hooks when she went to college. While working to dismantle economic inequality, she argues that we must affirm that it is possible to live a meaningful life whilst poor. She notes that Pretty Woman is about a benevolent rich man rescuing a poor woman from poverty – the ruling class generally portray themselves as generous and eager to share, while the poor are depicted as avariciously opportunistic. More and more people believe these tropes peddled by mainstream media and pop culture. Hooks makes the brilliant suggestion of building literacy programs for critical consciousness in movie theatres during the times when these are not in use.
16 Back to Black
An essay on the history of ‘black is beautiful’ and on colorism/shadism.
17 Malcolm X
On the lack of attention given to the radical leader’s self-divestment of misogyny and patriarchal values in later life. Obviously, the White gaze is implicated.
18 Columbus
Here hooks addresses the issue of settler colonialism in the USA. Something I did not know: African people came to the Americas before Europeans and a peaceful cultural exchange took place (in your face colonisers (I think that’s my face too unfortunately)).
19 Moving into and beyond feminism
This is an interview, very personal. Hooks talks about the wounds of racism, sexism and homophobia and the healing power of reaching out to each other. I love where she answers her own question “how do we deal with difference?” by inviting us to think about falling in love, and researching and carefully feeling each other out. As Trudy (of Gradient Lair) once tweeted ‘love = accountability’. I will never stop repeating that! Many themes here… community, madness… privacy, honesty, spirituality, the need to engage with emotions, using performance art to deal with trauma… “aesthetics are crucial to our ability to live humanely in the world". She also talks about cultivating the ability to wait, and to patiently learn not to dominate and shut down others when we interact
20 Love as the practice of freedom
The title kind of says it. I hope to read more about the place of love in hooks’ political vision and practice in her other books. So inspiring.
However, hooks shares her view that lots of folk in the field ‘prefer to score points by remaining in the academic world and representing radical chic there’ rather than reaching out to a wider audience as she does herself. This leads to appropriative rewriting of pop culture, seeing subversive intent that isn’t really there. Cultural studies is useless when it’s ‘the movement of the insurgent intellectual mind across new frontiers’ in cultural imperialist mode. We must decolonise our minds! Hooks talks about making boundary-crossing possible for all, about working to disrupt the structures of domination we interrogate, by ‘courageously surrender[ing] participation in whatever sphere of coercive hierarchical domination we enjoy individual and group privilege’.
Consistently hooks strives to make the reader feel at home in her essays by opening with and working from anecdotes or personal reflections. The feeling you get is that she is reaching out to you, offering her work to you in a generous, inclusive spirit. Welcoming especially the black, poor, or otherwise alienated-from-academia reader, hooks practices what she advocates. Another great thing is that she tells us what to do with our politics, how to live them, wherever possible. The practical strategies she suggests are often so simple that one can individually start to carry them out. Most require solidarity, cooperation and political engagement.
Should I feel this happy reading this book??! It’s not time to get comfy and pat myself on the back as if by reading I’ve magically solved injustice (hooks warns herself against feeling that by achieving success with her writing the space for her critique exists and thus job done! This is not the case – even now I struggle to explain and even justify my political approach to entertainment forms to many folk outside the feminist bubble. this essay by Trudy at Gradient Lair really speaks to me about the lack of space for cultural criticism and how it is crushed from both sides). But I feel hooks manages to affirm that passion for working towards the world we want, and lovingly welcome us all into the struggle. From this fierce willingness flows action… I see differently and act towards people around me differently after reading. Have to start somewhere.
Here’s a chapter-by-chapter summary for ease of reference. A lot of these summaries don’t do justice to the nuance, contextualisation and precision that hooks always brings to her arguments. Also, the any quotes should not be seen as an exhaustive list of quotables. I would have to type out the entire book to provide that!
1 Power to the pussy
Hooks has absolutely no time for Madonna’s white supremacist and homophobic stereotype-mongering in Sex and exposes her ‘women in abusive relationships must dig it’ line alongside her image as the pure blond hetero white woman as the racist victim-blaming antifeminist crap that it is. On the back of this, she expertly deconstructs the idea that sexual freedom for women means having the choice whether to dominate or be dominated.
2 Altars of sacrifice
This essay is about Jean Michel Basquiat and how extremely difficult it is for a black artist/creative to work under the white gaze. Her words on the works’ achievements (communicating black pain & its sources, critiquing imperialist maleness)and limits (failure to be ‘in touch with the senses and emotions beyond conquest) are fascinating, but I can’t help but latch onto the brilliantly pointed remarks she dishes out to white critics who crudely psychoanalyse Basquiat in accordance with racist and sexist assumptions, whitesplain his work and generally obstruct his entry into the canons.
3. What’s passion got to do with it?
“In what context within patriarchy do women create space where we can protect our genius?”
This is an interview in which hooks talks diversely about pop culture but especially about transgressive relationships and portrayals of African American communities. She mentions The Bodyguard and Thelma and Louise as offering the possibility of radical love that then crashes and burns. She shows how exciting and useful this kind of examination can be. One of the points I liked was her mention of how people who are generally completely unrepresented in pop culture tend to embrace even a crumb thrown their way.
real passion has the power to disrupt boundaries. I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility[…] We have to go to films outside America to find any vision of redemptive love… because America is a culture of domination.
4 Seduction and Betrayal
Going further in her discussion of interracial relationships, hooks expands on the disappointing politics of The Crying Game and The Bodyguard (which transgresses class stereotypes but is regressive about IRR), deconstructing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy all the way of course
“Uncontrollable lust between white men and black women is not taboo. It becomes taboo only to the extent that [it] leads to… a committed relationship”
5 Censorship from Left and Right
With examples that reveal the problems of patriarchal attitudes among and limited platforms for black culture-leaders, hooks makes clear her position on censorship – “the core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech”. She points out that as a dissenting voice within feminist movement she was often silenced by a collective demand for harmony. “I learned that any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and in practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange and dissent”. I’m almost unwilling to share these important words for fear they will be weaponised against the already marginalised they are meant to protect, by those folks who think debating others’ testimony & humanity is their free speech prerogative, or try to shut down criticism that bites them too hard with cries that they are being silenced by abuse… We need to remember where and who these words come from.
6 Talking Sex
Hooks rehabilitates feminism as supporting liberatory heterosexuality – it was always about ‘claim[ing] the body as a site of pleasure’ after being misquoted and misrepresented in Esquire magazine, in one of those now-familiar ‘look boys the new sexy feminism is here!’ pieces that denigrate ‘man-hating’ feminists who have critiqued compulsory heterosexuality and rape culture and hail the arrival of some sister-dissing ‘pro-sex/sex-positive’ ‘new’ feminists who are actually just repackaging conservative ideas that focus on male desire, domination and ‘the patriarchal phallic imaginary’, as well as aiding white supremacy by universalising white experience in the word ‘woman’. Her contribution was constructed in a way that played on racist stereotypes of black female sexuality. Hooks comments that the piece showed ‘contempt for any radical or revolutionary feminist practice that upholds dialogue and engagement with men [and] sees men as comrades in the struggle”. She calls for feminists to document their embrace of female agency and liberatory sex lives in art literature film etc, to provide counter-hegemonic evidence to repel the phallocentric sexist media from the turf of sexuality!
7 Camille Paglia
*laughing my ass off, makes mental note to repeat this action whenever anyone mentions Paglia to me*
8 Dissident heat
Before Lean In feminism there was Power feminism courtesy of Naomi Wolf, who actually wrote that the masters tools would be able to dismantle his house *laughter resumes*
9 Katie Roiphe
An important part of the lesson is, there is always some even worse white feminist to diss. Do not waste your time scoring points off their crappyness in ways that erase & appropriate the critiques radical women, especially feminists of Colour, have already made of us since the moment they (ok we) first started our shenanigans…
10 Seduced by violence no more
“We live in a culture that condones and celebrates rape”
This is an essay about how women and men can engage with heterosexuality to undermine rape culture by repudiating phallocentrism, where hooks uses her own experience to explain how to do this.
11 Gangsta Culture – Sexism and Misogyny
Hooks is so funny when she tells how the white mainstream media is so desperate for her to issue feminist condemnation of gangsta rap & refuses to hear her assertions that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is the purveyor of its sexism – this crap does not emerge in a vacuum but is produced from what folk are fed!
It is useful to think of misogyny as a field that must be laboured in and maintained both to sustain patriarchy but also to nourish an antifeminist backlash. And what better group to labour on this “plantation” than young black men?
After a thorough, contextualised critique of misogyny in gangsta rap, hooks turns her attention to The Piano, a thoroughly regressive and misogynistic film with a white bourgeois setting with the same values ‘cowboy, gangster, philistine’, revealing the racist agenda driving condemnation of the former and the sexism feminists must resist in both.
12 Ice Cube culture
Hooks lives her encouragement to folk to ‘talk across difference’ by chatting with rapper Ice Cube. They talk about black capitalism and the shaming hooks experienced when buying herself a decent car. A major theme is self-love – this is central to praxis for both of them. Hooks nudges him to consider this from a feminist perspective. His thoughts are really interesting. I like how he says ‘white kids are eavesdropping on my records, but they need to hear what we got to say about them’. This speaks to my own consumption of hooks’ product, which I have to keep contextualising & interrogating. I love how hooks talks about her need to be cool so that black kids particularly will see it’s possible to be an academic writing books and still be down: her coolness is enabling!
13 Spending Culture
Using Paul Fussell’s playful & v useful concept of a people who try to escape class, Xs, generally doing creative/intellectual, autonomous work & heedless of ‘popular shibboleths... an unmonied aristocracy’ hooks makes a nuanced critique of ‘opportunistic materialism’ lamenting that the commodification of blackness has made space for such attitudes and noting that interrogating class privilege is not at odds with solidarity in black liberation struggle. She sees an ‘internal colonialism' arising from American education: “complicity begins with the equation of black capitalism with black self-determination”. She notes that “the failings of global socialism have made it easier… to reject visions of communalism or of participatory economics that would redistribute society’s resources in more just and democratic ways” and problematises the way black elites discuss ‘the underclass’ and also her experiences of having her critique cast as envy on one side and appropriation on the other, depending on context.
Those of us who are still working to mix the vision of autonomy evoked by X category with our dedication to ending domination in all its forms, who cherish openness, honesty, radical will, creativity and free speech, and do not long to have power over others, or to build nations (or even academic empires), are working to project an alternative politics of representation – working to free the black image so it is not enslaved to any exploitative or oppressive agenda
14 Spike Lee doing Malcolm X
Problems with Lee’s film… it’s the way white supremacist capitalist patriarchy would want it. In detail.
15 Seeing and Making Culture
This essay is about the poor, particularly the African American poor, and how hooks’ upbringing involved instilling some communalist values and self respect, both of which are being cruelly undermined by increasingly neoliberal values and policies. Negative representations of the poor astonished hooks when she went to college. While working to dismantle economic inequality, she argues that we must affirm that it is possible to live a meaningful life whilst poor. She notes that Pretty Woman is about a benevolent rich man rescuing a poor woman from poverty – the ruling class generally portray themselves as generous and eager to share, while the poor are depicted as avariciously opportunistic. More and more people believe these tropes peddled by mainstream media and pop culture. Hooks makes the brilliant suggestion of building literacy programs for critical consciousness in movie theatres during the times when these are not in use.
16 Back to Black
An essay on the history of ‘black is beautiful’ and on colorism/shadism.
17 Malcolm X
On the lack of attention given to the radical leader’s self-divestment of misogyny and patriarchal values in later life. Obviously, the White gaze is implicated.
18 Columbus
Here hooks addresses the issue of settler colonialism in the USA. Something I did not know: African people came to the Americas before Europeans and a peaceful cultural exchange took place (in your face colonisers (I think that’s my face too unfortunately)).
We are called to judge between a memory that justifies and privileges domination, oppression and exploitation and one that exalts and affirms reciprocity, community and mutuality. Given the crisis the planet is facing – rampant destruction of nature, famine, threats of nuclear attack, ongoing patriarchal wars – and the way these tragedies are made manifest in our daily life and the lives of folks everywhere in the world, it can only be a cause for rejoicing that we can remember and reshape paradigms of human bonding that emphasise the increased capacity of folks to care for the earth and for one another. That memory can restore our faith and renew our hope
19 Moving into and beyond feminism
This is an interview, very personal. Hooks talks about the wounds of racism, sexism and homophobia and the healing power of reaching out to each other. I love where she answers her own question “how do we deal with difference?” by inviting us to think about falling in love, and researching and carefully feeling each other out. As Trudy (of Gradient Lair) once tweeted ‘love = accountability’. I will never stop repeating that! Many themes here… community, madness… privacy, honesty, spirituality, the need to engage with emotions, using performance art to deal with trauma… “aesthetics are crucial to our ability to live humanely in the world". She also talks about cultivating the ability to wait, and to patiently learn not to dominate and shut down others when we interact
20 Love as the practice of freedom
The title kind of says it. I hope to read more about the place of love in hooks’ political vision and practice in her other books. So inspiring.
September 18, 2022
In her essay on Spike Lee's biopic of Malcolm X, hooks quotes Manning Marable on the tendency of dominant cultural discourses under capitalism "to drain the radical message of a dynamic, living activist into an abstract icon, to replace radical content with pure image."
Something similar has happened to hooks' own image since her recent demise: the marketability of titles like All About Love: New Visions (chosen for several Valentines' Day reading lists and book clubs) repositioning her in the mainstream as a trendy philosopher of love, so that when people who consider the Love Trilogy as representative of hooks read her outside the context of a lifetime of explicitly radical (anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist), unapologetically feminist work—the stuff that has made reading her such a life-changing experience for many—they are often disappointed. Meanwhile, the hollowing-out of her political message in the way these later books are aestheticised serves as a source of alienation to those whose lives were changed by hooks' critical engagement with the hitherto separate(d) worlds of theory and praxis.
Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations forms an important bridge between these two kinds of readers, as well as between the two distinct ideas of the nature of bell hooks' work. Readers who came to her through her ideas on love will find it a gateway to understanding them better; and those who have engaged with her before will locate in her critical interrogations of the way media representations of black people and feminism in America operate through the logic of self-hatred the groundwork for her seemingly less-than-radical later focus on self-love.
Each essay and interview in this volume exposes the reductive, propagandist aspect of mainstream representations: of the feminisms of Camilla Paglia and Naomi Wolf; the art of Madonna and Basquiat; the violence of gangsta' rap; and the white supremacist romanticisation of black and Native American oppression, to name a few. Through these and other discussions, hooks explores variously the constructions of benevolent ruling classes, violent black men, and bitchy black women and links these pervasive image-phenomena with the commodification of resistance. Taken together, these point us towards an understanding of how radical activism in the context of the United States has come to be reduced to a subculture. Thus making the case for what happens in the absence of critical engagement with culture, hooks suggest a means of battling powerlessness—reimagining power—at both individual and collective levels.
Here, as elsewhere, hooks displays an extraordinary ability to create readable and accessible critiques while also retaining the nuance and precision which makes them so eye-opening. Like any other reviewer dealing with her work, then, I too am at a loss for words that would be able to explain or summarise the contents of this book better than the author's own efforts. However, since we are on the topic of resisting representations anyway, I would urge everyone to jump straight in.
Something similar has happened to hooks' own image since her recent demise: the marketability of titles like All About Love: New Visions (chosen for several Valentines' Day reading lists and book clubs) repositioning her in the mainstream as a trendy philosopher of love, so that when people who consider the Love Trilogy as representative of hooks read her outside the context of a lifetime of explicitly radical (anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist), unapologetically feminist work—the stuff that has made reading her such a life-changing experience for many—they are often disappointed. Meanwhile, the hollowing-out of her political message in the way these later books are aestheticised serves as a source of alienation to those whose lives were changed by hooks' critical engagement with the hitherto separate(d) worlds of theory and praxis.
Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations forms an important bridge between these two kinds of readers, as well as between the two distinct ideas of the nature of bell hooks' work. Readers who came to her through her ideas on love will find it a gateway to understanding them better; and those who have engaged with her before will locate in her critical interrogations of the way media representations of black people and feminism in America operate through the logic of self-hatred the groundwork for her seemingly less-than-radical later focus on self-love.
Each essay and interview in this volume exposes the reductive, propagandist aspect of mainstream representations: of the feminisms of Camilla Paglia and Naomi Wolf; the art of Madonna and Basquiat; the violence of gangsta' rap; and the white supremacist romanticisation of black and Native American oppression, to name a few. Through these and other discussions, hooks explores variously the constructions of benevolent ruling classes, violent black men, and bitchy black women and links these pervasive image-phenomena with the commodification of resistance. Taken together, these point us towards an understanding of how radical activism in the context of the United States has come to be reduced to a subculture. Thus making the case for what happens in the absence of critical engagement with culture, hooks suggest a means of battling powerlessness—reimagining power—at both individual and collective levels.
Here, as elsewhere, hooks displays an extraordinary ability to create readable and accessible critiques while also retaining the nuance and precision which makes them so eye-opening. Like any other reviewer dealing with her work, then, I too am at a loss for words that would be able to explain or summarise the contents of this book better than the author's own efforts. However, since we are on the topic of resisting representations anyway, I would urge everyone to jump straight in.
January 1, 2023
As someone who consumes a lot (and sometimes too much) of political theory content both online and through my university education, I'm constantly on the look out for nonfiction books that offer a perspective that will be able to actually make me think about things in a new way. There are a lot of books out there that can get you in the door, and I like reading those too, but I think picking a random book from bell hooks' backlog was the perfect choice for my first book of hers.
I just randomly picked this up because it was on clearance for three bucks at Better World Books, and I'd always wanted to read a full bell hooks book, so here was my chance. I've read essays by her, and I read a part of Talking Back: Thinking Feminist and Thinking Black for a paper I wrote a while ago, but I never read the rest of it, though I definitely plan to!
I've always enjoyed her work in the past, and I know every intersectional feminist loves to sing bell hooks' praises, but reading this cover to cover made me realize just how talented a writer she really was. I consider myself a relatively fast fiction reader when I have the time to devote to it, but nonfiction is always harder for me, yet something about this book is so easily readable! I don't think it will be difficult to get to several more of her books, and I fully intend to.
This book is a compilation of her essays on a variety of topics, but it's essentially hooks does media and pop culture analysis. To some extent, parts of the book feel like hooks speaking specifically to other Black people and/or to other women, but there's definitely something for everyone to take away. The downside of this collection is that some of the essays on pop culture were a bit hard for me to grasp as someone who was born after the book was published, so I just didn't know a lot of the references or whether or not I found her analyses fair.
Still, there are parts of her overall approach than can easily be applied to modern media, and there are plenty of pretty timeless essays in here too. I particularly enjoyed her nuanced but firm takedowns of some of the most popular white feminists at the time — joke's on them, because of all the 90s feminist thinkers called out in this book, hooks herself must be hands-down the most popular now!
Outlaw Culture was published in 1994, so it's one of her earlier books, and I get the sense that some of her ideas were still developing a little here. From the other bits I've already read of hers, I'm guessing this isn't necessarily bell hooks' best work, but I enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading more of her writing.
I just randomly picked this up because it was on clearance for three bucks at Better World Books, and I'd always wanted to read a full bell hooks book, so here was my chance. I've read essays by her, and I read a part of Talking Back: Thinking Feminist and Thinking Black for a paper I wrote a while ago, but I never read the rest of it, though I definitely plan to!
I've always enjoyed her work in the past, and I know every intersectional feminist loves to sing bell hooks' praises, but reading this cover to cover made me realize just how talented a writer she really was. I consider myself a relatively fast fiction reader when I have the time to devote to it, but nonfiction is always harder for me, yet something about this book is so easily readable! I don't think it will be difficult to get to several more of her books, and I fully intend to.
This book is a compilation of her essays on a variety of topics, but it's essentially hooks does media and pop culture analysis. To some extent, parts of the book feel like hooks speaking specifically to other Black people and/or to other women, but there's definitely something for everyone to take away. The downside of this collection is that some of the essays on pop culture were a bit hard for me to grasp as someone who was born after the book was published, so I just didn't know a lot of the references or whether or not I found her analyses fair.
Still, there are parts of her overall approach than can easily be applied to modern media, and there are plenty of pretty timeless essays in here too. I particularly enjoyed her nuanced but firm takedowns of some of the most popular white feminists at the time — joke's on them, because of all the 90s feminist thinkers called out in this book, hooks herself must be hands-down the most popular now!
Outlaw Culture was published in 1994, so it's one of her earlier books, and I get the sense that some of her ideas were still developing a little here. From the other bits I've already read of hers, I'm guessing this isn't necessarily bell hooks' best work, but I enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading more of her writing.
June 22, 2023
My friends don’t get bell hooks.
Often when they read bell hooks, and they typically never read past All About Love: New Visions (the most trendy and TikTokified of her books), they report back and say that they don’t see the hype. It’s hard to blame them – her once scintillating declarations that, for example, racism and sexism are linked, have now become unremarkable Twitter refrains. The presumptuous quality of her writing will no doubt feel to the average Black reader like a moralising aunty. Her struggle with and against academia comes with an unwanted side of no citations/referencing. These are all things one is to expect and prepare for when wading into a bell hooks text. However, this being my 5th bell hook’s book as of writing this, I have to admit that I feel like I am beginning to touch bell hooks the person and not the thinker.
No work (that I have read so far) in her bibliography better captures the magic of bell hook’s legacy than Outlaw Culture. In this work of cultural criticism bell hooks “talks back” to popular culture (of the early 1990s), displays the joy of oppositional thought to images, emphasises love and community as a politic, bridges worlds between the academic and the layman or expected ways of speaking in “academic texts”. It feels like all the bell hooks books I have read coalescing into one being who has concerns and wants to give them voice in the multiple languages she speaks (street talk, academic trappings etc.). Though I deeply disagree with her reading modes and the type of readings of art it produces at times, I have often found myself thinking “I know exactly what bell hooks would say about this” when encountering media, the same way you might know exactly what one of your particularly opinionated friends would say about a television series or movie. The irony is, of course, that she used the pen name bell hooks and insisted on its lowercasing to deemphasise herself and prioritise her ideas. However, I also find this to be the most tightly argued and insightful bell hooks essay collections holding its own even today, save for some misses, which are permitted since we had to build on the ideas of thinkers of former years to arrive at what we now consider to be the truth.
The first essay Power to the Pussy: We don’t wannabe dicks in drag and the penultimate interview Moving into and Beyond Feminism: Just for the joy of it were among my favourites and to me the most interesting.
In Power to the Pussy bell hooks engages Madonna’s book Sex. I summarised what she said and linked it to contemporary popular culture with the example of Lil Nas X’s imagery in my my review of that book. I think the essay was bogged down by its ham-fisted engagement with drag (also echoed in bell hook's Paris Is Burning essay) and psychoanalytic Freudian analysis, but the general analysis of Madonna's book was pretty spot on to me.
Moving Beyond Feminism: Just for the joy of it gave voice to several things I have been thinking about particularly as it relates to the issues of deinstitutionalization and cultural criticism among class lines.
Certain arguments in other essays like Back to Black: Ending Internalised Racism will not ring as much today such as her argument that we have abandoned "loving Blackness" as an important part of Black movement which might have been true in 1994 but in 2023, it seems that there is an over emphasis on "loving Blackness" as an ideologically vacant and apolitical act. Such is the nature of cultural criticism though, many things you write might not be relevant even 10 years after you write them.
Though it is flawed in some minor ways, I am giving it 5 stars because of my attachment to the kink of bell hooks voice and I equally recommend anyone who is interested in popular culture, American studies or social movements and their rhetoric reads this book as it has reinvigorated my love for criticism and why I got into bell hooks in the first place.
Often when they read bell hooks, and they typically never read past All About Love: New Visions (the most trendy and TikTokified of her books), they report back and say that they don’t see the hype. It’s hard to blame them – her once scintillating declarations that, for example, racism and sexism are linked, have now become unremarkable Twitter refrains. The presumptuous quality of her writing will no doubt feel to the average Black reader like a moralising aunty. Her struggle with and against academia comes with an unwanted side of no citations/referencing. These are all things one is to expect and prepare for when wading into a bell hooks text. However, this being my 5th bell hook’s book as of writing this, I have to admit that I feel like I am beginning to touch bell hooks the person and not the thinker.
No work (that I have read so far) in her bibliography better captures the magic of bell hook’s legacy than Outlaw Culture. In this work of cultural criticism bell hooks “talks back” to popular culture (of the early 1990s), displays the joy of oppositional thought to images, emphasises love and community as a politic, bridges worlds between the academic and the layman or expected ways of speaking in “academic texts”. It feels like all the bell hooks books I have read coalescing into one being who has concerns and wants to give them voice in the multiple languages she speaks (street talk, academic trappings etc.). Though I deeply disagree with her reading modes and the type of readings of art it produces at times, I have often found myself thinking “I know exactly what bell hooks would say about this” when encountering media, the same way you might know exactly what one of your particularly opinionated friends would say about a television series or movie. The irony is, of course, that she used the pen name bell hooks and insisted on its lowercasing to deemphasise herself and prioritise her ideas. However, I also find this to be the most tightly argued and insightful bell hooks essay collections holding its own even today, save for some misses, which are permitted since we had to build on the ideas of thinkers of former years to arrive at what we now consider to be the truth.
The first essay Power to the Pussy: We don’t wannabe dicks in drag and the penultimate interview Moving into and Beyond Feminism: Just for the joy of it were among my favourites and to me the most interesting.
In Power to the Pussy bell hooks engages Madonna’s book Sex. I summarised what she said and linked it to contemporary popular culture with the example of Lil Nas X’s imagery in my my review of that book. I think the essay was bogged down by its ham-fisted engagement with drag (also echoed in bell hook's Paris Is Burning essay) and psychoanalytic Freudian analysis, but the general analysis of Madonna's book was pretty spot on to me.
Moving Beyond Feminism: Just for the joy of it gave voice to several things I have been thinking about particularly as it relates to the issues of deinstitutionalization and cultural criticism among class lines.
Certain arguments in other essays like Back to Black: Ending Internalised Racism will not ring as much today such as her argument that we have abandoned "loving Blackness" as an important part of Black movement which might have been true in 1994 but in 2023, it seems that there is an over emphasis on "loving Blackness" as an ideologically vacant and apolitical act. Such is the nature of cultural criticism though, many things you write might not be relevant even 10 years after you write them.
Though it is flawed in some minor ways, I am giving it 5 stars because of my attachment to the kink of bell hooks voice and I equally recommend anyone who is interested in popular culture, American studies or social movements and their rhetoric reads this book as it has reinvigorated my love for criticism and why I got into bell hooks in the first place.
April 27, 2012
Outlaw Culture is the first book of hooks that I have read, although I've read several of her earlier articles (which I remember enjoying). In OC, I was turned off by her presumptuous declarations about what certain artistic pieces were about. She will spend pages antagonizing a certain thinker/artist/piece of art using harsh and political language without dignifying her evaluation with facts. For instance, she pulverizes Spike Lee for the mere fact that more time in Malcolm X is spent dedicated to the Malcolm's relationship with "the white woman" and not his wife. She doesn't mention the fact that the film is based on an autobiography that mirrors Spike Lee's chronology to a greater extent than how hooks would prefer. Another example is when she claims that What's Love Got to Do with it is sexist because it sympathizes too much with Ike Turner's character. Has she seen that movie? There's enough race/class/gender problems in this country that she shouldn't have to construct boogie monsters. Overall, these essays lacked research (or any critical analysis) of the issues she brings up. More often, she states a problem in culture and picks an individual target and spends a drastic amount of pages congratulating herself that she's taken an academic stand on them. I was very disappointed.
July 19, 2017
Alot to consider. My favorite chapter was 9, the interview she engaged with Re/Search Publications.
Favorite lines -
"The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech...The covert silencing of dissenting voices and opinions undermines free speech and strengthens the forces of censorship within and outside radical movements...any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent."
"I'm really into the deinstitutionalization of learning and of experience...People have this fantasy of colleges being liberatory institutions, when in fact they're so much like every other institution in our culture in terms of repression and containment."
"The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is - it's to imagine what is possible.
Favorite lines -
"The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech...The covert silencing of dissenting voices and opinions undermines free speech and strengthens the forces of censorship within and outside radical movements...any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent."
"I'm really into the deinstitutionalization of learning and of experience...People have this fantasy of colleges being liberatory institutions, when in fact they're so much like every other institution in our culture in terms of repression and containment."
"The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is - it's to imagine what is possible.
January 19, 2009
This is my first book by bell hooks. It's funny, it dives into all this pop culture stuff from when I was busy dropping out of high school to live a life of a scummy street-punk. So in some ways, it picks up where I left off. bell hooks is amazingly articulate and I love reading this. The essay on censorship from the right and the left is particularly good, pressing us to encourage and welcome dissent and to beware of the tendency to censor or self-censor in the interest of maintaining harmony or saving face.
October 23, 2016
Required reading for anyone who thinks that feminism is monolithic and univocal. In this collection of essays/interviews, bell hooks takes aim at Madonna, Spike Lee, Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, and antisex feminists like Catharine MacKinnon, just to name a few.
January 15, 2024
No essay collection is perfect, but this one comes pretty close. bell hooks has an incredible ability to communicate high-level academic concepts in an engaging way, stepping through ideas with one of the most inclusive and well-rounded world views in literature.
The breadth of subject matter helps Outlaw Culture avoid some of the trappings I found in the mostly-excellent All About Love, bouncing between i>The Bodyguard to Ice Cube to Spike Lee's i>Malcolm X. Bonus points too for the run where bell hooks goes in on Naomi Klein and starts a whole lot of writer beef. I'm always here for someone being a hater.
The breadth of subject matter helps Outlaw Culture avoid some of the trappings I found in the mostly-excellent All About Love, bouncing between i>The Bodyguard to Ice Cube to Spike Lee's i>Malcolm X. Bonus points too for the run where bell hooks goes in on Naomi Klein and starts a whole lot of writer beef. I'm always here for someone being a hater.
February 27, 2023
Until I found this book, I didn't know that bell hooks also write about culture, I really enjoyed her essay on Madonna and what her later image changes meant, her interview with Ice cube was also fascinating and the essay on Malcom X is an important critical review of Spike Lee's work. The essays are short but full of big ideas.
June 3, 2024
made me radically rethink love, pop culture, and so many relevant topics to current movements and past ones. so many topics, some of which i didn’t really know much about beforehand and some of which deeply interest me. best best best chapter was on love as the practice of freedom. made me feel so much, think about today, and hope for liberation for all.
September 17, 2020
Many times I found myself appalled and disgusted in the way representations have been commodified into mere tokenism, especially representations on Black women and Black folks in general. This book is eye-opening for me, delves deep to issues from feminist academia into Hollywood. My first bell hooks book and plan to read more books by her.
August 19, 2020
Take a drink every time Spike Lee, Madonna, or the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" is mentioned.
But seriously, this is a great read. Many of the subjects broached are despairingly relevant to modern "culture war" discussions, and even if you don't agree with all of hooks' takes, they are all excellent at prompting deeper thought.
But seriously, this is a great read. Many of the subjects broached are despairingly relevant to modern "culture war" discussions, and even if you don't agree with all of hooks' takes, they are all excellent at prompting deeper thought.
July 30, 2024
Como pode um livro de 1993 parecer que foi escrito ontem? Um dos favoritos do ano e, provavelmente, da vida.
July 18, 2025
Representação e representatividade
No papel de professora universitária, escritora e intelectual pública, Bell Hooks (1952 - 2021) aborda sobre raça, gênero e classe sob o âmbito da educação, cultura e amor. Nascida em Hopkinsville, numa pequena cidade segregada de Kentucky-EUA, o pensamento da autora contribui para a elaboração anti racista de um feminismo popular e abrangente. Com mais de trinta livros publicados, de linguagem acessível e dinâmica, a interdisciplinaridade de seu pensamento se endereça às grandes massas. Para a autora, especialmente a representatividade tem papel fundamental nas culturas de resistência. Enquanto, o senso comum das representações hegemônicas seguem pelo caminho contrário, a contracultura atenta para a construção de uma nova subjetividade. Sendo assim, por mais que a indústria cultural submeta as minorias socioeconômicas, étnicas e de gênero a imagens impróprias, incoerentes, e deturpadas. Em vários pontos chave da história, a luta pelos direitos civis dos afro-americanos nos EUA sustentou períodos de transição que modificaram e ainda modificam a subjetividade da cultura popular mundial.
Nascida num país de passado segregacionista onde o racismo recreativo era a forma de entretenimento máximo. Bell Hooks alerta que a inclusão social ainda está longe de ser plena. Dado que a maior participação negra nas mídias sociais não evidencia uma quebra de paradigma forte o suficiente para revolucionar as regras do jogo na maior nação capitalista do ocidente. Se no mainstream de outrora as imagens negras da mídia estavam marginalizadas a ponto de estarem descoladas da realidade, a estratégia comercial da diversificação de públicos surge também como uma adaptação aos valores de mercado da cultura dominante. Embora não seja novidade nenhuma saber que os EUA são um país ligado historicamente à distribuição colonial do imperialismo no mundo, é completamente verossímil encontrar esse poder colonial na produção da cultura imaterial. Na hipótese de que as imagens estáveis de uma aparente conquista de espaço midiático de direito desmobilizaria as minorias das suas lutas sociais, quem as representa também trabalha para agradar o status quo não representativo das imagens hegemônicas.
Nessa interferência da representatividade cruelmente permutada pela promoção individual, cujo sucesso dissipa os valores criadores de uma coletividade realmente integrada, as culturas de resistência respondem ao marasmo da passividade. Por serem descendentes diretas da cultura popular, a espiritualidade transformadora desses movimentos sociais e artísticos simboliza a mudança. Mesmo com o pesar das dissidências causadas pelos donos dos meios de produção que exportam essa cultura no modelo colonial do plantation numa ameaça que desafia a espiritualidade. A marginalidade dos eventos potencializa um espaço performático de contatos sensíveis e intermediários que possibilitam a esperança de novas práticas sociais. Nessa seleção de artigos que englobam crítica de arte, música, fotografia, cultura pop, cinema, educação, entrevistas, feminismo, e anti racismo, Bell Hooks analisa algumas práticas hegemônicas que apoiam na imagem do senso comum a manutenção representativa do servilismo racial e de gênero. Com essa equação problematizada, parte da solução estaria nas representações de resistência consoantes às possibilidades conjuntas e revolucionárias da reimaginação artística da vida.
(Yuri Ulrych)
No papel de professora universitária, escritora e intelectual pública, Bell Hooks (1952 - 2021) aborda sobre raça, gênero e classe sob o âmbito da educação, cultura e amor. Nascida em Hopkinsville, numa pequena cidade segregada de Kentucky-EUA, o pensamento da autora contribui para a elaboração anti racista de um feminismo popular e abrangente. Com mais de trinta livros publicados, de linguagem acessível e dinâmica, a interdisciplinaridade de seu pensamento se endereça às grandes massas. Para a autora, especialmente a representatividade tem papel fundamental nas culturas de resistência. Enquanto, o senso comum das representações hegemônicas seguem pelo caminho contrário, a contracultura atenta para a construção de uma nova subjetividade. Sendo assim, por mais que a indústria cultural submeta as minorias socioeconômicas, étnicas e de gênero a imagens impróprias, incoerentes, e deturpadas. Em vários pontos chave da história, a luta pelos direitos civis dos afro-americanos nos EUA sustentou períodos de transição que modificaram e ainda modificam a subjetividade da cultura popular mundial.
Nascida num país de passado segregacionista onde o racismo recreativo era a forma de entretenimento máximo. Bell Hooks alerta que a inclusão social ainda está longe de ser plena. Dado que a maior participação negra nas mídias sociais não evidencia uma quebra de paradigma forte o suficiente para revolucionar as regras do jogo na maior nação capitalista do ocidente. Se no mainstream de outrora as imagens negras da mídia estavam marginalizadas a ponto de estarem descoladas da realidade, a estratégia comercial da diversificação de públicos surge também como uma adaptação aos valores de mercado da cultura dominante. Embora não seja novidade nenhuma saber que os EUA são um país ligado historicamente à distribuição colonial do imperialismo no mundo, é completamente verossímil encontrar esse poder colonial na produção da cultura imaterial. Na hipótese de que as imagens estáveis de uma aparente conquista de espaço midiático de direito desmobilizaria as minorias das suas lutas sociais, quem as representa também trabalha para agradar o status quo não representativo das imagens hegemônicas.
Nessa interferência da representatividade cruelmente permutada pela promoção individual, cujo sucesso dissipa os valores criadores de uma coletividade realmente integrada, as culturas de resistência respondem ao marasmo da passividade. Por serem descendentes diretas da cultura popular, a espiritualidade transformadora desses movimentos sociais e artísticos simboliza a mudança. Mesmo com o pesar das dissidências causadas pelos donos dos meios de produção que exportam essa cultura no modelo colonial do plantation numa ameaça que desafia a espiritualidade. A marginalidade dos eventos potencializa um espaço performático de contatos sensíveis e intermediários que possibilitam a esperança de novas práticas sociais. Nessa seleção de artigos que englobam crítica de arte, música, fotografia, cultura pop, cinema, educação, entrevistas, feminismo, e anti racismo, Bell Hooks analisa algumas práticas hegemônicas que apoiam na imagem do senso comum a manutenção representativa do servilismo racial e de gênero. Com essa equação problematizada, parte da solução estaria nas representações de resistência consoantes às possibilidades conjuntas e revolucionárias da reimaginação artística da vida.
(Yuri Ulrych)
April 2, 2025
This was my first bell hooks novel/reading. Some of the essays I found to be more compelling than others. Ultimately, I enjoyed the essay format of this book. Hooks is a very engagement writing and I am happy to have read the essay collection. The focus on racism in the US is more relevant than ever. My favorite essays were about hooks meeting with rappers and then finding a common ground.
August 9, 2024
I continue to consume leftist critiques of pop culture without actually consuming the pop culture it critiques 💅
She covers A LOT of varied ground in this book/ collection of essays from who we identify with in horror movies to Basquiat to gangster rap to MLK & Malcolm X & who gets to tell their stories & many more complex topics that are all also very accessible to the general public all strung togetherinavery stream of consciousness way. The problematic features of pop culture & its discourse & censureship that bell hooks writes of in this book in 1994 continue to ring true 30 yrs later.
bell hooks do be falling on the anti-porn/ displays of sexuality in public (esp by black women) are inherently demeaning side of the sex wars & this current runs strong in her feminist analysis though the beginning of chapter 6 dives deliciously into her rejoicing in sexuality discovery & reveling in it in the personal before going on to make the point that feminism isn't anti-sex just anti-"phallocentric" sex tho nothing in all of culture seems to be worthy of sharing as anti-phallocentric & sex positive at the same time & she goes on to slam the likes of drag queens & feminists who share s & m fantasies on her way to make this point...
Her interview with Ice Cube in chapter 12 is a highlight for me 💙
Her discussion of "privacy" (We choose isolation when we feel shame at how our lives may look, true privacy supposedly being more like solitude the prerequisite being the ability to be with ourselves)& our desire for it being internalized alienation in the wake of the 60s failing intentional communities sang to my little heart.
"I like the term gaslighting I want to recover it"- bell hooks 1994 unknowing what the future of the left had in store for this phrase 😭
I have a lot of respect for bell hooks, her ethics & methodology though when I read her work especially her older work it sometimes feels like a shit talking session with a friend who I value & agree with on a fundamental level while also disagreeing with some of her hot takes but I always gain something from engaging with her & enjoy doing it. I admire her commitment to respect & engage with leftist theorists she has disagreements with instead of throwing them away for not aligning perfectly & therefore refuse to do any different for her work as well even if she occasionally drops a discursive bomb or 2 that really take me aback.
She covers A LOT of varied ground in this book/ collection of essays from who we identify with in horror movies to Basquiat to gangster rap to MLK & Malcolm X & who gets to tell their stories & many more complex topics that are all also very accessible to the general public all strung togetherinavery stream of consciousness way. The problematic features of pop culture & its discourse & censureship that bell hooks writes of in this book in 1994 continue to ring true 30 yrs later.
bell hooks do be falling on the anti-porn/ displays of sexuality in public (esp by black women) are inherently demeaning side of the sex wars & this current runs strong in her feminist analysis though the beginning of chapter 6 dives deliciously into her rejoicing in sexuality discovery & reveling in it in the personal before going on to make the point that feminism isn't anti-sex just anti-"phallocentric" sex tho nothing in all of culture seems to be worthy of sharing as anti-phallocentric & sex positive at the same time & she goes on to slam the likes of drag queens & feminists who share s & m fantasies on her way to make this point...
Her interview with Ice Cube in chapter 12 is a highlight for me 💙
Her discussion of "privacy" (We choose isolation when we feel shame at how our lives may look, true privacy supposedly being more like solitude the prerequisite being the ability to be with ourselves)& our desire for it being internalized alienation in the wake of the 60s failing intentional communities sang to my little heart.
"I like the term gaslighting I want to recover it"- bell hooks 1994 unknowing what the future of the left had in store for this phrase 😭
I have a lot of respect for bell hooks, her ethics & methodology though when I read her work especially her older work it sometimes feels like a shit talking session with a friend who I value & agree with on a fundamental level while also disagreeing with some of her hot takes but I always gain something from engaging with her & enjoy doing it. I admire her commitment to respect & engage with leftist theorists she has disagreements with instead of throwing them away for not aligning perfectly & therefore refuse to do any different for her work as well even if she occasionally drops a discursive bomb or 2 that really take me aback.
June 4, 2015
"One has to cultivate the capacity to wait. I think about a culture of domination as being very tied to notions of efficiency- everything running smoothly. I mean, it's so much easier if you tell me, "I'm leaving!" rather than "I desire to leave and not come back- how does that desire impact on you?" and I reply, "Is there a space within which I can have a response?" All this takes more time than the kind of fascism that says, "This is what I'm doing- fuck you!"
Variety of essays and dialogues.. exciting, reassuring, challenging as usual w/ her writing. I liked in particular the ones on intimate violence and transforming the structure of desire, her critiques of 2 white women's books on feminism and who gets to set the agenda/claim ownership, on columbus and transforming memory of shame/powerlessness-- "we do not choose to ignore or deny the significance of remembering Columbus because it continues to shape our destiny. By speaking, opposing the romanticization of our oppression and exploitation, we break the bonds with this colonizing past." i liked her interview conversation with ice t. and everything in the last two essays was good, moving into and beyond feminism, love as the practice of freedom.
Variety of essays and dialogues.. exciting, reassuring, challenging as usual w/ her writing. I liked in particular the ones on intimate violence and transforming the structure of desire, her critiques of 2 white women's books on feminism and who gets to set the agenda/claim ownership, on columbus and transforming memory of shame/powerlessness-- "we do not choose to ignore or deny the significance of remembering Columbus because it continues to shape our destiny. By speaking, opposing the romanticization of our oppression and exploitation, we break the bonds with this colonizing past." i liked her interview conversation with ice t. and everything in the last two essays was good, moving into and beyond feminism, love as the practice of freedom.
July 8, 2023
this collection of essay is timeless, i read most essays twice, and im sure—in a year—i could read it again and new ideas will stick.
a collection of contempory critiques of pop culture and ideas, hooks is impeccable at making astute observations and backing them up with evidence which often critiques subtle ways that white supremacy, classism, and racism seep into our imagination.
this is what i feel like this book did for me; it freed my imagination and encouraged my own critical interrogation of the way we consume popular culture, which can be so easy to do uncritically and passively.
hooks is an A1 writer, gifted at pulling in a broad-range of books and ideas without letting her identity as a intellectual color the way she writes, which is extremely digestible and accessible.
my one critique of this book is that it at times, if you walk into this book agreeing with the ideas, will feel repetitive. but the way the essays are threaded together is intentional. and yet you could easily read an essay, sit on it for six months, and come back to it.
a collection of contempory critiques of pop culture and ideas, hooks is impeccable at making astute observations and backing them up with evidence which often critiques subtle ways that white supremacy, classism, and racism seep into our imagination.
this is what i feel like this book did for me; it freed my imagination and encouraged my own critical interrogation of the way we consume popular culture, which can be so easy to do uncritically and passively.
hooks is an A1 writer, gifted at pulling in a broad-range of books and ideas without letting her identity as a intellectual color the way she writes, which is extremely digestible and accessible.
my one critique of this book is that it at times, if you walk into this book agreeing with the ideas, will feel repetitive. but the way the essays are threaded together is intentional. and yet you could easily read an essay, sit on it for six months, and come back to it.
June 24, 2021
Invigorating, and affirming. I can't believe it took me so long to read one of her books.
June 24, 2018
I was amazed that even though all the movies etc that were discussed in this were around 20 years ago or so this book was politically still so relevant and sadly filling in gaps in our conversation that still exist. Not everything in the book was so current, a couple of times I thought it was showing its age as a text but it remains thought provoking even now (it helped that I had seen some of the movies discussed but hooks keeps us in the loop enough even when we haven't,
hooks is very readable, she can talk about very emotional and personal things without coming across as wishy-washy in any way. She has a surprising generosity of spirit- she does not want to exclude ANYONE from her vision of equity and dignity. She can be deeply critical one moment and in the next paragraph is extending warmth to the same group (men or white people) that she just criticised, however her two agendas of feminist and black power/love/decolonisation are present in every sentence.
She's offering friendship but with conditions (fair ones).
This was a collection of essays and interviews rather than a work that was written to unfold in that order. I prefer a book-length work rather than a collection, nevertheless thematically these supported each other well and it was definitely well worth reading this book.
I'd recommend it to anyone. You need some brains to read it but I think the average amount should do.
hooks is very readable, she can talk about very emotional and personal things without coming across as wishy-washy in any way. She has a surprising generosity of spirit- she does not want to exclude ANYONE from her vision of equity and dignity. She can be deeply critical one moment and in the next paragraph is extending warmth to the same group (men or white people) that she just criticised, however her two agendas of feminist and black power/love/decolonisation are present in every sentence.
She's offering friendship but with conditions (fair ones).
This was a collection of essays and interviews rather than a work that was written to unfold in that order. I prefer a book-length work rather than a collection, nevertheless thematically these supported each other well and it was definitely well worth reading this book.
I'd recommend it to anyone. You need some brains to read it but I think the average amount should do.
July 20, 2020
an incredible collection of essays from which I learnt a lot about intersectionalism and black self-determinism; feminism and the importance of recognising that we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and this informs every aspect of our mass / "mainstream" culture
amazing amazing cultural criticism! some interviews featured too, which was really cool to see bell hooks' ideas manifesting in dialogue. the quotes she picks to centre her discussions, and the films + books she interrogates are very well picked.
would warn that there it is generally very cis-normative, and outdated language is used to describe trans people and the trans experience. this can in part be "excused" because it was compiled in 1994, but still, not ideal, and i'd have thought that since it's a modern edition some things could have been thoughtfully--and with acknowledgement--updated
amazing amazing cultural criticism! some interviews featured too, which was really cool to see bell hooks' ideas manifesting in dialogue. the quotes she picks to centre her discussions, and the films + books she interrogates are very well picked.
would warn that there it is generally very cis-normative, and outdated language is used to describe trans people and the trans experience. this can in part be "excused" because it was compiled in 1994, but still, not ideal, and i'd have thought that since it's a modern edition some things could have been thoughtfully--and with acknowledgement--updated
February 15, 2024
This was my first entire book by bell hooks. I’m mad I didn’t read more of her sooner. Her insights 30 years ago are still relevant. I’m glad that her voice gets louder with each generation, and her ideas are becoming more mainstream and less “outlaw.” The only way you can tell this is a book from the 90s is the culture she critiques, ex Madonna, The Body Guard, etc. Her interview with Ice T is marvelous…and I do feel like I’m eavesdropping…I hope that’s okay…
Also, and this is lol, I feel like if she were writing this today White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy would get an acronym like WSCP. Beware of WSCP.
Also every time she called something “a dick thing” I was 😂. She knows she’s fun.
I will read more of her books and this may not even be my favorite in comparison, but for now: 5 stars!
Also, and this is lol, I feel like if she were writing this today White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy would get an acronym like WSCP. Beware of WSCP.
Also every time she called something “a dick thing” I was 😂. She knows she’s fun.
I will read more of her books and this may not even be my favorite in comparison, but for now: 5 stars!
October 15, 2024
This was another great work from bell hooks. I did skim the interview sections because I just don’t care for those. This had some interesting points and I particularly appreciate the section on gangsta rap, Malcolm X and Naomi Wolf.
“Feminist movement is not a product—not a lifestyle. History documents that it has been a political movement emerging from the concrete struggle of women and men to oppose sexism and sexist oppression. We do a disservice to that history to deny its political and radical intent.”
AND
“We live in a culture that condones and celebrates rape. Within a phallocentric patriarchal state, the rape of women by men is a ritual that daily perpetuates and maintains sexist oppression and exploitation.”
“Feminist movement is not a product—not a lifestyle. History documents that it has been a political movement emerging from the concrete struggle of women and men to oppose sexism and sexist oppression. We do a disservice to that history to deny its political and radical intent.”
AND
“We live in a culture that condones and celebrates rape. Within a phallocentric patriarchal state, the rape of women by men is a ritual that daily perpetuates and maintains sexist oppression and exploitation.”
November 15, 2024
Overall i really liked this book. Helps out a lot with discussions of intersectionality & it reminded of the discourse i was in back when i was 2. That being said I'm aromantic so, some of it goes over my head.
Like some of the media discussions had questions that have since been resolved. For example by saying sex worker instead of prostitute we can more easily tell that Madonna was never independent.
Chapter 5 pissed me off though because not only are we not given the text she wrote that got her in trouble with her comrades, but we then hear her talk about needing to be open when it's like Stalin didn't go to Nazi Germany to give a speech because that invitation was unsafe & deadly.
Like some of the media discussions had questions that have since been resolved. For example by saying sex worker instead of prostitute we can more easily tell that Madonna was never independent.
Chapter 5 pissed me off though because not only are we not given the text she wrote that got her in trouble with her comrades, but we then hear her talk about needing to be open when it's like Stalin didn't go to Nazi Germany to give a speech because that invitation was unsafe & deadly.
December 18, 2023
All bell hooks is good bell hooks, and there's a few essays in here that are really fascinating, such as her critiques of Spike Lee and her interview with Ice Cube, but many of the cultural artifacts or moments that hooks engages with are not terribly relevant for the modern reader.
That isn't to say that they are totally irrelevant, but many people—myself included—will probably lack the cultural literacy to appreciate the full weight, say, of the essay on Madonna. Regardless, hooks's voice is as strong as ever here, and it made me really wish I could see what her commentary on pop culture in the 2020s would look like.
That isn't to say that they are totally irrelevant, but many people—myself included—will probably lack the cultural literacy to appreciate the full weight, say, of the essay on Madonna. Regardless, hooks's voice is as strong as ever here, and it made me really wish I could see what her commentary on pop culture in the 2020s would look like.
July 29, 2019
This book is a compilation of a series of interviews and essays with the author, radical feminist thinker bell hooks. It really is provocative and challenging in a multitude of ways. She hops around from challenging our ideas of materialism, to questioning the role of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in gangsta rap, to movies in pop culture that are supposedly seen as revolutionary but are hardly subversive. I’m walking away from this book feeling like I am better able to articulate how certain systems of oppression culturally drive us collectively and inform our thinking individually.
December 27, 2021
Rest in power and love, bell hooks.
This book is a critical literary covering various contemporary and historical issues particularly within the United States.
I enjoyed reading bell hooks’ critical take on those issues, sometimes was surprised by her unpopular take on the popular culture figures I thought were unproblematic before (Spike Lee, Malcolm X, etc.)
But her take was holistic and far from condescending, by urging the readers to zoom out to the bigger picture that is the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy embedded in the country, and to some extent, worldwide.
This book is a critical literary covering various contemporary and historical issues particularly within the United States.
I enjoyed reading bell hooks’ critical take on those issues, sometimes was surprised by her unpopular take on the popular culture figures I thought were unproblematic before (Spike Lee, Malcolm X, etc.)
But her take was holistic and far from condescending, by urging the readers to zoom out to the bigger picture that is the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy embedded in the country, and to some extent, worldwide.
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