bell hooks, thus Gloria Jean Watkins became known around the world. One of the leading black feminist thinkers and activists says goodbye to us leaving a legacy of hope, teachings, activism and struggle.
Gloria was born in Kentuck, United States, on September 25, 1952. She lived through racial segregation in the country and this informed much of her theoretical production and activism. He chose the pseudonym bell hooks in honor of his grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, writing the new name in lowercase, in order to draw attention to his words and not to his person. He studied in a segregated school and then in integrated schools. In one of the passages in the book Teaching to Transgredir: Education as a Practice of Freedom , bell hooks tells us that the segregated school allowed him to be a black child who could study, get attention from teachers, write. The mixed school, a controversial result of racial exclusion policies, took away the possibilities of being and being in that place, just like white children.
hooks was at university when he wrote his first book, Am I Not a Woman? at age 19, but it wasn't published until 10 years later. In this work, hooks alludes to the words of Sojourney Truth in the speech and am I not a woman? Aren't we black women women? Are we not human? Are we not worthy of affection, care, love? Are we not able to be and be in this world?
Hooks' work crosses the borders of time and space, reaching black women around the world, sharing the pains and annoyances of a life marked by racial, colonial, patriarchal, class, religion, nationality, sexuality and so many violence. others. In a lucid and accessible way, the author addresses racism, sexism and classism in order to broaden critical debates inside and outside the academic world. Her words become timeless, as contemporary as they were 40 years ago when she started writing. The perpetuation of racial and gender violence makes us still echo hooks' words, re-elaborate positions and continue his legacy.
Combining the most diverse social markers, hooks was already intersectional before the term was coined. Her concern with the different layers of oppression made her realize from an early age the nuances of sexism, racism and classism against black women. Hooks' entire thought is permeated by this concern, inspiring us to look beyond disassociated oppressions, but combined at different levels in different women.
This concern with intersectionality, the intertwining of layers of oppression, was worked on by the author in depth, even without the term, in the book Feminist Theory: Da Margem ao Centro , where she demonstrates the complicity of liberal white feminism with racial violence against women black, indigenous, and Latino women in the United States. Even if localized, this work says a lot about the scope of white feminism and its silence around other types of violence that middle and upper class white women do not suffer.
It is important to highlight that the subject of feminism is the middle and upper class white woman. hooks tells us that there is a central dichotomy that defines all Western thought, dividing people into subjects and objects. For her, subjects are those who speak for themselves, have the right to define their own realities, establish their identities and name their history. While objects are those for whom reality is defined by a third party, history is defined and named by subjects.
This dichotomous thinking defines women as docile, kind, home-oriented, and men as active, violent, and politically-oriented. It is the same thought that informs that men work to maintain the house, women take care of the children. However, what about black women, removed from their homes to take care of other homes, other people's children? Black women are placed on the margins of society, at work, in affection, in care, in education, in health. As bell hooks tells us, “being on the sidelines means belonging to the whole, but being outside the main body”. What hasn't been done to black women in the name of protecting white women?
Two points mark an ideal of the black woman in contemporary society, a constructed image that the black woman exists to serve both white women and men, and also the hypersexualization of their bodies, ready to serve the desires of white men. Racism and sexism work together to perpetuate this negative image that is passed down from generation to generation, including by feminist theory. bell hooks also argues that this stereotypical representation is one of the factors preventing black women from becoming intellectuals and there is always a “need to demonstrate and defend the humanity of black people including their ability and capacity to reason logically, think collectively and write lucidly”, we have to constantly prove ourselves as capable, as human, as women.
Against the universalization of the term Woman , hooks asserts the need to expand feminism beyond the ideal of a middle-class white western woman. For her, it is necessary to include agendas of black, indigenous, Latino women and many other identities. It is necessary to abandon a universal ideal of woman. The plurality of experiences must be seen as a potential for the feminist movement and not as an impediment to its demands. According to bell hooks “if black and white women continue to express fear and anger without committing to move beyond those emotions to explore new opportunities for contact, our efforts to build an inclusive feminist movement will fail”.
In addition to her perspicacity in working feminism as a movement possible for all, hooks turned to education as a practice of freedom, in search of diversity, of understanding difference as a potentiality for struggle and experience, not just survival, in a world that kills us every day. A great enthusiast of Paulo Freire, hooks continued his thoughts, presenting critical pedagogy as a possibility for changing social relations in elementary, middle and higher education. For hooks, the theorizing of black women presents us with the potential for a better world.
Her genius leaves us today, but her legacy lives on in the voices of Black women around the world. We now have the responsibility of echoing their words, of not letting them be silenced. hooks taught us a lot, our role is to multiply these learnings.
Reading suggestions:
- Teaching to Transgress: education as a practice of freedom
- Raise your voice: think like a feminist, think like a black woman
- And am I not a woman? Black women and feminism
- Teaching critical thinking: practical wisdom
- All about love: new perspectives
- Feminist theory: from the margin to the center
- Feminism is for everyone: Sweeping politics
- Black looks: race and representation
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Ananda Vilela , a black woman from the outskirts of Suzano, in Greater São Paulo. PhD student in International Relations at PUC-Rio and Master at the same institution. I research race and racism in International Relations and also the intersections between race, gender and class in social relations.
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