What impresss me the most about bell hooks is her desire to make her thoughts and concepts accessible to everyone. SO many public intellectuals' work can be hard to grasp; they often use detailed language and assume their audience has prior knowledge to their subject, which allows for them to speak in-depth. While I do believe such in-depth knowledge is important for critical thinking and analysis, it can be difficult then to successful convey a message or convince a broader, more inexperienced public. In her book "Feminisism is for Everybody," now widely held as a feminist classic, bell hooks is able to define feminism and its concept in a basic, accessible way so as to not overwhelm younger or unfamiliar readers.
One of the most important messages bell hooks discusses is that anybody can be a feminist - as long as they stand up to sexist oppression. In the second wave feminist movement, there was a large question of who was "really" a feminist and what the goals of the movement were as a whole. Some claimed that feminism could be as diverse as the individuals who made up the movement. That, bell hooks claims, is not the case. She makes it clear that one cannot support the oppression of women, or any policy that does so, and be a feminist. Her classic is example is that of the issue of abortion and feminism: she makes a steadfast distinction that one cannot be pro-life and a feminist. An individual can be as personally opposed to abortion as they wish, but they cannot advocate to take that choice away from everyone else.
"Feminism is for Everybody" is also a greta introduction for the concept of intersectionality. Oppression does not work through a single system; rather, there are interlocking systems of oppression reinorced through patriarchy, such as racism, classism, and homophobia. In all of these, one group seeks control and is dominant to a minority group. Her main hope as an activist and author is to see information accessible to everyone, spreading information about feminism through commercials, magazes ads and billboards. Deconstructing the knowledge necessary to make informed choices about the society with live in, bell hooks continues to be an important figure in ending sexism in society today.
You give any reader a good sense of who hooks is and why she matters. Clear communication is important for anyone to have impact. In Martha Nussbaum's classic take-down of feminist author Judith Butler, Nussbaum (feminist herself) complains of Bulter's impenetrable prose.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf