bell hooks: Feminism as the Transformational Work of Love

“Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love.”[i]

-          bell hooks

 

I’m not sure when I was first “hooked,” but at some point in my feminist life I began reading everything bell hooks wrote.  Over the years I’ve read a little over half of her 30+ books, and I have been grateful for the wisdom and perspective provided by each one.  I had come to count on her providing new sources of inspiration on a regular basis, and it was with great sorrow and sense of loss that I learned of her death on December 15th.  I have valued immensely the ways her work widened my partial perspective, challenged my blind sports, and gave me important viewpoints on everything from sexism, racism, classism, pedagogy, militarism, work, parenting, and more. I cannot begin to encompass all I have learned from her in a single post, so undoubtedly I will be revisiting her work often in the weeks and months to come. I write this first piece in great appreciation of her articulation of the meaning and practice of feminism as the work of love.

I began this blog in part because I wanted to be able to provide a corrective to popular misconceptions of feminism as a hatred of men, a resentful complaint, and/or a desire for equal access to power and position in the patriarchal, capitalist hierarchy. The feminism I know and love works toward the transformation of systems of domination and oppression to a world of justice, solidarity, and love.  This is the feminism bell hooks articulated so well.

hooks defined feminism simply as “a struggle to end sexist oppression” (Feminist, 24), but also recognized the interlocking of all forms of oppression. In the same year that Kimberlé Crenshaw famously coined the term “intersectionality” (1989), hooks also articulated that “feminist thought must continually emphasize the importance of sex, race, and class as factors which together determine the social construction of femaleness” (Talking, 23).  hooks recognized that feminism is not limited to gender oppression, but rather that it is “necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture” (Feminist, 24).  None of us is immune. As Audre Lorde reflected, “What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face?” (132). Recognizing that we all have the capacity to oppress and dominate, hooks challenged each of us to examine our own participation in systems of domination. This “ongoing, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, about how we live in the world” (Talking, 24) is one of the hallmarks of feminism. While essential, to be of use in the transformation of domination, it must be accompanied by incumbent action. Feminist solidarity requires that we each take responsibility for recognizing and rectifying those instances in which our actions contribute to the oppression and domination of others, as well as of ourselves.  For hooks, this is the very work of love. As she wrote, “When women and men understand that working to eradicate patriarchal domination is a struggle rooted in the longing to make a world where everyone can live fully and freely, then we know our work to be a gesture of love” (Talking, 27). Conversely, as she reiterated so often, “Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work of ending domination” (“Lorde,” 248).

When I first read hooks’ evocation of love as a transformative force embedded in a commitment to feminism, I resonated with her words immediately. It was the message that I had found so compelling in other resistance writers – as hooks did in Paulo Freire’s, “’I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love (70); and in Albert Camus’s, “Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. . . . this insane generosity. . . which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice” (304).  I recognize this force in my own deep desire for justice in the world.  Like hooks, I know such love to be a “source of empowerment, . . . a powerful force that challenges and resists domination” (Talking, 26) -- the foundation that sustains the work of creating a world without domination. hooks emphasized that every great movement for social justice has been grounded in love as a transformative force. In her years of working in social justice movements, she had found that “it was always love that created the motivation for profound inner and outer transformation. Love was the force that empowered folks to resist domination and create new ways of living and being in the world” (Writing, 194-195).

Much of hooks’ later work centered around defining and refining the meaning and practice of love in action in the world. This work culminated in her book, All About Love, in which she reflected on the implications of love in work, family, friendship, public policy, spirituality, and more.  Every chapter is worthy of long conversation and contemplation, but the one that has been in the forefront of my mind recently is her chapter on “Living by a Love Ethic.” In it hooks articulates a feminist vision of society shaped by this ethic of love, in which citizens and neighbors value and protect the common good -- a notion that seems to have disappeared from our national consciousness and will as of late, but that we sorely need in this time. How very different our society could be if we as a nation, as a world, lived by this love ethic. As hooks wrote, “If all public policy was created in the spirit of love, we would not have to worry about unemployment, homelessness, schools failing to teach children, or addiction” (All About Love, 98). And, I would add, public health, health care for all, poverty, childcare, structural racism, the school to prison pipeline, gun violence, environmental destruction, climate change. The list could go on and on. Imagine it – public policy created in the spirit of love. hooks challenged us to do more than imagine, inspiring us to do the daily hard and rewarding work of creating this society and these relationships based in love.

The love that hooks invoked is demanding.  As she said, it entails accepting “the fullness of our humanity, which then allows us to recognize the humanity of others” (Writing, 198).  That is not such an easy task.  It requires us to recognize not only the goodness in those we cast as “the enemy,” but our own shortcomings as well.  As one of her inspirations, Sam Keen, wrote, “When I know my shadow, I know that ‘they’ are like me. . . . [Those] I cast into the category of aliens are fellow humans who, like myself, are faulted, filled with contradictory impulses of love and hate, generosity, and the blind will to survive . . . ” (150). It is this recognition that galvanizes our refusal to engage in acts of domination, even against those who have oppressed and dominated us.  It enables us instead, in hooks’ words, to “engage a practice of loving kindness, forgiveness, and compassion” (Writing, 198). 

This is the work of transformational love.  This is the work of feminism.   To that end, as we head into a new year, I conclude with hooks’ charge to us all: “Let us draw upon that love to heighten our awareness, deepen our compassion, intensify our courage, and strengthen our commitment” (Talking, 27).

 


Notes

Camus, Albert. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  20th Anniversary Edition. Trans. Myra Berman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1993.

hooks, bell, All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co., 2000.

______. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.  Boston: South End Press, 1984.

______. “Lorde: The Imagination of Justice.” in Byrd, Rudolph et. al. eds. I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2009.

______. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1989.

______. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Keen, Sam. The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde.  Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984.

 

[i] Hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.  Boston: South End Press, 1989, 26.