bell hooks: the politics of accountability
By shag carpet bomb • Apr 16th, 2009 • Category: Belly Button Lint, Black Feminist Thought, Feminist Fight Club, Identity Politics, Women of Color FeminismThis is a really awesome talk hooks gave. In it, she brings up the issue that inflamed folks recently when Renee Martin wrote about big girl panties. While I disagree with Martin’s characterizations of Black Amazon and others, I think hooks says some really interesting things here, some of which I tend to chafe against because it seems a little to accomodationist for me. It seems to too easily fit into that mold anyway. But one thing, hooks is also getting at what Wendy Brown is. I was supposed to flesh that out by looking at brownfemipower’s work, but I obviously got sidetracked!
Anyway, a transcript, my own, STFWIW. I started transcribing at 27:44, URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAuHQIMQUIs
One of the things hooks learned is that, when she started changing the way she thought about things recently, moving away from what she calls a politics of blame and becoming less bitchy, she discovered that people
“liked the old bell as a bitch better. The liked the one they perceived as coming out with her big guns, blowing the enemy away. Responses like this kept making me see how even among liberal and progressive people we want to divide the world up into this binary of good and bad guys. So that when we do that we actually keep the dominant culture in place. For one aspect of that culture is projection outward on the enemy whenever things go wrong. Casting blame is a crucial component of dominator thinking. It helps promote the culture of victimization. When we are more energized by the practice of blaming than we are by efforts to create transformation, we not only cannot find relief from suffering, we are creating the conditions that help keep us stuck in the status quo.
Our attachment to blaming, to identifying the oppressor, stems from the fear that if we cannot unequivocally an absolutely state who the enemy is, then how can we know how to organize resistance struggles.
In the incisive essay, In Blame, (the author) talks about learning how to understand others rather than blaming them. He shares that “I remember my father and other members of the older generation saying they didn’t blame the Communist Chinese for the destruct of Tibet. They felt that blaming the Chinese would not solve anything, it would only trap the Tibetans in the past.
Concurrently, any examination of the history of civil rights in the u.s will show that greater progress was made when leaders emphasized the importance of forgiving one’s enemies, working for reconciliation, and the formation of “beloved community” over angry retaliation. Casting blame and calling for vengeance was an aspect of the militant movement for black power that really failed to sustain the climate of unlearning racism that had been forged by non-violent anti-racist struggles. In the aftermath of 60s rebellion, the more black folks were encourage to vent rage and blame all white folks for exploitation and domination based on race and to eschew any notion of forgiveness, the more we internalized a sense of victimhood that has become the norm.
Now was that part statement clear? (apparently the audience isn’t clear. Let me talk about it a little more.
When you feel like somebody else is to blame, what do you become? Like if I’m hurt. Like when things go wrong in my life sometimes, I notice lately, I’m always looking for who I can blame. You know like who can I blame. It’s a way for me to move away from my own sense of agency. When looking around for somebody else to put all the responsibility on, then I can be the victim. So what I’m saying is: the more black people were told to see everything as being about white people and the man and what the man is doing to you, the more many of us began to lose our own agency. And think about that versus a culture where my grandfather who was a share cropper, and definitely the white man was on his back, but what I remember about that, when this man would walk through his fields and see his vegetables that he grew, he’d say, “See these vegetables. White men cannot make the sun shine. They cannot control..”
I mean here’s a black man who did not go to school, who did not have an education. But he found a sense of self that transcended the idea of him as a victim. Because he could say “yes white men have power over my life. They exploit and terrorize me, but at the end of the day, there’s a power higher than white men that I can lend my imagination to.”
Many of us as people of color are being taught to forget that there is more to life than our pain and suffering. That we have agency.”
Dualistic thinking, which is at the core of dominating thinking, teaches people that there is always an oppressor and an oppressed, a victim and victimizer, hence there is always someone to blame. Moving away from the ideology of blame to a politics of accountability is difficult to make in a society where all political organizing, whether conservative or radical, has been structured around the binary of good guys and bad guys.
Accountability is a much more complex issue. When the issue is racism, a politics of blame allows white people to make statments like, ‘My family never owned slaves. Slavery is over. Why can’t they just get over it?” Whereas a politics of accountability would emphasize that all white people benefit from the privileges accrued from racist exploitation, past ad present. Therefore, they are accountable for changing and transforming white supremacy and racism.
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a structure is a structure is a structure is a structure.
This is very Buddhist thinking! (I’d say that even if I didn’t already know she is Buddhist, too.) Thanks so much for the link, will try to include some discussion of this!
glad you enjoyed it. i have some mixed feelings about whether it’s too accomdationist, and also wonder how historicallly accurate it is. Did blacks, for example, really make the most inroads for the reasons she says? I’m not sure.
i know how much you love Habermas. :)
i’d superpoke you back, btw, but i hate those apps!
besides, with all this recursive cul-de-saccery, i might as well superpoke myself. HA.
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Odds and Sods - merry month of May edition
I LOVE this!! LOVE, love, LOVE!! Thank you for sharing this TREASURE. hooks certainly gives a lot to think about! It’s like a Sunday morning sermon without God- HA!! I particularly appreciate her discussion of the divisive mindset of those who seek to dominate. After listening to the whole “lecture”, I have a better understanding of your assessment that she is too accomodationist! Nevertheless, I agree with her that refusing to be reactionary, *refusing to escalate a situation* IS the only way to successfully invite others to seriously consider your perspective and why you disagree with their (potentially offensive) statements. I really liked the example of when hooks went out to lunch with 2 other women…I can’t remember the characters, but hopefully you remember the anecdote that I’m referring to!
Anyways, I originally found your old blog/archives, Quare Dewd, while searching for “lesbian separatism” or something of the sort; I stumbled across your transcript of “Lesbian Ethics.” I am now (slowly) reading that book, which is ROCKING MY WORLD. I would’ve NEVER picked it up if it weren’t for the significant time & energy you (must’ve) spent putting that incredible excerpt on the internet: THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I am eternally grateful that you did.
And finally, I also enjoyed your recent reference to Martha Nussbaum’s new book and Elizabeth Spellman’s review of it (the slimy underbelly of understanding the Other). Spellman was my college adviser; it really tickled me to see her work on your blog!!! Almost 10 years later, I have a whole different perspective on her emotional analysis and how it relates to radical feminism.
Thank you again for the unparalleled exposure to these important philosophical concerns; I only wish more people were interested in how they relate to feminism and the creation of NEW VALUES! :) Please keep doing what you’re doing!!!
Hello again. I’ve been working on my own summary of Lesbian Ethics. Well ok, it’s only a cliff-notes version of the introduction so far. Anyways, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was going to post a link to the HUGE excerpt from chapter 1 that you painstakingly transcribed and which changed my internet life (by inspiring this practice of blogging)…and it’s GONE! The horror, the disappointment!
But ok, fine. Quare Dewd is dead. I get it. But, if I may be so bold, would you be willing to kindly pay it forward (so to speak) by sharing the text with me? You can email it to me if you don’t want to post it yourself. I’m happy to post it. I think it’s really valuable work that I’d like to share with my lesbian sisters. :) Thank you in advance for your reply.