Poetics Of Resistance:A Study On Bell Hooks' Radical Black Feminist Criticism

bell hooks,a cultural critic and feminist theorist,is regarded as one of the 35 intellectuals who have changed American thoughts.She becomes an object of research in theses and dissertations,but often assessed in light of black feminist critical tradition.By placing hooks in the genealogy of contemporary American feminist criticism,black literary and cultural criticism,this dissertation intends to delineate the features of radical resistance in hooks' criticism from the following respects.First,hooks contributes to the shift of critical paradigm from gender to gender,race and class during the second wave of feminism,and to the defence of feminist position by criticizing the anti-feminist backlash during the third wave.Second,hooks advocates a politics of representation by promoting the "oppositional gaze" strategy to reveal the conditional equality in American race films,and by presenting a "counter narrative" in her autobiography used as a discourse of redemption on family issues,of complexity on black female sexuality and gender relations,and of antagonism that emphasizes a revert to localization in the context of globalization.Third,hooks expands the feminist ethics of care by initiating a shift to a black feminist ethics of care at the turn of the century with her healing rhetoric.hooks speaks against the white feminist thinkers of the second wave.By promoting the idea of ending domination of all forms,she makes "anti white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" the logo of her critical theory.Postmodern blackness is the philosophical basis of her anti-domination politics,which is implemented by the ending of domination in the domain of gender,race and class.The 1990s witnessed gender-class-race as a prevalent discourse in the critical landscape.Critiquing the interlocking oppression of gender,race and class becomes a paradigm in American higher education institutes.Undoubtedly,hooks is a main contributor to this paradigm shift by her groundbreaking works.hooks speaks against the anti-feminist discourse fledged since the 1980s.She points out that the so called neofeminists,those who have challenged the former feminist agenda,have purged the radical political purposes of feminism,including criticizing sexual discrimination and ending patriarchy.Getting gender equality with males of their own class becomes the ultimate purpose of this newly packaged feminism.She criticizes the neofeminist writings by pointing out that it actually trivializes and depoliticizes feminism.By denying differences in race and class,the neofeminist writings once again place the privileged women in the center.hooks does not agree with the idea of taking capitalism as the synonym of liberation and self-determination.To her,power feminism ignores the experience of the masses,thus it has little to do with the disadvantaged.She criticizes the anti-feminist backlash by warning the danger of feminism merging with the neoliberal capitalism.The radicals and reformists contradict each other because they are rooted in two different schools of thoughts:state capitalism and neocapitalism respectively.Although the reformists gain an upper hand,hooks still thinks it is premature to declare the advent of a postfeminist era.Feminist activists carry on with the faith of resistance.hooks speaks antagonistically toward the representation politics of the film industry by fighting against the oppressive ideological state apparatus.She promotes the strategy of "oppositional gaze" to resist the dichotomy of male as the gazer and female as the gazed,thus transcends the identification mode of the male audience.If the audience refuse to view as the presupposed white male gazer,they can find that the image production reiterates the stereotypes of blackness,and the harmony in race films is based on the condition that nobody moves his or her place in the racial hierarchy.hooks deconstructs the black images presented by mass media.Meanwhile,she chooses autobiography as a form of counter narrative for the construction of black images,particularly the black female images from the dimensions of family relations,emotional experiences and spacial mobility.Traditional black family narratives are often connected with a destructive tendency,while hooks' family stories are both about the hardships in a patriarchal family,and about redemptions as well.The redemptive power derives from the nonconforming spirit of the extended family members,the power of spirituality and poetry.Discourse about black female sexuality often deals with the frustrating side of gender relation,while hooks presents a more complex vision.At her initiation stage,she transforms from self-indulgence to sexual repression and sublimation.In her prime stage,by having a partner and flying solo later,she experiences a bitter sweet gender relation.On the issue of spatial mobility,hooks is against the trend again.She practices localization in the context of globalization.At the turn of the 20th century,hooks writes a series of books on healing,which she considers as an act of transgression.She contextualizes feminist ethics of care in black culture.She focuses her writing on the ethics of love,and believes confronting the emotional sufferings in black people's life is the new frontier of political resistance.hooks' healing rhetoric has two focuses:On the one hand,the phenomenon of low self-esteem in black culture,its causes and remedies.She taps the causes for the low self-esteem(namely,the beliefs of violent domination and the aesthetics of white supremacy),and explores the remedial strategies(namely,the cultivation of critical consciousness and a revival of religious beliefs).On the other hand,the impaired gender characteristics and its counter actions.hooks points out that people should employ the ethics of love to challenge the patriarchal masculinity.Meanwhile,they should end their own obsession with violence and material gains.As a substitute,people should choose the mode of inter-being as the founding principle for the establishment of family and community.As to the healing of the black femininity,hooks suggests evoking the power of spirituality and language,building up a supportive community,practicing an ethics of love,reclaiming nature,and establishing a radical black female subjectivity.hooks' poetics of resistance is an echo of and response to feminist criticism,and black literary and cultural criticism.Her criticism adds complexity to the discourse of feminism and black criticism with a striking feature of resistance.Her critical discourse is vitally dynamic in form and content,ranging from feminist theory to cultural criticism,and finally to autobiographical writings.This trajectory reflects a similar change in feminist discourse:a "transition" from feminist criticism to gender and cultural studies.It seems that feminist criticism is expanding its frontier,and this feminist turn in hooks from "theoretical speculations" to autobiographical and fictional writings deserves further study.