Legacy as Art

At a training I recently co-facilitated my friend V announced as part of her introduction, “I’m a bell hooks feminist.” Gathered with the board members of a company that focuses on increasing access for women in tech, I too mentioned bell hooks when I described feminism using her definition, “a movement to end sexism and other forms of oppression.” hooks' definition from Feminism is for Everybody a beautiful, short, concise, accessible text is a classic I assigned to every Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies course I taught. Every WGS student who I taught had bell hooks on their syllabus. She is among a small cohort of feminist intellectuals I can say that to be true. That she was so committed to the love and liberation of Black women cannot be understated, that her work transformed us all is her generous and true gift. Her message is clear and memorable. A vision that rightfully approaches the need to understand feminism’s goals as not about personal choices but rather a political commitment to challenging and remaking systems that humans have created and maintain that default toward inequality and inequities.

bell hooks was a brilliant writer because she purposefully wrote against the academic convention of complicating language in the name of theory. Her theories were born of her experiences, analysis, reflection and connection to broader themes that impacted other Black women, other women of color, other queer folks, other poor women, other white women, and men. She had a gift in synthesizing complex ideas and formulating them in accessible language for whomever needed them. She shared that gift with us all as a voracious public intellectual, publishing over forty books in her lifetime; modeling a possibility of what it looked like to be a scholar beside the academy. As a reader of her work I felt the urgency of her message through her words, her style, her insatiable and incredible release of writing, her commitment to sending and sharing new thoughts into the world. She modeled the process of thinking as a political necessity, as a community project, as important as our other bodily needs. Often writing in shorter essays collected around a theme, her work has provided rich analysis on the intersections of race and racism with gender and sexism in regards to class, to art, to popular culture, to love, to pedagogy, to writing, to coming of age, to feminist theory, to masculinity to to to…

I do not want to tread into hagiography territory. I do not believe bell hooks would have wanted to be sainted. Though certainly her ideas circulating on the popular Tumblr Saved by the bell hooks and the intersectional feminist urge to put a halo on our foremothers abounds. Her work over the last forty years has paved a path for our contemporary feminist critique as it now takes place on the streets, in cafes, on Twitter, blogs, newsletters, and in scholarship. She was human and I’m grateful I got to witness her humor, her grit, and her uncompromising style live. Many of us remember her famous (infamous?) ability to run a Q&A - most notably that time at NWSA in Puerto Rico when she kept telling folks from the audience lined up at the mics “that’s not a question” and refusing to even entertain the effort required to contort the jumble from the crowd into something she wanted to talk about instead. “Next question” she stated to those of us listening, directly signaling with her hand for the non-questioner to move away from the mic so she could receive an actual question. She refused to play this game — that the speaker be polite to the questioners — especially when it was clear the questioners just wanted to hear themselves speak (IYKYK). She refused to be spoken at in this matter, though sometimes she would do just that. I do not mean this in an insulting way, especially because the role of the public intellectual is to teach through talking at sometimes. Hooks took seriously the responsibility of demonstrating the process of thinking. She took joy in showing us how knowledge is produced and chewed on and thought through and shared. Hooks was not known for her tact, which is often assumed as the only way to gain access to a stage for any woman. Remember the blow up on her essay critiquing Beyoncé’s Lemonade and her subsequent conversation with Lavern Cox? She was unmoved by Fourth Wave reasonings as to why Beyoncé’s visual album, or contemporary Black women’s styling choices, didn’t uphold what she had coined “the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” From my vantage point she was not afraid to dig in her heels, to be unwavering by the invocation of choice feminist takes, that was her prerogative. Whether or not that’s the only way to be, or the best way to accomplish the goal of ending sexism and other forms of oppression however is our prerogative to question. Regardless, she provided the map to posing the question and she did it with love, showing us that we too must remain courageous in our questioning. 

There is no question as to bell hooks’ immense influence in feminist circles and her significance to the advancement of a modern feminism political movement for folks on the ground. Her work is truly foundational. She required complexity and nuance when so much of our world tries to push us into binary thinking. She also challenged academia, especially bucking against the institutionalization of the field of Women’s and Gender Studies when it shifted toward the theoretical alone, always reminding us all that without the lived experience, the practice, what good are the theories? While she was critical of the academy her optimism in the revolutionary possibility of the college classroom was unrivaled. She was my guiding light in that regard, she helped me make sense of the value of community in those spaces and my role in fostering it. I’m no longer carrying her torch in the academy, but I have the privilege of remaining a bell hooks feminist in my daily life because her work and words do not live in the ivory tower. She worked to build a world where they could live on in us. They live in their call to action to try to remake this current world better and for those who will follow us. I’m trying to carry this with me as a celebrate the gifts she leaves behind. I am shaken by her passing, reaching for her words to make sense of her absence. The world feels like a different place without her here in this realm. The truest testament to the impact she has carved in words, on pages, within books, of libraries, in bodies of knowledge. Blessed journeys to the next realm to one of my teachers. May our love light your way. May your legacy endure. May your teachings guide the change we deserve. QEPD maestra.


 

What I’m Reading

Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger

Before I cancelled my Audible Subscription (shifting to libro.fm which supports local bookstores) the machine totally tried to suck me back in by simply playing a memoir after I finished one of my books! The one it started playing was Dancyger's Negative Space and the book seriously sucked me in which says a lot because I am more of the type of person who likes to choose their own book after a long process of reading reviews, trusted friends’ recommendations, and my intuitive strolls through the library stacks for the finds that are supposed to come into my life. So, riddle me surprised when the algorithm was like you will like this, and my stubborn self gave in to the recommendation. Some have described this memoir as a journalistic uncovering, others have pointed to the mash up between memoir and art criticism, but whatever entry point you take, Dancyger’s tale is compelling, interesting, and though-provoking. The daughter of two parents struggling with addiction, she traces her relationship with her deceased father in this gripping and well crafted book. Part family memoir, part illumination of the 1980s NYC art scene, the book takes the reader to a lot of different emotional and cultural places. I really enjoyed it. So much so that I’m following Dancyger on the socials because I want to know what she has to say.

Creative Ritual

Apologies for no links to artist offerings this time, I've been not on the interwebs as much the first part of the month so I've got nothing to share at the moment. What's been keeping me busy? I worked on and got a commission out the door for someone’s Christmas gift, hopefully it will be well received! I joined a painting critique group led by my one of my faves - Cate White that met for the first time on the first of the month and will run for 8 sessions every other week which means I need to get back to my paintings since tomorrow I have a critique sesh! The ChicFinn Guild (me and Vaimo) stretched a 5x4ft canvas together and I have built another frame for the next canvas to be stretched. My hopes are that I can build these frames and stretch all the canvases for which I have the wood cut before 2022. More importantly that I will get paint on those canvases! I’m in the midst of applying for a grant for some material support for this series I’m working on so wish me luck! The work continues, beside the grief. 

Questions to ponder

What legacy are you working on leaving behind?
Who are your intellectual foremothers?
How do you practice thinking?
How are you honoring bell hooks’ life and work?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF