bell hooks, Deconstruction, and Revolutionary Blackness
Our age is a very deceptive one. It is an age that seems to champion equality, diversity, multiculturalism, and color-blindness while refusing to address real social inequalities and various forms of injustice, discrimination, dehumanization, and marginalization. In a period of liberalism where allegedly everyone believes in equality and color-blindness, the issue of race is made more complex and requires a more rigorous analysis. Further, it is an era that declares that race is not real: “We are all the same.” It is true that the concept of race is a social construct used initially for the purposes of domination. However, we are reminded by Charles Mills that even social constructs are real, especially in terms of their real social, political, and existential consequences.1
Race is like a specter. On the one hand it is not real, on the other hand it is very real in terms of its effects on racialized individuals and social groups. The reality of race lies in its power to organize groups in such a way that racial signifiers determine the availability of certain social and economic goods that are necessary for self-development and self-determination. Even while the biological status of race is questionable, it still haunts us, a specter without a material reality but that exists nonetheless as an attitude with problematic social consequences.
The work of bell hooks occurs at a difficult moment in the race debate. For decades the movement to overcome racism had as its motivating premise the notion of color-blindness. If we are all the same and see each other as such, then racism and its dehumanizing consequences would go away. At this point in our history this liberal conception of race is dangerous. The assertion that we are all the same, and the subsequent demand for color-blindness, is premised the social and historical relationships wherein our social, political, and existential identities were formed and then forgotten. It forgets the violence that shaped the long-term process of group identity formation and the future consequences of this violence. It forgets the way in which the past is carried into the present and future. Racial identities are real in terms of the social formation of racial groups and the benefits or lack of benefits that follow from these identities.
White liberals who urge us to believe that we are all the same perpetuate white supremacy by ignoring their white privilege. That is, the history of racial discrimination in the United States has allowed many whites to accumulate the resources necessary for self-development and self-determination where blacks have suffered from a paucity of such resources.2 Blacks tend to understand this privilege in ways that most whites don’t and as a result they view whites through a critical lens and understand that sameness is a myth. hooks mentions that her white students are always surprised when they discover that they have been subjected to the black gaze. She writes:
Usually, white students respond with naïve amazement that black people critically assess white people from a standpoint where “whiteness” is the privileged signifier. Their amazement that black people watch white people with a critical “ethnographic” gaze is itself an expression of racism. Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal subjectivity (we are all just people) that they think will make race disappear. They have a deep emotional investment in the myth of “sameness,” even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are and how they think.3
Racism and its consequences are not overcome by pretending that race is not real. The issue here is what we do with our racial identities. This is where bell hooks makes one of her most important contributions to race theory.
In this chapter I will not enter the debate about the reality of race. I will, instead, examine the interesting, provocative, and prophetic way that bell hooks deals with the problem of racial identity. The debate about the reality of race falls short with respect to offering us a way to overcome the problem of racism and its long-term effects on people of African descent. bell hooks moves us beyond this debate into a discourse on what can be done with race to overcome racism. I see hooks as moving from the construction of race to the deconstruction of race to the revolutionary reconstruction of race (more specifically, revolutionary blackness). Before directly exploring hooks’s contribution, however, more must be said about the problem of racial identity.
Race is a reality, but in what way? How does race function? How should race function? These are necessary questions when approaching the work of bell hooks. The difficulty before us is that of recognizing the reality of race while avoiding racial essentialism. Further, how do we recognize the reality of racial identity without perpetuating racial oppression and exclusionary practices? The problem is that of recognizing difference without making that difference essential and oppressive. I will set the stage for engaging hooks on these issues by citing an important distinction made by Iris Young between the essentialist meaning of difference and the egalitarian meaning of identity politics. Young writes: “Traditional politics that excludes or devalues some persons on account of their group attributes assumes an essentialist meaning of difference; it defines groups as having different natures. An egalitarian politics of difference, on the other hand, defines difference more fluidly and relationally as the product of social processes.”4
The institution of slavery in the United States was justified, in the minds of white racists, by the division of human beings along racial lines. Racial difference began with the mere difference in geography and phenotype and later the fabrication of moral difference. Recognition of physical differences between Africans and people of European descent was used to make unjustifiable claims about differences in morality, character, and human essence. Whites were taken to be fully human while those of African descent were taken to be subhuman. Blacks (people of African descent) were believed to be by nature less human than whites. This is a long story that we are all familiar with; I will not bore the reader with the continuation of this racist narrative. The point is that the concept of race was not merely based on recognition of physical difference. Rather, physical difference was used to make claims about the humanity and worth of people of African descent that cannot be derived from physical differences alone. It is important here to make a distinction between natural differences and the social production of differences.
It is undeniable that there are physical differences between Africans and Europeans. Natural differences such as skin color are not the issue. The problem is with the type of narratives such differences give birth to and how those narratives are used for the purposes of dehumanizing an entire group of people. In the case of Africans, their natural, accidental differences were used by Europeans for the construction of racial hierarchies wherein Europeans were viewed as fully human and Africans were viewed as less than human. This narrative was given philosophical and scientific justification.5 Sander Gilman writes: “If their sexual parts could be shown to be inherently different, this would be a sufficient sign that the blacks were a separate (and, needless to say, lower) race, as different from the European as the proverbial orangutan.”6
Gilman’s entire essay examines medical literature which used the supposed difference in genitalia between white women and black women to make claims about the moral character of black women. It is from this sexual/racial narrative that we get the historical image of the black Jezebel. I cannot fully examine these issues given the scope of this chapter; I simply wanted to point out the role of essentialist racial narratives in the production of racial identity.
We know today that these racist narratives are false. The problem for us is the long-term consequences of such narratives and the role that they play in social identity formation. Essentialist racial narratives play a role in the construction not of essentialist identities but rather socially constructed identities which are nonetheless real and have real social consequences. The construction of race takes place in the context of Euro-American exploitation and dehumanization of African people. This construction of race is designed to use racial identity as a signifier of the human status of people of European descent and to signify the “subhuman” status of people of African descent. Blackness then becomes a marker, a signifier that carries with it many negative connotations. Blacks or people of African descent then become victims of this signifying practice.
The social construction of essentialist racial identities is oppressive and dehumanizing for people of African descent. Unfortunately, not only is essentialist racial identity perpetuated by the system of white supremacy, it is also maintained and perpetuated by blacks who are the victims of racial essentialism. Racial essentialism is dangerous whether it be from whites or blacks.7 Therefore, racial identity must be deconstructed. hooks calls for a deconstruction of race and what she calls postmodern blackness as an emancipatory response to the system of white supremacy. It is here where I think some of her most important contributions are made.
Racial essentialism has its origin in the desire to establish a racial hierarchy wherein one race can justify the domination of another. It is claimed by the advocates of such a hierarchy that not only is racial difference established by nature, but that the position of races within the hierarchy is natural and cannot be changed. Blacks by nature are lower on the great chain of being than whites. The idea that race is a social construct shows that the racial hierarchy is human, all too human. Hence, racial identity in terms of a system of social valuation is not given but constructed. The essentialist construction of racial identity attempts to separate races from each other in terms of some racial essence. This leads to the belief that there is a white essence and a black essence. We might even say that white people have a white soul with certain necessary features (such as higher intelligence) while black people have black souls with certain necessary features (such as lower intelligence).
The deconstruction of race makes possible the development of a counterhegemonic discourse that challenges the hegemony of “white power.” It discloses the fluid nature of racial identities as well as the contingent nature of racist narratives that are constructed for the purposes of racial domination. Deconstruction is not merely a method that is applied to things. The point of deconstruction is to show that things simply refuse to conform to our static definitions. John Caputo describes it as follows: “The very meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that things—texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and practices8 of whatever size and sort you need—do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more9 than any mission would impose, that they exceed the boundaries they currently occupy.”10
With respect to race, racial essentialism attempts to construct fixed, racialized identities that rob black persons of their agency. As we have seen, such essentialist identity formation requires the construction of a narrative which takes the form of a hegemonic discourse that is constructed and maintained by the “dominant” race. However, this attempt to enclose one’s racial identity fails because the individuals encircled by certain racial signifiers are much more than the racial signifiers can contain.
With respect to the deconstruction of race, one of hooks’s most philosophically provocative essays is “Postmodern Blackness.” hooks calls for a postmodern blackness as a challenge to essentialist notions of racial identity. This essay is crucial for understanding the problem of black racial identity. It presents a problem that I think is central to hooks’s contribution to race theory. That is, how is racial identity possible without some support of racial essentialism? Is racial identity necessary if we are to overcome racism? While postmodernism has presented us with a solution to racial essentialism it has also created another problem that hooks grapples with in “Postmodern Blackness.”
Postmodernism (deconstruction included) has presented an important challenge to essentialist notions of racial identity by challenging the very notion of identity itself. However, hooks reminds us:
The postmodern critique of “identity,” though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups.11
Postmodernism falls short as a critique of race because its discourse is directed “to a specialized audience that shares a common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to challenge.”12 That is, postmodernism emerges as a white, male, academic discourse directed to white, male, academic discourse. As such, it does not adequately consider the position of the oppressed. Postmodernism attempts to rid us of subjectivity and identity before blacks have been recognized as subjects.
At one level this critique of identity and subjectivity is necessary. At another level it goes too far. hooks writes:
Considering that it is as subject one comes to voice, then the postmodernist focus on the critique of identity appears at first glance to threaten and close down the possibility that this discourse and practice will allow those who have suffered the crippling effects of colonization and domination to gain or regain a hearing. Even if this sense of threat and the fear it evokes are based on a misunderstanding of the postmodernist political project, they nevertheless shape responses. It never surprises me when black folks respond to the critique of essentialism, especially when it denies the validity of identity politics by saying, “Yeah, it’s easy to give up identity, when you got one.” Should we not be suspicious of postmodern critiques of the “subject” when they surface at a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time. Though an apt and oftentimes appropriate comeback, it does not really intervene in the discourse in a way that alters and transforms.13
The point here is that the postmodern view that there is no subject is very problematic with regard to the critique of racism. In fact, racism denies black subjectivity. The postmodern rejection of the subject fails to take into consideration the situation of the oppressed who have fought to have their subjectivity recognized. Further, postmodernists fail to recognize that their rejection of the subject comes from a place of privilege where their own subjectivity has not been denied by a system which sought to dehumanize them altogether. However, although postmodernism fails in some respects, it is useful in others.
The postmodern critique is helpful in challenging essentialism. “Postmodern critiques of essentialism which challenge notions of universality and static overdetermined identity within mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new possibilities for the construction of self and the assertion of agency.”14 The postmodern critique of identity does not necessarily require the abandonment of subjectivity and identity, but rather, a freeing up of identity. That is, identity is no longer viewed as something static, fixed, and universal. There is no fixed, universal black or white identity. Identity, rather, hovers before us as a possibility. However, this possibility is not random. The horizon of possibility is still contextual. Therefore, it is still possible to speak of black identity without recourse to essentialism.
Simply put, black identity, although not universal or fixed, is shaped by its social/ historical context. To be black in America situates one within a social/historical narrative that includes the slave trade, slavery, and Jim Crow segregation. What binds together blacks in America is not some black essence that is imparted to us by nature, but rather, a history, a history that included the attempt by white supremacists to deny our humanity, as well as a history of resistance and affirmation of ourselves as human beings. There are many ways to respond to this history, many forms of resistance, and therefore, many different ways of being black.
Every moment of deconstruction requires by necessity a moment of reconstruction. Deconstruction does not leave us with nothing, but with something new. Likewise, the deconstruction of race leaves us with a new view of racial identity and indeed with a new identity. The work of hooks suggests a movement from racial construction to a moment of necessary deconstruction followed by a reconstruction of black racial identity. The latter moments, those of deconstruction and reconstruction belong together as emancipatory moments.
We have seen that the social construction of race had as its motive the domination of non-European peoples by Europeans. In this context, the geographical marker, Africa, and the phenotypic marker, blackness, became negative signifiers for Europeans. Blackness became a marker that pointed to a narrative which described the black person as sub-human. Blackness and the false narrative which defined it were essentialized for the purpose of establishing a racial hierarchy with whites at the apex.
The purpose of the deconstruction of race is not to deny or reject blackness or distinctions based on geography and outer physical features. The purpose of deconstruction is to disrupt the racist narrative wherein racial hierarchies are formed. It is to problematize a value system that supports white supremacy. For hooks, racial identity is not denied but it is deconstructed and reconstructed for emancipatory purposes. Here, the concern is not with difference, but rather with the interpretation and use of difference. For white supremacists, difference was a sign of inferiority of the nonwhite group.
As I mentioned before, many so-called antiracists believe that racism can be overcome if we become color-blind. However, the problem is not with recognizing color or racial difference, it is with the way in which difference is devalued. hooks combats racism not by ignoring racial difference or by pretending that we are all the same. She combats racism by reaffirming blackness in a positive way. In her work, the narrative of black identity is retold as something positive and something to be loved. This is the real deconstructive/reconstructive moment which is more devastating to white supremacy than the liberal notion of color-blindness. Simply put, racist whites leave us with one option: blackness is bad and should be despised. White liberals leave us with a second option. Indeed, for well-meaning white liberals we should be color-blind, race is not real, there is no need to embrace one’s blackness.
Both of the above options are not real options for blacks seeking liberation and equality and neither serves to empower marginalized black people. The more blatant white supremacists leave us with a negative self-image and no hope for emancipation. The white liberal who wants to pretend that he or she is color-blind only ignores the problem of race. While color-blindness may be an ideal, we are not yet in a position to advocate such. Further, the recognition of racial difference should not necessarily embody racism or the devaluing of a race. The present goal of color-blindness assumes that the playing field is even for blacks and whites. It also fails to take into consideration present structures of white supremacy. Quite often the focus on color-blindness is a demand for assimilation and the erasure of one’s black identity. It is also a failure to recognize the reality of whiteness.15
Black identity has been formed through the historical process of resistance. Blackness is not an essentialist-based identity but rather a historical one.16 hooks writes:
The oppositional black culture that emerged in the context of apartheid and segregation has been one of the few locations that has provided a space for the kind of decolonization that makes loving blackness possible. Racial integration in a social context where white supremacist systems are intact undermines marginal spaces of resistance by promoting the assumption that social equality can be attained without changes in the culture’s attitudes about blackness and black people.17
The above passage reminds us of the way American society has refused to think deeply about racism and its long-term effects. The dominant tendency is to see racism as a problem with the individual. It is believed that only individuals can be racist. Racism requires a conscious commitment to white supremacy by an individual. We have ignored the ways in which racism or white supremacy is embedded in our social institutions and cultural practices. For example, black students are bombarded with images of great white figures in history while great blacks are marginalized. The very structure of our educational system is designed to perpetuate white supremacy. In a racist society everything is colonized, from our institutions to our minds. Too often racial integration means assimilation, it means conforming to a white supremacist system without challenging the system.
It is in this context that the voice of bell hooks is most prophetic. Black identity is to be maintained and loved. To love blackness is indeed revolutionary. White supremacy constructs social systems that are based on a hatred of blackness. Indeed, blacks are encouraged to hate themselves. In the context of liberal “antiracism,” rather than love blackness, we are encouraged to pretend that racial identity does not exist. Loving and affirming blackness is taboo. To love blackness is to deconstruct and challenge the system that constructed blackness as something negative and subhuman in the first place. To love blackness is also to reconstruct blackness as beautiful, positive, and human. Loving blackness produces what might be called the clash of narratives. That is, the narrative about black identity constructed by white supremacists must be countered and destroyed by a narrative that redefines and reaffirms blackness. In the final analysis, loving blackness reveals that the emperor has no clothes.
1. See Charles Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1998).
2. Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of social, economic, and cultural capital is useful here. His analysis of these three forms of capital with regard to social class may also apply to race. Centuries of racial discrimination has put blacks at a great disadvantage while whites were able to accumulate necessary financial, social, and cultural resources. As a result many white children are born with a much wider “field of possibility” than black children since these resources are passed on from generation to generation. The playing field is grossly uneven at birth. Hence, the social trajectory of the average white child in the United States is much better than that of the average black child. See Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984).
3. hooks, “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” in Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 34–35.
4. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), 157.
5. See Arnold Farr’s “Whiteness Visible: Enlightenment Racism and the Structure of Racialized Consciousness,” in George Yancy, What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), 143–158.
6. Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 223–261.
7. Hooks is just as critical of forms of racial essentialism perpetuated by blacks as she is with that perpetuated by whites. It is not uncommon to hear blacks debate about who is really black and who is not in the black community. Blacks often accuse other blacks of trying to be white if they differ in various cultural practices ranging from what one reads to the kind of music one listens to.
8. I would add “identities.”
9. My italics.
10. John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1997), 31.
11. hooks, “Postmodern Blackness,” in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990), 26.
12. hooks, “Postmodern Blackness,” 25.
13. Ibid., 28.
14. Ibid.
15 Arnold Farr, “Whiteness Visible: Enlightenment Racism and the Structure of Racialized Conscious-ness.”
16. Arnold Farr, “Racism, Historical Ruins, and the Task of Identity Formation,” in The Quest for Community and Identity: Critical Essays in Africana Social Philosophy, ed. Robert Birt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 15–28.
17. hooks, “Loving Blackness as Political Resistance,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston MA: South End Press, 1992), 10.