Read Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) Online
Authors: Bell Hooks
| bh: | “Like what? she says! Well, for example, I just had this fling with a 22-year-old black male. A lot of people felt, “This is politically incorrect. This person isn’t political; he’s even got a white girlfriend. How can you be non-monogamous in the age of AIDS?” Likewise, if you say you have a spiritual practice, people immediately think you’re plugged into a total good/bad way of reading reality. |
| R/SP: | Or that you can’t have a wild sex life … You’re older and he’s younger, so you’re breaking an “age” taboo? |
| bh: | Actually, less the taboo of age than the taboo of being involved with somebody who isn’t involved with my work, who doesn’t talk, and who’s not politically correct. |
| R/SP: | Almost as if you could be the exploiter? |
| bh: | No! Rather, “You’re letting us down. How could you be involved with a sexist terrorist?!” Because from jump I wasn’t trying to pretend that this guy was a wonderful person—I said he was a “terrorist”—referring to people who are into “gaslighting,” that great old term we should never have abandoned: men who seduce a woman, and just when you think you’re in heaven, they suddenly abandon you. The syndrome of seduce and abandon, seduce and betray. This theme really was popular in Hitchcock movies. I like that term “gaslighting”; I want to recover it. It makes me think of emotional minefields, of someone you might actually have this ecstatic experience with, someone who inspires in you feelings of belonging and homecoming, you’re walking along and suddenly you get blown up! Some part of you falls away, and you realize that all along this has been part of the other person’s agenda: to give you a sense of belonging and closeness, then disrupt it in some powerful way. Which is what I think sexual terrorism does … In a more general sense, in this country I always relate terrorism to the idea of sugar-coated fascism: where people really think they are free, but all of a sudden discover that if you cross certain boundaries (for example, decide you don’t want to go fight in that Gulf War), suddenly you find you can be blown up—some part of you can be cut off, shot down, taken away … I think about the soldiers that people were spitting on—the ones who don’t want to happily get on planes and go kill some Iraqis … just how quickly their whole experience of “America” was altered in the space of, say, even a day. If you juxtapose the notion of “Choice/Freedom of Will” (that mythic projection) against the reality of what it means to say, “Well, I really would like to exercise my freedom in this democracy and say that I don’t really support this war, and I don’t want to go to it!” then WHAM! You find out there really was no such freedom, that you really had signed up to be an agent of White supremacy and White Western Imperialism globally— and that you get punished quickly if you choose against that! |
| R/SP: | This really was a white supremacist war, yet the way it was presented on TV sidestepped that reality. |
| bh: | It’s funny, because I was just talking with a friend about Dances with Wolves. We were disturbed because so many “progressive” people had been seeing this film, crying, and saying what a wonderful film it is. And while it is one of the best Hollywood representations of Native Americans, the fact remains that the overall package is completely pro-war, completely conservative. I was interested in this, and my book Black Looks: Race and Representation has an essay that examines the whole history of Africans coming to the so-called “New World,” and the kind of bonds that developed between Africans and different nations. All of a sudden we began to think of Native American Indians as lightskinned people with straight hair, whose cultures have nothing to do with African American (or any African) culture … when in fact, in the 1800s and early 1900s, there was still lots of communication—a lot of black people joined Native American nations legally. You could declare yourself a citizen of a particular nation. |
| R/SP: | Do you have any thoughts regarding the presentation of people of color in mass media? |
| bh: | I think one of the dilemmas in film or performance for people of color is it’s not enough for us just to create cultural products in reaction to prevailing archetypes— we must try to create the absences in Hollywood cinema. For example, we think a Spike Lee film is “good” because it has different images from what we’ve seen before. But we need more than merely “positive” images—we need challenging images. When people say to me, “Well, don’t you think that at least Spike Lee’s telling it like it is?” I say, “You know, the function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible.” |
| R/SP: | To tell what could be. |
| bh: | Yes. And I think that for all people of color in this culture (because our minds have been so colonized) it’s very hard for us to move out of that location of reacting. Even if I say, “I’m going to create a drama where Asian women’s sexuality is portrayed differently than the racist norm,” I’m still working within that sense of, “We only respond to the existing representation.” Whereas actually, we need some wholesale reenvisioning that’s outside the realm of the merely reactionary! I’m fascinated by the appearance of transgression in an art form that in fact is no transgression at all. A lot of films appear to be creating a change, but the narrative is always so “sewn up” by an ending which returns us to the status quo—so there’s been no change at all. The underlying message ends up being completely conservative. |
| R/SP: | Can you think of any examples in mass media that work in a positive way? |
| bh: | We haven’t seen enough. Black heterosexuality in cinema and television is always basic, funky, and sexist, like in Mo’ Better Blues by Spike Lee where nothing different takes place—even though we know that people’s real lives can have far more complex constructions. For example, nobody says, “Let’s have different arrangements—I don’t think I want to be monogamous. Let’s reorganize this.” A location where one can imagine possible different constructions is performance art. We think of Whoopi Goldberg’s early performances when she took on many different identities, such as the “bag lady” she gave voice to. There was a point in my life when I needed a therapist. I was involved in this horrible, bittersweet life with a black male artist/intellectual. There was no one I could go to and say, “This is what’s happening to me, and I have no apparatus for understanding it.” So I invented this figure: this therapist, this healer, and I could get up and do an improvisational performance on this persona. I realized you could invent something you need. I was just reading a quotation from Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères: “There was a time when you were not a slave,” which evokes the idea of remembering who you were. I was thinking about being in that emotionally abusive, bittersweet relationship, and was trying to remember when I was not in the matrix like that. But coming from a family where I had been routinely tortured and emotionally persecuted, it was hard for me to even imagine a space where I wasn’t involved with people who seduce and betray—who make you feel loved one minute, and then pull the rug out from under you the next—so you’re always spinning, uncertain how to respond. The point is: performance art, in the ritual of inventing a character who could not only speak through me but also for me, was an important location of recovery for me. |
| R/SP: | As far as the position of women or people of color goes, it seems that the deception levels are getting worse. The illusions are so much tighter, and the grip of control. |
| bh: | There’s an incredible quote by Martin Luther King in his last essay, “A Testament of Hope.” He says that the black revolution is not just a revolution for black people, but in fact is exposing certain systematic flaws in society: racism, militarism, and materialism. And while there are a lot of progressive people on the Left who oppose militarism, many do not oppose materialism. One thing we can learn from Thich Nhat Hanh, who lived through the Vietnam War, is how much this culture is so profoundly materialistic … people think they need so much. When I teach a course on Third World Literature, I spend the first few weeks trying to get people to unlearn thinking with a First World mind-set, which means when you watch a show like “Dynasty” and see all this material opulence, you measure your own life by that. You might say, Oh God, I don’t have anything—I only have an old car and an old stereo, but just look at this opulence!” Whereas if we think about the rest of the world … I remember myself as a naive teenager going to Germany and finding out that everyone didn’t have a stereo! When we think globally, we’re able not only to see how much we have (compared to others), but also to think about what goes into the production of what we have. I tell my students, “In the first two weeks, in order to not think with a First World context—if you eat a steak, you have to take out your pen and paper and write down what goes into producing that steak.” Thus you have a sense of being part of a world community, and not just part of a First World context that in fact would have you deny your positionality as an individual in a world community. It’s not enough to just think of yourself in terms of the United States. Even friends on the “Left” would rather not discuss the Gulf War in terms of challenging materialism; using so much of the world’s resources, exploiting so much of the world’s resources. Because then we might begin discussing what it would mean to change our way of life … to realize that being against war also means changing our way of life. In his Nobel Prize speech the Dalai Lama said: “How can we expect people who are hungry to be concerned about the absence of war?” He also said that peace has to mean more than just the absence of war—it has to be about reconstructing society so that people can learn how to be fully self-actualized human beings, fully alive. |
| R/SP: | Possessions become substitutes, covering up for a loss of meaning and connection (you are what you own). The things I love most don’t cost that much—yet have special meaning for me, such as gifts that link me to certain people or objects that remind me of a certain time period. Whereas Western industrial society promotes items whose original function has been forgotten: a car isn’t just a box on wheels that gets you around—it’s the expensive commodity you buy to “communicate” status. |
| bh: | I think our materialism is often totally disconnected from the idea that aesthetics are crucial to our ability to live humanely in the world, to be able to recognize and know beauty, to be able to be lifted up by it, to be able to choose the objects in your surroundings … I’ve always been interested in Buddhist room arrangement: how do we place something in our house so that we can be made more fully human by glancing at it, or by interacting with it? And there’s so little of that in our culture. For example, for some time I’d wanted this expensive coffee-table book on Amish quilts. And I was really sad when I got it and discovered it was just about the Esprit collection! On the one hand, we’re made to feel “grateful” that these wealthy people are buying these quilts and making them “available” to the public. But no one talks about how yuppie consumers have turned quilts into something that totally abandons the homes of the people who had them as historical or family legacies—all in the interest of money. There’s nothing that tells us, “Well, this is how we acquired this quilt.” There’s nothing about the process of acquisition in the context of capitalism, nothing about that whole process of collecting and what it implies … |
| R/SP: | … which takes it out of the community. In certain American Indian tribes, spirituality and a profound community sense would be deeply integrated into the making of objects whose function was also necessary for the survival of the tribe … I grew up in New England where old ladies used to have sewing bees which gathered women together and provided a valuable sense of community. And then suddenly for this community craft to get shunted off into a collector status, you’ve just alienated and consumed that spiritual, cultural reservoir. |
| bh: | I know that when I have the money to buy a thing, I struggle a lot with the question of the meaning of that thing in my life. Do I want to possess something just because I have the money to buy it? What would be the way that I or Esprit (or any group of people) could own a collection of something, and not be participating in this process of cultural alienation? Esprit seems to think that hanging the quilts in their offices is a way of sharing. I was trying to analyze why I felt violated when I got this book entitled The Amish Quilt—thinking I’m going to learn something about Amish quilts, only to realize that what I’m really learning about is this Esprit collection of Amish quilts. This brings in the question of repackaging, as well as the question of this fantasization of Amish life that’s taking place in the United States. I think it’s not untied to White Supremacy, because if we think about the Shakers or Mennonites or other groups who have welcomed people who are nonwhite into their midst, we find that one of the groups which has stayed more solidly white has been the Amish. And when white people are looking at them with a kind of nostalgia and evoking this ideal of “the Amish way of life”—whether we see them being grossly exploited (as in the movie Witness) or in the many books that have been published recently … There’s a new book by a white woman who went to live among the Amish; it describes the peace and serenity she found. I think we all have something to learn from the Amish way of life, their habits of being and thought … but it’s interesting that this particular group which is most white is the one that gets fetishized. |
| R/SP: | How can exploitation in general be prevented? |
| bh: | I always think that whenever there’s the possibility for exploitation, what intervenes is recognition of the Other. Recognition allows a certain kind of negotiation that seems to disrupt the possibility of domination. If a person makes a unilateral decision that does not account for me, then I feel exploited by that decision because my needs haven’t been considered. But if that person is willing to pause, then at that moment of pause there is an opportunity for mutual recognition (what I call the “subject-to-subject” encounter, as opposed to “subject-to-object”). This doesn’t necessarily mean the person will change what they intended to do, but it means that (at least temporarily) I am not rendered an object by their carrying forth with their objective. To have a nondominating context, one has to have a lived practice of interaction. And this practice has to be conscious, rather than some sentimental notion that “you and I were born into the world with the ‘will to do good towards one another.’” In reality, this nonexploitative way to be with one another has to be practiced; resistance to the possibility of domination has to be learned. This also means that one has to cultivate the capacity to wait. I think about a culture of domination as being very tied to notions of efficiency—everything running smoothly. I mean, it’s so much easier if you tell me, “I’m leaving!” rather than “I desire to leave and not come back—how does that desire impact on you?” and I reply, “Is there a space within which I can have a response?” All this takes more time than the kind of fascism that says, “This is what I’m doing—fuck you!” I often think, What does “resistance” mean (our resistance against war, sexism, homophobia, etc.) if we’re not fully committed to changing our way of life? Because so much of how we are is informed by a culture of domination. So how do we become liberated within the culture of domination if our lived practice, every moment of the day, is not saying “No!” to it in some way or another? And that means we have to pause, reflect, reconsider, create a whole movement … and that is not what the machinery of capitalism in daily life is about. It’s about “Let’s do it all swiftly—quickly!” I hope that what’s happening now for many people is that a lot of the denial is being cut away, because denial is always about insanity. So we know that the less we engage in denial, the more we are able to recover our selves. Hope lies in the possibility of a resistance that’s based on being able to face our reality as it is. |