Bell Hook Critique

The readings for this week consisted of the second half of Bell Hooks’ work. In this book, Hooks is giving the reader an insight into her experiences as a Black female feminist educator teaching about Black women’s issues. Although I myself am not Black, as a Mexican-American woman pursuing an academic career, I could relate to a vast amount of what Hooks stated throughout the book. The point that struck me the most was the discussion of critiques and the validation of experience in academia (Hooks, 1994).
In chapter 6, Hooks critiques Diana Fuss’s Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. Hooks describes how Fuss’s writing critiques Black female authors for focusing too much on experience (p. 78-83). By citing this critique,
Fuss is a white scholar, who faced very different issues than those being raised in the writings she critiques. Although we should all be able to criticize work by anyone if there is need for critique, why is it that the majority of critiquing is conducted by individuals in positions of power and authority, and why are these critiques aimed at marginalized groups? I have seen students criticize professors who are members of marginalized groups for assigning literature from said groups. Works by Latino/as, women and individuals with disabilities have been rejected as legitimate work because it did not fit into the personal narratives of the individuals rejecting said works. I have witnessed students call professors biased for assigning works by women and discussing women’s issues in a Women’s Studies class. This leads me to believe that these critiques are not necessarily critiques, but rather ways to shut down dialogues that address power
As Hooks states: “All students, not just those from marginalized groups, seem more eager to enter energetically into classroom discussion when they perceive it as relating directly to them” (p. 87). It is not that students dislike personal experience it classroom discussion, it is that when said experience forces them to address their own place in the power structure, it is much easier to disregard this experience as valid. In my final semester as an undergraduate student, I participated in a brown bag lunch that was meant to discuss the media’s portrayals of women. I found out there that the athletics department was requiring all athletes who were available at the time to attend any brown bag lunches involving discussions of gender. The whole time, I was stuck arguing with twenty large football players about how portrayals of women in the media could translate to sexism in real life experiences. Any claim that I made was deemed as anecdotal evidence, while any claim that was made by the players was greeted with a head nod and a “true” from the other players. There were women there who had similar backgrounds and had shared similar experiences as my own, but they were