Sisterhood: Beyond public and private

Abstract

In an interview, feminist theorist Bell Hooks discusses the breakdown of traditional dichotomies between theory and practice in the last 20 years and how she has undermined the merger of theory and practice in her own work.

Headnote

bell hooks with Tanya McKinnon

DU R I N G M O S T O F T H E more than twenty years that I have spent as a critical thinker, writing conventional literary criticism, annotated according to the MLA style sheet, as well as the unconventional feminist theory and cultural criticism that has been my claim to fame such as it is, I was not in the public eye. Like many women of my generation, I finished my Ph.D. late. My experience of graduate school was somewhat unconventional in that I had already written and published Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) before I wrote my dissertation on Toni Morrison's first two novels, The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973). I wanted most to be a writer, but also an academic. While these two conflicting desires created tensions and anxiety, the longing to be a writer enabled me to rebel against the academic status quo.

While it is exciting that I have fulfilled my childhood dream both of being a writer and having a successful academic career, one of the dilemmas I now confront as I receive more and more attention in both alternative and mainstream media is the issue of representation. Because so much of the work I have done within feminist theory and cultural studies critically interrogates the way images are constructed to perpetuate and maintain sexism and racism, I am utterly mindful of the way in which my own understanding of what it is to be a black woman insurgent intellectual/ writer is increasingly subordinated to the way in which I am represented by various structures of that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy I have spent my adult life critiquing. Let me give one example. Recently, I was asked to do a profile with the Chronicle of Higher Education (Leatherman 1995). Approached by a Chronicle reporter, I agreed. She showed up quite early in the morning at the door of my West Village apartment in New York City. She shared that she was a native of Kentucky, like myself, and that she wanted to observe both my professional work in the classroom and the world behind the scenes. Because I live with no sense that I have anything either to hide or to be ashamed of, I was quite welcoming, and all the more so because she understood something of the world in which I grew up. Her whiteness was not a barrier to my sharing. I welcomed her with the Southern hospitality of my upbringing. She talked with some of my students, to those in my class and to one, a working-class black female student from City College, whom I had encouraged to take my course at the graduate center (so that she could see that she was just as capable of excelling in graduate school as her peers from different class backgrounds). When the Chronicle reporter wrote her story, she left out all the information my students had given her about how I work with them as an intellectual mentor. She made the defining characteristics of my engagement with them, not the academic work we do together, but silly personal details that she had observed only because my students and I had happily included her in our "downtime" lunch at my place. The thrust of her piece was that I was merely a seductive "black madonna"-type icon-all flash and no substance. Her piece disturbed. While I am quite seductive, my powers of seduction are not needed with students who need academic help, many of whom grapple with selfesteem problems that interfere with their capacity to realize their intellectual potential. Our work centers around ideas. The fact that we may have fun together when the work is done does not change the reality that it is rigorous and often painful for many of the students with whom I work, be they black, nonblack people of color, or white, to change their paradigms, to begin to think differently about race, gender, and class-to encounter feminist thinking for the first time. There was no student or colleague of mine with whom this reporter talked who did not share a sense of this rigor or the constructive impact it has had on her or his intellectual growth. That this reporter chose to represent me in a false and distorted light seemed to me merely part of the overall mainstream mocking of both feminist thought and women's studies, which is one way the conservative backlash is attacking the work we do. Frankly, the vampish tabloid-like portrait she painted of me had to be invented because the reality of watching me work for a long day was infinitely more boring.

I have given this example as a preface to my interview with Tanya McKinnon because it is rare that I am given an opportunity to talk with a progressive black female and to have some control over the way I am represented. Tanya, a graduate student in anthropology at the New School for Social Research, suggested that she conduct this interview precisely because she felt that there are aspects of my identity and work that are never talked about. Although Tanya has never been a student of mine, I have known her for more than ten years. I first met her when she was an undergraduate at Tufts University. I went there to give a talk, and she was among the group of students with whom I had an informal discussion at the university's African-American cultural center. The students were from diverse backgrounds. Tanya impressed me because of her insight and capacity for critical thought. Yet she seemed to be self-effacing. Later, at a dinner with black women students held in my honor, I found she lingered in the background. Encouraging her to sit next to me, I affirmed her intelligence and encouraged her to write. As we talked she shared that she was struggling to cope with a history of childhood abuse, that sometimes her self-esteem was low, that as the child of a white European mother and a black father she felt estranged from other black people, particularly other black women. At that time, Tanya seemed to me to be yet another gifted black female student who might not "make it" without special attention and care. She was not the first student I "adopted," but she has stayed around longer. After graduation, with my support, she went to work at South End Press, the Left collective that at the time had published all my books. Tanya edited the book I did with Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991). While I had found it exciting to work with her as an editor, I encouraged her to attend graduate school. She resisted. Because she was an adopted "play" daughter, someone I related to as a parent/mentor more than as a teacher, I accepted her decision even though I felt it to be unwise. After a year spent studying in Egypt, following an end to her job as editor at South End Press, Tanya decided to attend graduate school. To me the New School was an exciting place for her because of the progressive scholars who worked there. I was especially eager to have her work with my longtime colleague and comrade Rayna Rapp. Like many of the students with whom I work as professor and/or parent, Tanya constantly monitors both the way I am working (she loves to bring critique to bear on my theory and practice) and the way in which I am represented in the larger culture.

This is a unique interview in that it begins from a location of intimacy. Tanya knows me first from her passionate engagement with my work (which was prior to meeting me) and from her intimate involvement with my life. As she becomes more fully self-actualized, her "own" woman, she is increasingly more a peer than a child/student. Like all constructive relationships, ours changes and evolves.