August 24, 2023 • 62 mins
Gloria Jean Watkins, the revolutionary Black feminist intellectual known as bell hooks, died on December 15, 2021. She was 69. In her time with us she wrote over 30 books and became a powerful voice in social criticism and commentary. Laverne and her friends, author and activist Darnell Moore and scholar and author Imani Perry, all had close personal relationships with Ms. hooks. In this loving tribute they discuss her impact, legacy, themes and teachings that have profoundly impacted each of them in different ways including her ideas centered around domination, arguing in community, and imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. She was feminist-and-fly, a little shady, and fully human.
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Links of Interest:
The Wide Angle Vision, and Legacy, of bell hooks (New York Times)
Gov. DeSantis Book Banning Push
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
AUDIO: bell hooks & Cornell West Press Conference (1997, C-Span)
bell hooks’ works mentioned:
Other Episodes Mentioned:
Beauty as Capital w/ Kimberly Foster
CREDITS:
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You know, I'll repeat this everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're really clear, and I've been sort of trained to
name the feet that are situated on our nets, but
we've not really done the work of naming the nets
that our feet are situated on. And after having done that,
taking your feet off that I owe to bell Hooks.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. Language
is also a place of struggle, is the beginning of
My favorite quote from bell Hooks is from her nineteen
ninety one book Yearning. And I am struggling with finding
the language right now to expe what bell Hooks means
(01:03):
to me and how important it is for me to
have this conversation and to continue since Belle Hooks has
passed away. Bell Hooks died in December of twenty twenty one,
and when she passed away, I knew that I wanted
to use every platform that I have to try to
(01:26):
continue to honor her work, honor her legacy. It's work
that shaped me when I was a young college student
in New York City in the early nineties. I often
say I came to critical consciousness reading her books. Black
Looks was the first book that I read of hers.
Bell Hooks's or Bell Hooks was a feminist author, a professor.
(01:49):
She taught at Oberlin at Yale University, City College of
New York. She ended her career at Beria College in Bria, Kentucky.
She wrote over thirty books. Was a public intellectual. She
for me is the mother of intersectional feminism. And Belle
Hooks is someone I got to know personally, and that
(02:10):
is really a dream come true. And at the honor
of speaking to her on the phone the day before
she passed away, And yeah, I love her so much.
I love her so much, and I am so deeply
(02:33):
honored to have two amazing people joined me today to
talk about her, her work, and her legacy. Imani Perry
is a multidisciplinary scholar, professor of African American Studies at
Princeton University, international speaker, and the author of seven books.
(02:56):
Her most recent book, South to Americajourney Below the Mason
Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation, won the
twenty twenty two National Book Award for Nonfiction. Perry writes
a newsletter for the Atlantic, and has written for The
New York Times, Harper's New York Magazine, and more. Darnell L.
(03:18):
Moore is an author and activist. His award winning memoir
No Ashes in the Fire, Coming of Age, Black and
Free in America, was listed as a twenty eighteen New
York Times Notable Book. Moore is also a writer in
residence at Columbia University and a twenty nineteen Senior Fellow
at the University of Southern California. His writings have appeared
(03:41):
in The New York Times, Book Review, Playboy, Vice, The Guardian,
The Nation, Ebony, and other outlets, and he gets currently
at work on his second book, tentatively titled Unbecoming Visions
Beyond the Limits of Manhood. Please enjoy our conversation in
Tribua to the singular bell hooks. Hello, Darnell and Imani,
(04:10):
Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today? Darnell?
How are you feeling?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I feel better saying you all. Being in conversation with
your office is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Emani, how are you, darling?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I think similarly. You know, this is an overwhelming time,
but it is wonderful to be in conversation with y'all.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, I ough Bell Hooks. We all knew and loved
Bell Hooks. Her work, I know, transformed my life, and
since she has passed away, it's been really important to
me to honor her legacy, honor her work. She was
(04:49):
all about folks engaging with the work, and I wanted
to take this podcast as a moment to do that. Darnell,
can you start by telling us when you first encounter
at Belle's work any how that impacted you?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I first encountered Belle's work when I was Wow, maybe
late nineties, early two thousands. I'm a late bloomer in
that way to Bell. And it's interesting because I had
been exposed to folk like Cheryl Clark and a lot
(05:24):
of sort of black lesbian feminists much earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
How old were you when you discovered Bell's work with
rough Law?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Undergrad? Was undergrad again, Yeah, so that's the sort of
timeframe for me.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And it's funny also because at the time, like as
a person who was who assumed that he would go
into like academia, there was this way that I was
I was groomed to believe that one needed to write
a certain way that the text need to sort of
like flow and appear a certain way that it needed
to be sort of like overly theoretical. And I remember
(05:57):
first reading it was like, huh, anybody could pick this
up in read this, you know, And it's interesting fast
forward all these years to think about knowing what it
takes to take really thoughtful, super super super like theoretical
concepts and actually making them accessible for anyone to be
(06:19):
able to pick it up and read, to do the
work of translation. Mm hmm, with such a gift. And
I look back at the self that was wanting something,
wanting Bell's writing to be something other than that, And
now where I am now thinking about the ways that
Fears taught me to step sort of behind all of
the sort of accoutrements that language can be to really
(06:41):
make our words make meaning for people that need them.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
She was deeply committed to the work reaching the average
everyday person that was so important to her, reaching beyond
the academy. So your an initial intro to Bell, you
were like, why is she writing like this? This is
an academic enough that we're your initially impression when you
read the word, But it is academic.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It is academic it's very very much, so.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But there's you know, like there was certain writers in
a style of writing. Yeah, that I was being sort
of groomed to model my writing after and a model
my thinking after, and she her work became something of
a gift to me to free myself.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's gorgeous. Yeah, money, When did you first encounter Bell's work?
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So I met her and her work at the same time.
So I was an intern at South End Press, and
so you know, her books lined the walls, and then
she'd come in and so it's part of the reason
I still in my head I call her Gloria because
I met her as Gloria and from the outset. It
(07:55):
was interesting because to meet her in the page at
the same time one and you get this on the page.
It's part of how she's academic is she was such
a voracious reader, but her relationship to reading and knowledge
wasn't the sort of pomp of most academics, Like it
wasn't I know, more than it was like I'm passionate
about ideas and I want to talk about these things
(08:17):
I'm reading and I'm trying to figure this out, not
just on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level
and how I'm going to deal with my relationships and
how I'm going to deal with my broken heartedness and
how and so she was one of these people who
opens up what it means to live the life of
the mind and felt like, you know, so accessible, but
(08:41):
also an invitation to be a kind of person that
feels that I think it's often we feel like it's
not acceptable to be that kind of person who just
is passionate about ideas and big questions. And so I
encountered her as someone who taught a lesson about how
to be expansively and I was.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I was.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
I was seventeen, eighteen years old, so as a young
person that was just amazing, you know. And she dressed
cute and she had a red Merceses like, you know,
it's like the whole thing, right, I was like, Oh,
like it's okay to be, you know, to.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Be you can be feminist and fly, yeah, and fly.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You know, and enjoy food and talk about sex and
like all this.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And it was so beautiful. She was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
It's in the work. There was a quest for transformation
to be made over to heal. There was so much
in the work. I think that really deeply spoke to
me is that it's critical iss she was Black Looks
was the first book I read of hers, and that's,
you know, ferocious and critical and provocative, with titles like
(09:52):
Selling Hot Pussy and Eating the Other, which I just
loved the provocation of it all. But there's healing in
all of it, the way that she writes and the
search that she's on as an academic and as a
human being and as an artist. I think that's she's
really an artist is about being transformed and being healed
(10:15):
and giving that as an offering to the world. So
I had the honor of speaking at Harvard University last year.
I received their W. E. B. Du Boyd's Medal, and
I evoked Bell's work in her words and evoked one
of her most famous phrases, imperialless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
(10:36):
And she talked about coming up with this on what
she calls this jargonistic kind of phrase to speak to
the ways in which systems of oppression are interlocking, are intersecting,
and as a way to sort of understand what is
happening to her, and that if we only look through
(10:57):
the lens of race, that we're not seeing the whole picture.
For I only looked through the lens of gender. We're
not seeing the whole picture. She was talking about intersectionality
before we had the term intersectionality, right, and Black feminism
has always been intersectional. But I think that that for me,
that phrase is so important and it's a way to
(11:17):
understand and such a contribution to the to the work.
Can you talk about your relationship to Belle's intersectional approach
intersectional feminism, Black intersectional feminism. I mean, there's a whole
history of it, and how she does so much with
the phrase imperiless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
I mean, I would say, you know, there's something really
brilliant about the weight of the language because it's heavy. Yeah,
And she was such a student of like social theory
of understand you know, sophisticated understanding way capitalism work, the
way transatlantic slave trade work, and so in some ways
(12:02):
what she was asking us to do with that phrase
is one to feel the weight, but also to understand systems. Right,
and obviously our identities are really important, but our identities
underneath these systems of domination. She always talked about domination, right,
And that I think is another piece of what was
so brilliant, not just you know, capitalism, not just sexism,
(12:25):
not just race domination. What are the ways in which
others are controlling the lives and the destinies of some right.
And so for me, the turn of phrase was just
so brilliant. She never wanted us to forget right, the complexity, right,
even though our language was plain. Where we're situated is complex,
(12:50):
and it reminds us of our ethical relationship to each other, right,
Because you know, if you're just like, well, I'm you know,
well I'm oppressed too, right, But if you have all
of those words, you have to be cute into the
fact that you're probably participating in the oppression of another.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Oh oh right, And that piece that we know, Bell
Hooks is the first person I heard say that we
can all be oppressors, and we can all become oppressors.
And that is oh girl, we need that so much.
And I think that what's so exciting for me about
her work right now is how much we need it,
how much that in the world right now, with everything
(13:30):
that's going we desperately need this work and it's actually
being I think It's important to note that Ron Desanders
wants to ban it in the state of Florida right now.
She's one of the authors that he wants to ban,
and the conversation abound your sectionality. He wants to ban, right,
so the stakes are high. Darnell, do you want to
speak to imperialless? White supremacist capitalist patriarchy is.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Just putting an exclamation point on what Amani shared about
her invitation for us to consider our complicity. And it
is a weighty term, and to the point about the
weightiness of it, you know, I often say, and this
is really modeled after her and her teaching.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
You know, I repeat this everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We're really clear and been sort of trained to name
the feet that are situated on our next, but we've
not really done the work of naming the next that
our feet are situated on. And after having done that,
taking your feet off that I owe to Belle Hooks
really inviting me as a black.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Can we pause? Can we actually pause her? Now? Can
you say that one more time?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
That we're really good at naming the feet that are
that are situated on our next, and we're not really
good at being honest about the next that our feet
are situated on, let alone removing them after we find
out that we are. And I often ask rooms when
I say that, how many of us know that we
all got our feet on somebody's neck?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
That honest reckoning.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Is a part of what that waighty phrase invites us
to lean into. And I'll say even more specifically, as
a black male identified person, a cisgender man socialized in
the world to breathe domination like a brief.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Air and to love it and to love it.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It was Bell's work, along with others, you know, I
think about the work of June Jordan and Shroke. I mean, like,
these are folks that really did teach me that feminism
was expansive. It was for me too, in fact, that
patriarchy was more of a hindrance to my freedom, more
(15:42):
of a denier of my freedom than it was a gift.
Now I wouldn't have gotten there had Bell's words and
the words of other black feminists not invite me into
that work of self reckoning, which itself is a gift.
And to the points that you both made, it isn't
just a theoretical move like these words have shifted the
way I lived my life the way that I actually
(16:04):
engage with other people. It is an ethic like undergirding
it that shapes how I am living and how I
exist in community with other people in the world, how
I love, how I have sex, how I think about sex.
You know, all of those things are really shaped by
Bell's work, along with the work of so many other
black feminis.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And it really, I mean, it's just it's the genius
of Bell, but it is so important to acknowledge the
work of other black feminists because she, you know, it's
in conversation with those other feminists historically and her contemporaries
and built on that work. And I mean, the whole
point of her name being Laura Case is that it
was about a movement. It was about a collective. It
(16:46):
wasn't about like, you know, even though she became a
you know, a star and you know unintentionally so you know,
destiny is destiny, But it was about the collective in
such a beautiful, amazing way. Is there a particular book.
I mean, she wrote over thirty books and there's a
lot of books. Is there a moment from Bell that
(17:10):
feels like seminole, that feels critical for you and thinking
about her work and her legacy.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I mean the quote that I have in front of
me from feminism is for everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Patriarchal masculinity teaches men that their sense of self and identity,
their reason for being, resides in their capacity to dominate
others and skipping down. Boys need healthy self esteem, They
need love, and a wise and loving feminist politics can
provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children.
Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so, they
(17:50):
would all be well. Now, if this was contemporary, we'll
probably put period at the period.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, but like that is it for me? Like that
is it for me?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Like this idea that we are attempting in this moment
to ban the very thing, to get out of the
curriculum and off of the bookshelves, the very doorways entry
points to a type of liberatory future, a type of
new way of being for folk who are socialized in
the world as boys and who go off to identify
(18:23):
as men.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Right, like.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Scares a hell out of me, Like this was a
gift for like the way I orient myself in the world,
the way that I exist, And it changed the course
of my thinking for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's so powerful to hear a male identified person speak
to this as well, because feminism is for everybody, you know.
And one of my favorite moments from Belle is that
you do not need man for patriarchy at all. Patriarchy
has no gender. Say that, againtch no gender, We do
not need it. You can't speak to ways in which
(19:00):
we all collude and can be in partnership in perpetuating
Oh yeah, oh there's so much there. This is a
good time to take a little break. Alrighty, we're back. Emani.
(19:22):
Is there a moment from am Bell that for you
it's just like that, it's just the moment.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Well, yes, but I will say, Darnelle, reading that part
actually makes me rethink the moment because so much of
what she wrote, and I have been actually grappling with that,
this question of how much she influenced me in ways
that I wasn't even fully cognizant of, because when I
hear that quote, I'm like, right, but this is her
(19:51):
presence that has shaped the way that I parent, like
sort of wanting to have sons who can be free
of patriarchy, to raise them free.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I was thinking about your book as I was reading
that it's.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
A direct, I mean direct connection to want them to
be free, right, So that part and then I would
say for my own development. And I don't even know
necessarily that it's my favorite piece of hers. But in Yearning,
there was something about and there's an essay in at
(20:25):
Third World Diva Girls which is about the students, so
she was mentoring. Yeah, but if there was something about
being considered, Like, here's this great intellectual who's thinking about
young women like us, right, Like, I mean, that was
so huge. It doesn't seem like it should be here,
this this amazing moment of black feminist literature and writing
(20:48):
and novels and stuff. But there was something about the
way she honed in on young women she cared about
and wanted to not just think about, but actually paid
tribute to their excellence and their beauty and how special
they were, and that being considered matters so much for us, right,
(21:10):
I mean, that's part of what she would do over
and over again in different ways. I'm going to pay
attention to you, right, not knowing us, that's it, but
the reader, right. And I think that's part of why
young people, everybody has to go through bell hooks. I
think for kind of sort of self actualization, honestly, particularly
(21:30):
young black people. But I really think there's something about
young people of conscience, right, like figuring themselves out. She's
a curate, She's a tender of souls in that way.
So for me, it was Yearning.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
She shifted my mouth. He's Black Looks was the first
book of hers I read in Yearning was the second one,
and my favorite quote of hers is from Yearning that
I have friend Lucy. Language is also a place of struggle.
I was just a young girl coming slowly into womanhood
when I read Adrian Rich's words, this is the oppressor's language.
Yet I needed to talk to you. Language is also
a place of struggle. And there's more. I have it
(22:04):
written down. It's just and I got to when she
opened the Bail Hook's Institute, I got to be there
and I got to read that passage to her in
front of an audience, and it was really quite beautiful
for me because I had I discovered Bell's one work
in the early nineties when I was an undergraduate, and
(22:25):
it just shifted my molecules. And by the time that
Bale Hook's Institute opened in twenty fifteen, I think it
was I had lived with this work for so long
and had just contemplated, and it really just it changed
my life, and just in ways I can't even imagine.
I just like in the way in which I had
(22:47):
to confront my own internalized racism. And I feel like
we don't talk enough about internalized racism. Now there are
different ways in which we talk about it, but I
feel like we don't talk about it. And the way
Bell talks about it, it's so clear and it's so plain
when she talks about growing up in the segregated South
and the color caast system and she calls it a
(23:08):
colorcast system, and we don't really use that language anymore.
She tells the story of I'm going to her I
think her grandmother's house, who looked white and lived in
a white neighborhood and who said, you know, would say
I don't want that darkie referring to Belle's sister coming over,
and that white supremacy was something that we enacted as
black people on each other, that this is something that
(23:30):
we deeply internalized. And when I encountered her work, it
was like it hit me, like the internalized white supremacy
hit me so hard, that it just it was painful
and difficult, and it was a reckoning that was like fuck,
Like I got to decolonize my mind, and this is
(23:52):
like and it's an ongoing process, and it's an ongoing
process because of the ways in which we collude. I
mean in my conversation with her that we did at
the New School and she sort of called out my
blonde hair and high heels and the way in which
you know, white supremacy intersects with capitalism and patriarchy and
being a woman, a straight woman who has sex with
(24:14):
men and wanting to be seen and attractive in a
white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist context. So that like these things,
even with that knowledge, these things are working in our
lives and we have to negotiate them. She often also
said that we're often living in contradiction when we have
to navigate these systems, right, that this is it's so complicated,
(24:38):
and it's so and it's so often very painful as well,
and it's a place of struggle. I want to finish
reading that language is also a place of struggle, Coote,
because it's so good. She goes, this is this language
that enabled me to attend graduate school, to write a dissertation,
to speak at job interviews. Carries this of oppression. Language
(25:02):
is also a place of struggle. We are wedded in language,
have our being in words. Language is also a place
of struggle. Dare I speak to oppressed and oppressor in
the same voice. Dare I speak to you in a
language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination, A
language that will not bind you, fence you in, or
hold you. Language is also a place of struggle. The
(25:22):
oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite,
to renew our words are not without meaning, They are
in action a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.
Oh wow, right, yeah, ah.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, And I was thinking about your point earlier, about
saying that being really clear at Bell was also an artist,
And you know, I think we think about Bell the
academic or social theorist, but she's a writer, yes, you know,
but I think the three of us will know. But
literally talking about the way she studied her craft, the
(26:10):
language the pro like read feverishly and was reading like
for understanding of new ideas. But I think, like also
what you just read, craft was craft. Here is someone
using craft to write, and I just want to acknowledge that.
And I don't think we celebrate that enough, you know,
but no, And I.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Think that's also, to be completely frank, part of the
reason why she hasn't been given her full due as
an intellectualist because she was an artist because beauty was important. Yes, right,
So beauty was not secondary to ideas. And there's a
lot of resistance amongst, you know, amongst intellectuals, the idea
(26:49):
that you do something beautifully. And also I just wanted
to go back to something you said Laburne that I
think is so powerful because I think in her own
life she was working through in a very open way
these questions around wanting to be attractive, wanting to be
you know, recognized, and also understanding that that wasn't what
(27:11):
she was doing it for that internal tension. I just
loved that she was transparent about it. Yeah, because she
gave us permission to be transparent about the way that
we're you know that we struggle with those things, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Absolutely, Can we just say she was very transplant.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yes, there's nobody from me to day, right, Yeah, who
I want to go out with? Right?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
All the time, like Beryl was a key.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
She was and she was and she and she was shady.
They all was shady. A like she was so shady, yes,
Like she would read you to your face in a
way with like elegance and poetry and history, but she
would read beat you down.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Last time I saw no, she was like, so you
have expanded since the last time I saw you. And
I was like, okay, so okay, really.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Were listen.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
We were at the VAT and we were like, I
think right about the start of panel, and I was
saying something, it's a book panel, and she turns to me,
she goes, if that was the case, you could have
said a little bit more about me and your book. Yes,
And that was a thing, you know, But I always
(28:34):
I say this everywhere I go, like so easy it
is to turn any artist, to any person who is
public facing in the world into an avatar and to
someone who like who's sort of stripped of the full
complex person that they are and the person that I
got to sit across from on.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Good and bad days, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Where it's like, here is a person that was inviting us,
you know, she didn't sort of let us off the hook.
She also didn't let herself off the hook, and she
set and reckoning. She was, you know, the same person
that writes all about love sits you down and says,
I really just want intimacy. I really just want to man,
I just want somebody to hold on, rubbed up next
(29:18):
to you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I want you know. I'm like, it was very honest
about that.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And on one hand, we'll be talking about Buddhist principles,
but the second hand like, oh and I can't stand
such and such, you know what I mean? And like, really, yeah,
fuly fully like shading.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Oh there's stuff I can't even talk about that she's
exactly saying.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But the thing is, here's what I'll say about that.
It gave me permission.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
It gave me permission to be like, okay with my
full humanity.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Yeah, we are complicated beings.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah. Yes, And she was controversial throughout her life. Really,
I was thinking a lot about different ideas that are
so important to her work. There's a wonderful YouTuber named
Kimberly Foster who found it for Harriet, which is the
great YouTube channel that I enjoy, and she often she
does cultural criticism and she's read her bell Hooks, and
you know she's read her bell Hooks when she talks
(30:14):
about the Watt video and she talks about it in
the context the spectacle. When she's when she started talking
about it being spectacle and relationship to sexual liberation, it's
a spectacle undermine the idea. I was like, she's read
her bell Hooks and the concept obviously of society spectacle
comes from Gidah Boord's famous book. But the way that
Belle adapted it, that's a really good example of like
(30:36):
this French you know, post structuralist theorist who was a
sort of Marxist theorist, that Belle took his work, as
she did with Fucoa and others, and made it accessible
in ways to talk about pop culture and ways to
talk about the world around us that are really crucial.
The way she talked about spectacles specifically, I find really
(30:59):
use full and looking at the world around us right
now interesting.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
And I will say I didn't totally agree with her.
I mean we had some arguments over popular culture because
and there's this beautiful book that she did with Stuart
Hall that's about that. Because propula culture is also a
place where people disrupt write the order and like challenge it.
But I think actually raising the question is incredibly important, right,
and trusting us to raise that question.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, absolutely. And Danielle, did you want to hop in No.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I'm just thinking more broadly about you said. You started
by saying, you know, and they'll raised critical points and
sometimes that weren't always popular. Oh no, No, like we
just modeled something here. I mean, I think in many
cases we've all talked about at least I heard you
say the money. I can say it too. And Laverne,
(31:50):
I'm sure we've had moments where I just did not
agree with some of the things that you profit, right, Yeah, absolutely.
The thing that I am most thoughtful about now after
having witnessed the sort of collective and these things can
these are not mutuel exclusive, so hear me out. But
there was like this collective moan and this collective grief
that sort of we experience after she passed by some
(32:13):
of the very people that you know, they dragged her,
they dragged and like her work was to do criticism.
And I can disagree with the point that you raised
without demeaning your humanity, and like absolutely, just I just
want to name y'all, like, this is what it means.
You want to talk about the spectacle? Yeah, I just
(32:34):
had to get that off my chest. Yeah, and no
matter you said this to me once before, you probably
forgot years ago that somehow we're so if we look
at criticism, the way that I think about it is
like to love is to not lie, right. You would
not be dishonest to a thing, or offer a thing
that you love dishonesty. You would give it truth, even
if that truth is to say this could be better
or whatever the critique might be. Criticism is love when
(32:58):
it's grounded in love, and love.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That love right, you know, I'll say that, you know.
After she wrote her piece about Lemonade, it was interesting
watching the academic beehive, the Black Beehive, swarm swarm on
bell Hooks like hardcore, like it was the whole symposium
(33:22):
that came together after Lemonade, and like did I gagged?
I really gagged, And as a member of the behive
myself as a hardcore Beyonce fan and as a hardcore
bell Hooks fan, it was deeply painful for me to
witness that. And I remember calling her. I remember calling
(33:43):
her as as that was as that was happening. And
I don't know if you guys talked to her in
the aftermath of that, after that hit, you know, the
behot swarmed and they had the whole white form whatever
that was. And I called I remember calling her and
she was she was just so hurt. She was so hurt.
(34:04):
But I remember saying to her that you are the blueprint.
You are Black feminism is what it is because of
you and your work. And they've all convened in this
way because you were so great, because you were so
important and you are so impactful, that that that that
(34:32):
she's that bitch, you know, to quote Beyonce, that she
mail was that bitch so much so that they they
had to swarm, you know. And after the I got
off the phone with her. I remember her feeling better.
Her mood seemed to shift after that. But that was
deeply painful for me to witness and watch and it
(34:55):
and it's and I don't I don't agree with most
of her assessments of Beyonce, except was it was really interesting.
There was a moment when I was I had my copy,
my hard copy of Black Looks. I still have my
original copies and my la plays, and I was I
was traveling and I wanted to allude to an essay
from Black Looks, actually the Oppositional Gaze. And I didn't
(35:15):
have a book with me, and so I downloaded it
on Kindle and I reread the introduction and I was
mentioned in the introduction me along with Beyonce, and Belle
mentioned me on the cover of Time magazine with blonde
hair and Beyonce on the cover of Time magazine with
blonde hair and underwear and how and she sort of
talked about, you know this, these blonde women, these black
women in blonde hair and reinforcing im peerless wise of
(35:38):
premiss calpolist patriarchy. And I read it and I, you know,
I actually called her. I was like, girl, I just reread,
you know, and it was all and I can my
love for her never diminish with that critique, because it's
just it is, It is what it is, you know, right.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
You know, one of the things that I think I
think about her and how she came of age intellectually
right so and politically. Beverly guys Chefteal tells a story
about when they went to the National Women's Studies Association
the first time, and you know, there was a big
up Peeve. I can't remember what I think it was.
It was either ourdel Lord or June Jordan. There was
fighting and deliberation, and then even on the intellectual side, right,
(36:20):
and thinking about her hanging out with people like Edward said,
who said, never solidarity before deliberation and debate, right, that
she assumed that we were in community and we could
fight in community, and so we need that time back.
And you know, you just modeled a way of getting
that time back right in that that you can sustain
(36:42):
community and also be like, we don't think it the
same way and not just be dispassionate but sometimes fight
in the process.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
But we trust each other enough for that. And I
just think that people missed that.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yes, that's so crucially thank you for that. That is
so beautiful. That so and that's such a beautiful lesson
from that that period of feminism. And it reminds me
of a moment that Cornell, Wests and Bell had in
the nineties after the Million Man March and Bell this
is a great video where Belle's like, you know, it's
hard for us to be in process. Sometimes it's hard
(37:16):
for me to stand up here with you, Cornell after
not seeing you for a while and say I don't
agree with you. I disagree with you. I disagree with
you vehemently. That's hard for me, but I don't agree
with you. And she says like, I don't agree with you.
And luckily for them, I believe they were able to
maintain that love over decades when they didn't always agree.
(37:43):
It feels like they were. I don't know the inner work.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, they definitely were, for sure. And it's you know,
when I think about Belle and Bell's work and Belle's
just life and just the everyday ness of her life,
I am also thinking about what her career. We are
along with others you mentioned Cornell, and there's others that
we can sort of list that class of public intellectuals
(38:07):
who were about the work of bringing the sort of
ideas and debate to the public square. Like remember, this
is a period of like immense debate, and folk were
welcomed into debates so much so that they would convene
in stadiums on occasion, in front of the cameras right
of the community and have differences of opinion and guess
(38:29):
what it was all well, when the conversations were over
because at the core of it was this understanding that
to engage in this way, particularly for an end of
an expansive black liberation, is an act of law. To
disagree in this way, to push each other in this way,
and to the monis like we are in a stage
where when she went to have the sort of lemonade conversation,
(38:52):
we were in the stage of you talked about spectacle
of sort of one dimensionality, you know of like echo chambers,
and to dare say it like an inability to be
really honest and therefore loving with people when there are
things that we want to disagree with.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It really kind of evokes this whole time when folks
were able to lovingly disagree, lovingly be in dialogue to
get because it was about the ideas. It was about
getting to a better way of liberating ourselves and each other.
It wasn't about like the sort of gatekeeping who's right
(39:27):
who's wrong. But I think that it feels like the
capitalist piece is operating right that that the spectacle. I'm
so glad we brought that in the spectacle. It works
in direct relationship to capitalism and direct relationship to clicks
in a world of clicks and a world of algorithms,
that that kind of engaged dialogue across difference with love
(39:53):
and empathy does not really work in the capitalist structure
that that we live in now with media and social media.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's right. I mean, even
for example, and I've tried to write a bit about this, right,
you can't actually deliberate. If somebody posts something, then it's
just over right, and the life even if a person
then goes on to have a conversation and change their perspective,
that thing exists out there as a representation of them
(40:23):
that circulates and has a life of its own that
at a certain point no longer has to do with
the body and the mind of the person who initially posts. Right,
So you can't even have like a real conversation where
people evolve, because people are held to the moment at
the beginning of the conversation.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And this is really I mean, how trying to have
space to give people space to evolve where they don't
know where they might not understand something. You know, language
is a place to stroll and that like the T
word that ends with the whys, everybody doesn't know that
that's offensive to some trans people and that in certain
spaces you might you know, be read and people might
(40:59):
be way about it. And we have to give people
space to evolve and to be able to grapple with ideas.
You know, it's so hard and it's so tricky, but
there has to be love and nuance there.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
And I think it also part of what makes it
so hard is something that you said earlier, which is
they're also bad faith actors, right, So there are people
who are evolving, and then there are people who are
actually gaining their traction and their audience, right, and by
being bad faith actors who are just being horrific, right,
And so we're so vulnerable in that scenario, right.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
And there's a whole there's an entire media ecosystem that
supports that bad faith, that the lies the propaganda so
that they don't even the real truth or the nuance
certain people will never ever see because their funnels the lie,
the propaganda, through algorithms, through only watching whatever. And so
(41:55):
this is a it's a very tricky time for liberation
because there's a whole propaganda machine, right that didn't exist
in the seventies and eighties that is so pervasive and effective,
deeply effective.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Or existed, but in just you know, by way of
different sort of technological means and at a sort of
different scale.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
You know, it's a scale that propaganda's always existed because
this whole most of the anti LGBTs, none of this
is new, but it's been scales with social media scale
and so it's reaching way more people and there's no
spaces of it being challenged. But what I love about
Bell too is that, like speaking of intersectionality, is that
(42:36):
she you know, historically there are a lot of feminists
who have trinui fat issues with trans people, and Bell
just never, in my experience, is never that persons. She
was critical of, you know, my wigs and high heels
and the trappings of patriarchy, and I think that is
certainly a conversation, right, But there was just she she
(43:00):
loved me. I Yes, she loved me.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That's absolutely true. That's true, deeply.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Deeply, and I I loved her and she saw me
and in a way that I needed to be seen.
I've always felt like, even before I met her, I
felt like she was my second mother, my feminist mother,
that when I read her work, I was just it
was like I remember reading Sisters of the Yams and
it was just like, this is my mom. You know,
(43:28):
I don't know what, I don't know everybody else has
that experience anyway, getting emotional.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Without further ado. When I think about Belle's influence and
how we talk about pop culture, Reel to Reel is
one of my favorite books of hers, and it's just
all film criticism. I think it was in the mid
nineties that she wrote it, and she reviews film like
The Crying Game and Bodyguard, Daughters of the Dust and
the idea that she wrote about and on black looks,
(44:08):
the oppositional gaze black female spectatorship, I think is so
crucially important when we think about film criticism just in general,
when we think about feminist film criticism. It's a concept
that really for me as a producer when I was
making Disclosure, It's something I thought a lot about her
(44:29):
idea of the oppositional gaze. And I'm just going to
read a little bit from it. I'm accessed with like
reading bell Hooks excerpts in The Oppositional Gaze Black Female
Spectators Bell Wrights. When thinking about black female spectators, I
remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard, intense,
direct looks children would give grown ups, looks that were
(44:50):
seen as confrontational, a's gestures of resistance, challenges to authority.
The gaze has always been political in my life. Imagine
the terror fl by the child who has come to understand,
through repeated punishments, that one's gaze can be dangerous. The
child who has learned so well to look the other
way when necessary, Yet when punished, the child is told
(45:14):
by parents, look at me when I talk to you.
Only the child is afraid to look, afraid to look,
but fascinated by the gaze. There's power in looking amazed.
The first time I read in history classes that white
slave owners, men, women, and children punished and slaved black
people for looking, I wondered how this traumatic relationship to
(45:38):
the gaze had informed a black parenting and black spectatorship.
The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations were such
that the slaves were denied their right to gaze. She
continues years later, reading Michelle Lucot, I thought again about
these connections about the way's power. Its domination reproduces itself
(46:01):
in different locations, employing similar apparatuses strategies and mechanisms of control.
Since I knew as a child that the dominating power
adults exercised over me and over my gaze was never
so absolute that I did not dare to look, to
sneak a peek, to stare. Dangerously, I knew that the
(46:25):
slaves had looked, that all attempts to repress our black
people's right to gaze had produced in us and overwhelming
longing to look, a rebellious desire and oppositional gaze. By
courageously looking, we defiantly declared, not only will I stare,
(46:46):
I want my look to change reality.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Oh and talking about craft by.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
The way, I want my look to change reality. And
that is really I mean for me as as an
image maker, as a producer where we're working on a
new show right now, I think so much about that,
how how I can look differently and produce images differently,
(47:18):
And it's it's tricky, it's hard, but it's like it's
really about decentering. I think so much of it is
about what does it mean to de center. I think,
here she's talking about the patriarchal white supremacist gaze, But
for me, it's that patriarchal, white supremacist gaze. But there's
also the cis normative, heteronormative gaze. What does it look
like to decenter that gaze? And then we can have
(47:40):
the conversations differently, so we're not having the conversations on
the terms of the oppressor. Yes, that we're having the
conversations and doing the representation from margin to center where
we are now femas theory for marginalists center. Another Fels
reference that we can recenter the marginalized, the oppressed. But
(48:02):
what comes up for you when you hear that gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Pros I instantly think about all of what you just said,
by the way, and thank you for the beauty with
what you read that I'm listening to the like the
beautiful way you're reading the words. And it's also just
animating them, Yes, decentering, but also oppositional in terms of
being able to sort of revert the gaze, be honest
about what it is that we are seeing. Yes, Yes,
(48:26):
that's a critical political work for us to be able
to one sort of shape our lens, create a lens
through which we can actually see things for what they are. Yeah,
and do the work of averting.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
That, yes, And it also it makes me think that
part of the reason she is such a resilient thinker
for us is that right, so what happens how do
we decenter assists heteronormative gaze? Right? So, you know, the
Hopes doesn't have a long exegesis on that question, but
she's given us the tools to pursue that kind of question.
(49:06):
So often with thinkers when we and the way that
you read that was so was gorgeous, both informed, but
also you sounded like sort of being given wings, right,
and that's the thing, right to be given the wings
to do the thinking. So often we just mimic what
other folks. We're like, Oh, I like what that person said,
not this what this person said becomes something that then
(49:29):
we can use to create on our own. And I
think that's that's what comes up for me, you know,
is that Okay, my eyes, my eyes, my perspective, my
witness right.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And Belle was so she said over
and over and over again as a teacher, as a
professor that one of the most important things for her
to impart to her students is critical thinking, that they're
able to engage with the work, to think critically and
then to come up with new things and to work
(50:01):
with the work. She would say, I want you to
work with the work. There was a moment in loving
Blackness is political resistance. I think that is an essay
from I think it's from yearning I forget where. I
remember reading that you Know twenty years no, twenty five
years ago or so, and she talked about black is beautiful,
that jargon, that phrase that emerged in the late nineteen
(50:24):
sixties and early seventies as a way to celebrate blackness,
to celebrate beauty standards that were not informed by white supremacy.
And I remember thinking, how amazing would it be for
trans people to have a movement of transit beautiful, movement
to celebrate all the things about trans people that you
know are not CIS normative. And I literally started the
(50:45):
hashtag trans is beautiful in twenty twenty fifteen, inspired by that,
inspired by this idea that I'm not beautiful despite my
big hands, my big feet, my deep voice, my wide shoulders,
all the things that make me noticeably trans. I'm beautiful
because of those things. And that came directly from reading
Belle Hooks' work and thinking about loving blackness is political resistance.
(51:09):
Loving transness as political resistance, right, And so that that's
how I'm working with the world. You know, That's just
one way that I'm working with the work. How are you?
How are you finding that you're working with the work?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
You know, honestly, like, so much of what I have
benefited from both her work and just her friendship is.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Some sort of.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
Tidbits on how I might live a life that is
deeply invested in connectivity, like profoundly in real ways, living
out love in real time, Like I become so much
more invested in living, loving the people that I have
(51:57):
around me and the strangers that I have that I
come in contact with, living, try my best to be
better at not preaching a thing.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
But living it.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
And those are like the every day like in every
real like in very meaningful ways.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Like it's I try to take that up in the
way that I live.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
And the last thing I'll say is, you know, like
I'm profoundly shaped by her work as a black cisgender
man who's in the world thinking about a world that's
been freed up from the pangs of patriarchal violence.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
And it's an everyday work.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Every day I have to make decisions and negotiate the
ways that I move in the world, the ways that
I love, the ways that I am loved. Like and
that is like, you know, this second work that's been
taking me forever just sort of work through is directly
connected to her teaching. I mean a book is the
first iteration of it was called unbecoming Visions Beyond the
(52:59):
Limits of Manhood.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Right isn't that like such an homage to something that
Bell would have us think about? Right?
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Like, what it means is sort of unravel to look
back at the self and say, how can I pull out,
take away, do away with these things that aren't doing
me any good. So my writing, my living, my political
the texture of my political life has been shaped by
her and so many other black feminists for whom, and
(53:26):
I say this with all honesty, I would not be here.
I would not be here if I didn't have these
black women's books to pick up and help me to
love the black queer.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Man that I was taught to hate, to let that person.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Back, I wouldn't be here either. I wouldn't be here either.
How are you working with the work, your money in
your life?
Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yeah, you know a lot of it is. I keep
thinking about the word embodiment, and I think what I'm
thinking about is her honesty and the vulnerability of my
body and witnessing the vulnerability of her body, and you
(54:16):
know what it means to have a body that in
some way feels as though it's betraying you and in
decline and the way that strips you down to what's
the point? Why are we here? What's the point? And
she was this reminder. You know, there are so many
ways that she was punished for not having conventional trappings
(54:37):
to what she was doing, but she stayed true to
the point, and that is why she will live. The
work will live. And it's this reminder. Right. Wait, you
know I turned fifty last year in this sort of
to be that age, right, so you're this age and
you're like, okay, I'm over halfway done most likely? Why
(55:01):
why am I here? What am I?
Speaker 2 (55:03):
And she.
Speaker 4 (55:05):
Her example You can't think it's gonna be easy. Living
in your purpose is not easy.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yep, and going against the grain is not you know,
even her talking about opening the institute, it was her
thinking intentionally about her legacy. Why am I here? What's
the point? She did struggle with health things for many
years before she passed, and I think that prompted her
to think think very differently about that legacy. I think
(55:34):
those series of talks that she did at the New
School were so oh just they were just so good.
I've gone back and watched them many many times. It's
an honors I've gotten to participate in one of them.
I think that was her thinking about her legacy, thinking
about what she'll leave behind, and she really did want
she wanted people. She wanted love. She wanted people to
(55:56):
love on her. She wanted people to love on the work.
And she needed that and she needed that sense of
I've written over thirty books, I've been like in this
for so long, and I've been on a no fly
list and band here and food and and like just
all kinds of crazy stuff being She would refer to
(56:17):
herself as an insurgent black you know, intellectual, you know
in the early nineties that she was a real she
was a revolutionary figure, like for real, for real, And
that was not an easy rot a ho, you know,
it really wasn't. And yet and yet there was so
much love that she gave that she allowed herself to
(56:40):
receive that is deeply inspiring and empowering to think about.
I like to end every podcast with the question, what
else is true? This comes from my from my somatic
trauma healing work. What else is true? It's like what
(57:03):
it gets you through when the world is on fire,
when things are just deeply troubling. What is the thing
that you turn to? A resource that it's also true?
Like Belle Hoops. Let us know this that multiple things
can exist at the same time. So when things are
troubled for you, what else is true for you that
(57:23):
you can look to that'll help you get through? Imani
you look, you may be ready to answer.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
ROBERTA Flax recording of Afro BLUEO early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (57:36):
It is.
Speaker 4 (57:38):
It's genius and beautiful and healing.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah, I don't know that. I'm going to go listen
to it right after this. Please Diterflac Afro Blue, Darnell.
What else is true for you today?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
A good bottle of red wine, a cab specifically, and
my family.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yes, my boyfriend loves a good Cabernet too, man after
my own heart. I love it. Thank you so much,
both of you. This is everything I hoped it would be.
Hope I hope Belle feels the spirit, this energy, this celebration.
I just thank you, I just thank you so much,
(58:16):
thank you, thank you. Long live Bell Hooks. Yes, indeed, Oh,
I'm so grateful to Darnell and Imani for that healing conversation.
Love is what comes up for me over and over
and over again. And Belle has said about love that
love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect,
(58:41):
and trust. And it was wonderful talk that I alluded
to earlier with Cornell West and Bell Hooks from the
mid nineties, and they begin with the quote from from
Martin Luther King, and the beginning of the quote is
I have chosen to love. I have chosen to love.
Belle Hooks was a Buddhist, but she was deeply steeped
(59:03):
in that tradition in the civil rights movement of the
fifties and sixties, that Christian thing that Martin Luther King
talked about, that we had to figure out a way
to love each other, to be loved warriors, as Cornell
West would say. And so it's really all about love.
(59:27):
And I hope that this podcast has inspired you to
go and explore her work to grapple with it, feel
free to disagree with it, and hopefully be inspired to
think more critically about your life, think more critically about
the world around you. This is what she would want
(59:48):
for you to engage with the work, to work with
the work so that you can live a better life
for yourself and make the world better around you. So yeah,
go read your bell hooks.
Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
Often we respond negatively to the moment of process, you know,
even myself. You know, one of the things when I
said to cornellis, you know, I don't agree with some
of the things you're saying lately, But I didn't really
want to greet him after not seeing him for such
a while, with having to admit that I don't agree. Now,
(01:00:28):
think about that, we're two people who forge so much
in dialogue, and I can still feel afraid to say
to him, I don't agree with you. And I think
that so much of our shying away from anti racist
struggle is the fear that we have that when we
come together in our differences and there is disagreement, we
(01:00:52):
will have conflict and everything will fall apart. So many
people feel it's better not to come together, It's better
to stay with people that are just like yourself, where
you can feel safe, where the smooth running can happen
without any moment of chaos or conflict, but in the
true spirit of both spiritual and political revolution in the
(01:01:15):
best sense. We cannot begin to build beloved community without
embracing the moments of tension and conflict as part of
the struggle, as part of what we're seeking.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.
Please rate, review, subscribe and share with everyone you know.
You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at
Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real.
Until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox
(01:01:53):
Show is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You know, I'll repeat this everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're really clear, and I've been sort of trained to
name the feet that are situated on our nets, but
we've not really done the work of naming the nets
that our feet are situated on. And after having done that,
taking your feet off that I owe to bell Hooks.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. Language
is also a place of struggle, is the beginning of
My favorite quote from bell Hooks is from her nineteen
ninety one book Yearning. And I am struggling with finding
the language right now to expe what bell Hooks means
(01:03):
to me and how important it is for me to
have this conversation and to continue since Belle Hooks has
passed away. Bell Hooks died in December of twenty twenty one,
and when she passed away, I knew that I wanted
to use every platform that I have to try to
(01:26):
continue to honor her work, honor her legacy. It's work
that shaped me when I was a young college student
in New York City in the early nineties. I often
say I came to critical consciousness reading her books. Black
Looks was the first book that I read of hers.
Bell Hooks's or Bell Hooks was a feminist author, a professor.
(01:49):
She taught at Oberlin at Yale University, City College of
New York. She ended her career at Beria College in Bria, Kentucky.
She wrote over thirty books. Was a public intellectual. She
for me is the mother of intersectional feminism. And Belle
Hooks is someone I got to know personally, and that
(02:10):
is really a dream come true. And at the honor
of speaking to her on the phone the day before
she passed away, And yeah, I love her so much.
I love her so much, and I am so deeply
(02:33):
honored to have two amazing people joined me today to
talk about her, her work, and her legacy. Imani Perry
is a multidisciplinary scholar, professor of African American Studies at
Princeton University, international speaker, and the author of seven books.
(02:56):
Her most recent book, South to Americajourney Below the Mason
Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation, won the
twenty twenty two National Book Award for Nonfiction. Perry writes
a newsletter for the Atlantic, and has written for The
New York Times, Harper's New York Magazine, and more. Darnell L.
(03:18):
Moore is an author and activist. His award winning memoir
No Ashes in the Fire, Coming of Age, Black and
Free in America, was listed as a twenty eighteen New
York Times Notable Book. Moore is also a writer in
residence at Columbia University and a twenty nineteen Senior Fellow
at the University of Southern California. His writings have appeared
(03:41):
in The New York Times, Book Review, Playboy, Vice, The Guardian,
The Nation, Ebony, and other outlets, and he gets currently
at work on his second book, tentatively titled Unbecoming Visions
Beyond the Limits of Manhood. Please enjoy our conversation in
Tribua to the singular bell hooks. Hello, Darnell and Imani,
(04:10):
Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today? Darnell?
How are you feeling?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I feel better saying you all. Being in conversation with
your office is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Emani, how are you, darling?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I think similarly. You know, this is an overwhelming time,
but it is wonderful to be in conversation with y'all.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, I ough Bell Hooks. We all knew and loved
Bell Hooks. Her work, I know, transformed my life, and
since she has passed away, it's been really important to
me to honor her legacy, honor her work. She was
(04:49):
all about folks engaging with the work, and I wanted
to take this podcast as a moment to do that. Darnell,
can you start by telling us when you first encounter
at Belle's work any how that impacted you?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I first encountered Belle's work when I was Wow, maybe
late nineties, early two thousands. I'm a late bloomer in
that way to Bell. And it's interesting because I had
been exposed to folk like Cheryl Clark and a lot
(05:24):
of sort of black lesbian feminists much earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
How old were you when you discovered Bell's work with
rough Law?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Undergrad? Was undergrad again, Yeah, so that's the sort of
timeframe for me.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And it's funny also because at the time, like as
a person who was who assumed that he would go
into like academia, there was this way that I was
I was groomed to believe that one needed to write
a certain way that the text need to sort of
like flow and appear a certain way that it needed
to be sort of like overly theoretical. And I remember
(05:57):
first reading it was like, huh, anybody could pick this
up in read this, you know, And it's interesting fast
forward all these years to think about knowing what it
takes to take really thoughtful, super super super like theoretical
concepts and actually making them accessible for anyone to be
(06:19):
able to pick it up and read, to do the
work of translation. Mm hmm, with such a gift. And
I look back at the self that was wanting something,
wanting Bell's writing to be something other than that, And
now where I am now thinking about the ways that
Fears taught me to step sort of behind all of
the sort of accoutrements that language can be to really
(06:41):
make our words make meaning for people that need them.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
She was deeply committed to the work reaching the average
everyday person that was so important to her, reaching beyond
the academy. So your an initial intro to Bell, you
were like, why is she writing like this? This is
an academic enough that we're your initially impression when you
read the word, But it is academic.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It is academic it's very very much, so.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But there's you know, like there was certain writers in
a style of writing. Yeah, that I was being sort
of groomed to model my writing after and a model
my thinking after, and she her work became something of
a gift to me to free myself.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's gorgeous. Yeah, money, When did you first encounter Bell's work?
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So I met her and her work at the same time.
So I was an intern at South End Press, and
so you know, her books lined the walls, and then
she'd come in and so it's part of the reason
I still in my head I call her Gloria because
I met her as Gloria and from the outset. It
(07:55):
was interesting because to meet her in the page at
the same time one and you get this on the page.
It's part of how she's academic is she was such
a voracious reader, but her relationship to reading and knowledge
wasn't the sort of pomp of most academics, Like it
wasn't I know, more than it was like I'm passionate
about ideas and I want to talk about these things
(08:17):
I'm reading and I'm trying to figure this out, not
just on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level
and how I'm going to deal with my relationships and
how I'm going to deal with my broken heartedness and
how and so she was one of these people who
opens up what it means to live the life of
the mind and felt like, you know, so accessible, but
(08:41):
also an invitation to be a kind of person that
feels that I think it's often we feel like it's
not acceptable to be that kind of person who just
is passionate about ideas and big questions. And so I
encountered her as someone who taught a lesson about how
to be expansively and I was.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I was.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
I was seventeen, eighteen years old, so as a young
person that was just amazing, you know. And she dressed
cute and she had a red Merceses like, you know,
it's like the whole thing, right, I was like, Oh,
like it's okay to be, you know, to.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Be you can be feminist and fly, yeah, and fly.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You know, and enjoy food and talk about sex and
like all this.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And it was so beautiful. She was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
It's in the work. There was a quest for transformation
to be made over to heal. There was so much
in the work. I think that really deeply spoke to
me is that it's critical iss she was Black Looks
was the first book I read of hers, and that's,
you know, ferocious and critical and provocative, with titles like
(09:52):
Selling Hot Pussy and Eating the Other, which I just
loved the provocation of it all. But there's healing in
all of it, the way that she writes and the
search that she's on as an academic and as a
human being and as an artist. I think that's she's
really an artist is about being transformed and being healed
(10:15):
and giving that as an offering to the world. So
I had the honor of speaking at Harvard University last year.
I received their W. E. B. Du Boyd's Medal, and
I evoked Bell's work in her words and evoked one
of her most famous phrases, imperialless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
(10:36):
And she talked about coming up with this on what
she calls this jargonistic kind of phrase to speak to
the ways in which systems of oppression are interlocking, are intersecting,
and as a way to sort of understand what is
happening to her, and that if we only look through
(10:57):
the lens of race, that we're not seeing the whole picture.
For I only looked through the lens of gender. We're
not seeing the whole picture. She was talking about intersectionality
before we had the term intersectionality, right, and Black feminism
has always been intersectional. But I think that that for me,
that phrase is so important and it's a way to
(11:17):
understand and such a contribution to the to the work.
Can you talk about your relationship to Belle's intersectional approach
intersectional feminism, Black intersectional feminism. I mean, there's a whole
history of it, and how she does so much with
the phrase imperiless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
I mean, I would say, you know, there's something really
brilliant about the weight of the language because it's heavy. Yeah,
And she was such a student of like social theory
of understand you know, sophisticated understanding way capitalism work, the
way transatlantic slave trade work, and so in some ways
(12:02):
what she was asking us to do with that phrase
is one to feel the weight, but also to understand systems. Right,
and obviously our identities are really important, but our identities
underneath these systems of domination. She always talked about domination, right,
And that I think is another piece of what was
so brilliant, not just you know, capitalism, not just sexism,
(12:25):
not just race domination. What are the ways in which
others are controlling the lives and the destinies of some right.
And so for me, the turn of phrase was just
so brilliant. She never wanted us to forget right, the complexity, right,
even though our language was plain. Where we're situated is complex,
(12:50):
and it reminds us of our ethical relationship to each other, right,
Because you know, if you're just like, well, I'm you know,
well I'm oppressed too, right, But if you have all
of those words, you have to be cute into the
fact that you're probably participating in the oppression of another.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Oh oh right, And that piece that we know, Bell
Hooks is the first person I heard say that we
can all be oppressors, and we can all become oppressors.
And that is oh girl, we need that so much.
And I think that what's so exciting for me about
her work right now is how much we need it,
how much that in the world right now, with everything
(13:30):
that's going we desperately need this work and it's actually
being I think It's important to note that Ron Desanders
wants to ban it in the state of Florida right now.
She's one of the authors that he wants to ban,
and the conversation abound your sectionality. He wants to ban, right,
so the stakes are high. Darnell, do you want to
speak to imperialless? White supremacist capitalist patriarchy is.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Just putting an exclamation point on what Amani shared about
her invitation for us to consider our complicity. And it
is a weighty term, and to the point about the
weightiness of it, you know, I often say, and this
is really modeled after her and her teaching.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
You know, I repeat this everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We're really clear and been sort of trained to name
the feet that are situated on our next, but we've
not really done the work of naming the next that
our feet are situated on. And after having done that,
taking your feet off that I owe to Belle Hooks
really inviting me as a black.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Can we pause? Can we actually pause her? Now? Can
you say that one more time?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
That we're really good at naming the feet that are
that are situated on our next, and we're not really
good at being honest about the next that our feet
are situated on, let alone removing them after we find
out that we are. And I often ask rooms when
I say that, how many of us know that we
all got our feet on somebody's neck?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
That honest reckoning.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Is a part of what that waighty phrase invites us
to lean into. And I'll say even more specifically, as
a black male identified person, a cisgender man socialized in
the world to breathe domination like a brief.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Air and to love it and to love it.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It was Bell's work, along with others, you know, I
think about the work of June Jordan and Shroke. I mean, like,
these are folks that really did teach me that feminism
was expansive. It was for me too, in fact, that
patriarchy was more of a hindrance to my freedom, more
(15:42):
of a denier of my freedom than it was a gift.
Now I wouldn't have gotten there had Bell's words and
the words of other black feminists not invite me into
that work of self reckoning, which itself is a gift.
And to the points that you both made, it isn't
just a theoretical move like these words have shifted the
way I lived my life the way that I actually
(16:04):
engage with other people. It is an ethic like undergirding
it that shapes how I am living and how I
exist in community with other people in the world, how
I love, how I have sex, how I think about sex.
You know, all of those things are really shaped by
Bell's work, along with the work of so many other
black feminis.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And it really, I mean, it's just it's the genius
of Bell, but it is so important to acknowledge the
work of other black feminists because she, you know, it's
in conversation with those other feminists historically and her contemporaries
and built on that work. And I mean, the whole
point of her name being Laura Case is that it
was about a movement. It was about a collective. It
(16:46):
wasn't about like, you know, even though she became a
you know, a star and you know unintentionally so you know,
destiny is destiny, But it was about the collective in
such a beautiful, amazing way. Is there a particular book.
I mean, she wrote over thirty books and there's a
lot of books. Is there a moment from Bell that
(17:10):
feels like seminole, that feels critical for you and thinking
about her work and her legacy.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I mean the quote that I have in front of
me from feminism is for everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Patriarchal masculinity teaches men that their sense of self and identity,
their reason for being, resides in their capacity to dominate
others and skipping down. Boys need healthy self esteem, They
need love, and a wise and loving feminist politics can
provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children.
Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so, they
(17:50):
would all be well. Now, if this was contemporary, we'll
probably put period at the period.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, but like that is it for me? Like that
is it for me?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Like this idea that we are attempting in this moment
to ban the very thing, to get out of the
curriculum and off of the bookshelves, the very doorways entry
points to a type of liberatory future, a type of
new way of being for folk who are socialized in
the world as boys and who go off to identify
(18:23):
as men.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Right, like.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Scares a hell out of me, Like this was a
gift for like the way I orient myself in the world,
the way that I exist, And it changed the course
of my thinking for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's so powerful to hear a male identified person speak
to this as well, because feminism is for everybody, you know.
And one of my favorite moments from Belle is that
you do not need man for patriarchy at all. Patriarchy
has no gender. Say that, againtch no gender, We do
not need it. You can't speak to ways in which
(19:00):
we all collude and can be in partnership in perpetuating
Oh yeah, oh there's so much there. This is a
good time to take a little break. Alrighty, we're back. Emani.
(19:22):
Is there a moment from am Bell that for you
it's just like that, it's just the moment.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Well, yes, but I will say, Darnelle, reading that part
actually makes me rethink the moment because so much of
what she wrote, and I have been actually grappling with that,
this question of how much she influenced me in ways
that I wasn't even fully cognizant of, because when I
hear that quote, I'm like, right, but this is her
(19:51):
presence that has shaped the way that I parent, like
sort of wanting to have sons who can be free
of patriarchy, to raise them free.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I was thinking about your book as I was reading
that it's.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
A direct, I mean direct connection to want them to
be free, right, So that part and then I would
say for my own development. And I don't even know
necessarily that it's my favorite piece of hers. But in Yearning,
there was something about and there's an essay in at
(20:25):
Third World Diva Girls which is about the students, so
she was mentoring. Yeah, but if there was something about
being considered, Like, here's this great intellectual who's thinking about
young women like us, right, Like, I mean, that was
so huge. It doesn't seem like it should be here,
this this amazing moment of black feminist literature and writing
(20:48):
and novels and stuff. But there was something about the
way she honed in on young women she cared about
and wanted to not just think about, but actually paid
tribute to their excellence and their beauty and how special
they were, and that being considered matters so much for us, right,
(21:10):
I mean, that's part of what she would do over
and over again in different ways. I'm going to pay
attention to you, right, not knowing us, that's it, but
the reader, right. And I think that's part of why
young people, everybody has to go through bell hooks. I
think for kind of sort of self actualization, honestly, particularly
(21:30):
young black people. But I really think there's something about
young people of conscience, right, like figuring themselves out. She's
a curate, She's a tender of souls in that way.
So for me, it was Yearning.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
She shifted my mouth. He's Black Looks was the first
book of hers I read in Yearning was the second one,
and my favorite quote of hers is from Yearning that
I have friend Lucy. Language is also a place of struggle.
I was just a young girl coming slowly into womanhood
when I read Adrian Rich's words, this is the oppressor's language.
Yet I needed to talk to you. Language is also
a place of struggle. And there's more. I have it
(22:04):
written down. It's just and I got to when she
opened the Bail Hook's Institute, I got to be there
and I got to read that passage to her in
front of an audience, and it was really quite beautiful
for me because I had I discovered Bell's one work
in the early nineties when I was an undergraduate, and
(22:25):
it just shifted my molecules. And by the time that
Bale Hook's Institute opened in twenty fifteen, I think it
was I had lived with this work for so long
and had just contemplated, and it really just it changed
my life, and just in ways I can't even imagine.
I just like in the way in which I had
(22:47):
to confront my own internalized racism. And I feel like
we don't talk enough about internalized racism. Now there are
different ways in which we talk about it, but I
feel like we don't talk about it. And the way
Bell talks about it, it's so clear and it's so plain
when she talks about growing up in the segregated South
and the color caast system and she calls it a
(23:08):
colorcast system, and we don't really use that language anymore.
She tells the story of I'm going to her I
think her grandmother's house, who looked white and lived in
a white neighborhood and who said, you know, would say
I don't want that darkie referring to Belle's sister coming over,
and that white supremacy was something that we enacted as
black people on each other, that this is something that
(23:30):
we deeply internalized. And when I encountered her work, it
was like it hit me, like the internalized white supremacy
hit me so hard, that it just it was painful
and difficult, and it was a reckoning that was like fuck,
Like I got to decolonize my mind, and this is
(23:52):
like and it's an ongoing process, and it's an ongoing
process because of the ways in which we collude. I
mean in my conversation with her that we did at
the New School and she sort of called out my
blonde hair and high heels and the way in which
you know, white supremacy intersects with capitalism and patriarchy and
being a woman, a straight woman who has sex with
(24:14):
men and wanting to be seen and attractive in a
white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist context. So that like these things,
even with that knowledge, these things are working in our
lives and we have to negotiate them. She often also
said that we're often living in contradiction when we have
to navigate these systems, right, that this is it's so complicated,
(24:38):
and it's so and it's so often very painful as well,
and it's a place of struggle. I want to finish
reading that language is also a place of struggle, Coote,
because it's so good. She goes, this is this language
that enabled me to attend graduate school, to write a dissertation,
to speak at job interviews. Carries this of oppression. Language
(25:02):
is also a place of struggle. We are wedded in language,
have our being in words. Language is also a place
of struggle. Dare I speak to oppressed and oppressor in
the same voice. Dare I speak to you in a
language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination, A
language that will not bind you, fence you in, or
hold you. Language is also a place of struggle. The
(25:22):
oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite,
to renew our words are not without meaning, They are
in action a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.
Oh wow, right, yeah, ah.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, And I was thinking about your point earlier, about
saying that being really clear at Bell was also an artist,
And you know, I think we think about Bell the
academic or social theorist, but she's a writer, yes, you know,
but I think the three of us will know. But
literally talking about the way she studied her craft, the
(26:10):
language the pro like read feverishly and was reading like
for understanding of new ideas. But I think, like also
what you just read, craft was craft. Here is someone
using craft to write, and I just want to acknowledge that.
And I don't think we celebrate that enough, you know,
but no, And I.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Think that's also, to be completely frank, part of the
reason why she hasn't been given her full due as
an intellectualist because she was an artist because beauty was important. Yes, right,
So beauty was not secondary to ideas. And there's a
lot of resistance amongst, you know, amongst intellectuals, the idea
(26:49):
that you do something beautifully. And also I just wanted
to go back to something you said Laburne that I
think is so powerful because I think in her own
life she was working through in a very open way
these questions around wanting to be attractive, wanting to be
you know, recognized, and also understanding that that wasn't what
(27:11):
she was doing it for that internal tension. I just
loved that she was transparent about it. Yeah, because she
gave us permission to be transparent about the way that
we're you know that we struggle with those things, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Absolutely, Can we just say she was very transplant.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yes, there's nobody from me to day, right, Yeah, who
I want to go out with? Right?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
All the time, like Beryl was a key.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
She was and she was and she and she was shady.
They all was shady. A like she was so shady, yes,
Like she would read you to your face in a
way with like elegance and poetry and history, but she
would read beat you down.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Last time I saw no, she was like, so you
have expanded since the last time I saw you. And
I was like, okay, so okay, really.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Were listen.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
We were at the VAT and we were like, I
think right about the start of panel, and I was
saying something, it's a book panel, and she turns to me,
she goes, if that was the case, you could have
said a little bit more about me and your book. Yes,
And that was a thing, you know, But I always
(28:34):
I say this everywhere I go, like so easy it
is to turn any artist, to any person who is
public facing in the world into an avatar and to
someone who like who's sort of stripped of the full
complex person that they are and the person that I
got to sit across from on.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Good and bad days, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Where it's like, here is a person that was inviting us,
you know, she didn't sort of let us off the hook.
She also didn't let herself off the hook, and she
set and reckoning. She was, you know, the same person
that writes all about love sits you down and says,
I really just want intimacy. I really just want to man,
I just want somebody to hold on, rubbed up next
(29:18):
to you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I want you know. I'm like, it was very honest
about that.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
And on one hand, we'll be talking about Buddhist principles,
but the second hand like, oh and I can't stand
such and such, you know what I mean? And like, really, yeah,
fuly fully like shading.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Oh there's stuff I can't even talk about that she's
exactly saying.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But the thing is, here's what I'll say about that.
It gave me permission.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
It gave me permission to be like, okay with my
full humanity.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Yeah, we are complicated beings.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah. Yes, And she was controversial throughout her life. Really,
I was thinking a lot about different ideas that are
so important to her work. There's a wonderful YouTuber named
Kimberly Foster who found it for Harriet, which is the
great YouTube channel that I enjoy, and she often she
does cultural criticism and she's read her bell Hooks, and
you know she's read her bell Hooks when she talks
(30:14):
about the Watt video and she talks about it in
the context the spectacle. When she's when she started talking
about it being spectacle and relationship to sexual liberation, it's
a spectacle undermine the idea. I was like, she's read
her bell Hooks and the concept obviously of society spectacle
comes from Gidah Boord's famous book. But the way that
Belle adapted it, that's a really good example of like
(30:36):
this French you know, post structuralist theorist who was a
sort of Marxist theorist, that Belle took his work, as
she did with Fucoa and others, and made it accessible
in ways to talk about pop culture and ways to
talk about the world around us that are really crucial.
The way she talked about spectacles specifically, I find really
(30:59):
use full and looking at the world around us right
now interesting.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
And I will say I didn't totally agree with her.
I mean we had some arguments over popular culture because
and there's this beautiful book that she did with Stuart
Hall that's about that. Because propula culture is also a
place where people disrupt write the order and like challenge it.
But I think actually raising the question is incredibly important, right,
and trusting us to raise that question.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, absolutely. And Danielle, did you want to hop in No.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I'm just thinking more broadly about you said. You started
by saying, you know, and they'll raised critical points and
sometimes that weren't always popular. Oh no, No, like we
just modeled something here. I mean, I think in many
cases we've all talked about at least I heard you
say the money. I can say it too. And Laverne,
(31:50):
I'm sure we've had moments where I just did not
agree with some of the things that you profit, right, Yeah, absolutely.
The thing that I am most thoughtful about now after
having witnessed the sort of collective and these things can
these are not mutuel exclusive, so hear me out. But
there was like this collective moan and this collective grief
that sort of we experience after she passed by some
(32:13):
of the very people that you know, they dragged her,
they dragged and like her work was to do criticism.
And I can disagree with the point that you raised
without demeaning your humanity, and like absolutely, just I just
want to name y'all, like, this is what it means.
You want to talk about the spectacle? Yeah, I just
(32:34):
had to get that off my chest. Yeah, and no
matter you said this to me once before, you probably
forgot years ago that somehow we're so if we look
at criticism, the way that I think about it is
like to love is to not lie, right. You would
not be dishonest to a thing, or offer a thing
that you love dishonesty. You would give it truth, even
if that truth is to say this could be better
or whatever the critique might be. Criticism is love when
(32:58):
it's grounded in love, and love.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That love right, you know, I'll say that, you know.
After she wrote her piece about Lemonade, it was interesting
watching the academic beehive, the Black Beehive, swarm swarm on
bell Hooks like hardcore, like it was the whole symposium
(33:22):
that came together after Lemonade, and like did I gagged?
I really gagged, And as a member of the behive
myself as a hardcore Beyonce fan and as a hardcore
bell Hooks fan, it was deeply painful for me to
witness that. And I remember calling her. I remember calling
(33:43):
her as as that was as that was happening. And
I don't know if you guys talked to her in
the aftermath of that, after that hit, you know, the
behot swarmed and they had the whole white form whatever
that was. And I called I remember calling her and
she was she was just so hurt. She was so hurt.
(34:04):
But I remember saying to her that you are the blueprint.
You are Black feminism is what it is because of
you and your work. And they've all convened in this
way because you were so great, because you were so
important and you are so impactful, that that that that
(34:32):
she's that bitch, you know, to quote Beyonce, that she
mail was that bitch so much so that they they
had to swarm, you know. And after the I got
off the phone with her. I remember her feeling better.
Her mood seemed to shift after that. But that was
deeply painful for me to witness and watch and it
(34:55):
and it's and I don't I don't agree with most
of her assessments of Beyonce, except was it was really interesting.
There was a moment when I was I had my copy,
my hard copy of Black Looks. I still have my
original copies and my la plays, and I was I
was traveling and I wanted to allude to an essay
from Black Looks, actually the Oppositional Gaze. And I didn't
(35:15):
have a book with me, and so I downloaded it
on Kindle and I reread the introduction and I was
mentioned in the introduction me along with Beyonce, and Belle
mentioned me on the cover of Time magazine with blonde
hair and Beyonce on the cover of Time magazine with
blonde hair and underwear and how and she sort of
talked about, you know this, these blonde women, these black
women in blonde hair and reinforcing im peerless wise of
(35:38):
premiss calpolist patriarchy. And I read it and I, you know,
I actually called her. I was like, girl, I just reread,
you know, and it was all and I can my
love for her never diminish with that critique, because it's
just it is, It is what it is, you know, right.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
You know, one of the things that I think I
think about her and how she came of age intellectually
right so and politically. Beverly guys Chefteal tells a story
about when they went to the National Women's Studies Association
the first time, and you know, there was a big
up Peeve. I can't remember what I think it was.
It was either ourdel Lord or June Jordan. There was
fighting and deliberation, and then even on the intellectual side, right,
(36:20):
and thinking about her hanging out with people like Edward said,
who said, never solidarity before deliberation and debate, right, that
she assumed that we were in community and we could
fight in community, and so we need that time back.
And you know, you just modeled a way of getting
that time back right in that that you can sustain
(36:42):
community and also be like, we don't think it the
same way and not just be dispassionate but sometimes fight
in the process.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
But we trust each other enough for that. And I
just think that people missed that.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yes, that's so crucially thank you for that. That is
so beautiful. That so and that's such a beautiful lesson
from that that period of feminism. And it reminds me
of a moment that Cornell, Wests and Bell had in
the nineties after the Million Man March and Bell this
is a great video where Belle's like, you know, it's
hard for us to be in process. Sometimes it's hard
(37:16):
for me to stand up here with you, Cornell after
not seeing you for a while and say I don't
agree with you. I disagree with you. I disagree with
you vehemently. That's hard for me, but I don't agree
with you. And she says like, I don't agree with you.
And luckily for them, I believe they were able to
maintain that love over decades when they didn't always agree.
(37:43):
It feels like they were. I don't know the inner work.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, they definitely were, for sure. And it's you know,
when I think about Belle and Bell's work and Belle's
just life and just the everyday ness of her life,
I am also thinking about what her career. We are
along with others you mentioned Cornell, and there's others that
we can sort of list that class of public intellectuals
(38:07):
who were about the work of bringing the sort of
ideas and debate to the public square. Like remember, this
is a period of like immense debate, and folk were
welcomed into debates so much so that they would convene
in stadiums on occasion, in front of the cameras right
of the community and have differences of opinion and guess
(38:29):
what it was all well, when the conversations were over
because at the core of it was this understanding that
to engage in this way, particularly for an end of
an expansive black liberation, is an act of law. To
disagree in this way, to push each other in this way,
and to the monis like we are in a stage
where when she went to have the sort of lemonade conversation,
(38:52):
we were in the stage of you talked about spectacle
of sort of one dimensionality, you know of like echo chambers,
and to dare say it like an inability to be
really honest and therefore loving with people when there are
things that we want to disagree with.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It really kind of evokes this whole time when folks
were able to lovingly disagree, lovingly be in dialogue to
get because it was about the ideas. It was about
getting to a better way of liberating ourselves and each other.
It wasn't about like the sort of gatekeeping who's right
(39:27):
who's wrong. But I think that it feels like the
capitalist piece is operating right that that the spectacle. I'm
so glad we brought that in the spectacle. It works
in direct relationship to capitalism and direct relationship to clicks
in a world of clicks and a world of algorithms,
that that kind of engaged dialogue across difference with love
(39:53):
and empathy does not really work in the capitalist structure
that that we live in now with media and social media.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's right. I mean, even
for example, and I've tried to write a bit about this, right,
you can't actually deliberate. If somebody posts something, then it's
just over right, and the life even if a person
then goes on to have a conversation and change their perspective,
that thing exists out there as a representation of them
(40:23):
that circulates and has a life of its own that
at a certain point no longer has to do with
the body and the mind of the person who initially posts. Right,
So you can't even have like a real conversation where
people evolve, because people are held to the moment at
the beginning of the conversation.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And this is really I mean, how trying to have
space to give people space to evolve where they don't
know where they might not understand something. You know, language
is a place to stroll and that like the T
word that ends with the whys, everybody doesn't know that
that's offensive to some trans people and that in certain
spaces you might you know, be read and people might
(40:59):
be way about it. And we have to give people
space to evolve and to be able to grapple with ideas.
You know, it's so hard and it's so tricky, but
there has to be love and nuance there.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
And I think it also part of what makes it
so hard is something that you said earlier, which is
they're also bad faith actors, right, So there are people
who are evolving, and then there are people who are
actually gaining their traction and their audience, right, and by
being bad faith actors who are just being horrific, right,
And so we're so vulnerable in that scenario, right.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
And there's a whole there's an entire media ecosystem that
supports that bad faith, that the lies the propaganda so
that they don't even the real truth or the nuance
certain people will never ever see because their funnels the lie,
the propaganda, through algorithms, through only watching whatever. And so
(41:55):
this is a it's a very tricky time for liberation
because there's a whole propaganda machine, right that didn't exist
in the seventies and eighties that is so pervasive and effective,
deeply effective.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Or existed, but in just you know, by way of
different sort of technological means and at a sort of
different scale.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
You know, it's a scale that propaganda's always existed because
this whole most of the anti LGBTs, none of this
is new, but it's been scales with social media scale
and so it's reaching way more people and there's no
spaces of it being challenged. But what I love about
Bell too is that, like speaking of intersectionality, is that
(42:36):
she you know, historically there are a lot of feminists
who have trinui fat issues with trans people, and Bell
just never, in my experience, is never that persons. She
was critical of, you know, my wigs and high heels
and the trappings of patriarchy, and I think that is
certainly a conversation, right, But there was just she she
(43:00):
loved me. I Yes, she loved me.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That's absolutely true. That's true, deeply.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Deeply, and I I loved her and she saw me
and in a way that I needed to be seen.
I've always felt like, even before I met her, I
felt like she was my second mother, my feminist mother,
that when I read her work, I was just it
was like I remember reading Sisters of the Yams and
it was just like, this is my mom. You know,
(43:28):
I don't know what, I don't know everybody else has
that experience anyway, getting emotional.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Without further ado. When I think about Belle's influence and
how we talk about pop culture, Reel to Reel is
one of my favorite books of hers, and it's just
all film criticism. I think it was in the mid
nineties that she wrote it, and she reviews film like
The Crying Game and Bodyguard, Daughters of the Dust and
the idea that she wrote about and on black looks,
(44:08):
the oppositional gaze black female spectatorship, I think is so
crucially important when we think about film criticism just in general,
when we think about feminist film criticism. It's a concept
that really for me as a producer when I was
making Disclosure, It's something I thought a lot about her
(44:29):
idea of the oppositional gaze. And I'm just going to
read a little bit from it. I'm accessed with like
reading bell Hooks excerpts in The Oppositional Gaze Black Female
Spectators Bell Wrights. When thinking about black female spectators, I
remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard, intense,
direct looks children would give grown ups, looks that were
(44:50):
seen as confrontational, a's gestures of resistance, challenges to authority.
The gaze has always been political in my life. Imagine
the terror fl by the child who has come to understand,
through repeated punishments, that one's gaze can be dangerous. The
child who has learned so well to look the other
way when necessary, Yet when punished, the child is told
(45:14):
by parents, look at me when I talk to you.
Only the child is afraid to look, afraid to look,
but fascinated by the gaze. There's power in looking amazed.
The first time I read in history classes that white
slave owners, men, women, and children punished and slaved black
people for looking, I wondered how this traumatic relationship to
(45:38):
the gaze had informed a black parenting and black spectatorship.
The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations were such
that the slaves were denied their right to gaze. She
continues years later, reading Michelle Lucot, I thought again about
these connections about the way's power. Its domination reproduces itself
(46:01):
in different locations, employing similar apparatuses strategies and mechanisms of control.
Since I knew as a child that the dominating power
adults exercised over me and over my gaze was never
so absolute that I did not dare to look, to
sneak a peek, to stare. Dangerously, I knew that the
(46:25):
slaves had looked, that all attempts to repress our black
people's right to gaze had produced in us and overwhelming
longing to look, a rebellious desire and oppositional gaze. By
courageously looking, we defiantly declared, not only will I stare,
(46:46):
I want my look to change reality.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Oh and talking about craft by.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
The way, I want my look to change reality. And
that is really I mean for me as as an
image maker, as a producer where we're working on a
new show right now, I think so much about that,
how how I can look differently and produce images differently,
(47:18):
And it's it's tricky, it's hard, but it's like it's
really about decentering. I think so much of it is
about what does it mean to de center. I think,
here she's talking about the patriarchal white supremacist gaze, But
for me, it's that patriarchal, white supremacist gaze. But there's
also the cis normative, heteronormative gaze. What does it look
like to decenter that gaze? And then we can have
(47:40):
the conversations differently, so we're not having the conversations on
the terms of the oppressor. Yes, that we're having the
conversations and doing the representation from margin to center where
we are now femas theory for marginalists center. Another Fels
reference that we can recenter the marginalized, the oppressed. But
(48:02):
what comes up for you when you hear that gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Pros I instantly think about all of what you just said,
by the way, and thank you for the beauty with
what you read that I'm listening to the like the
beautiful way you're reading the words. And it's also just
animating them, Yes, decentering, but also oppositional in terms of
being able to sort of revert the gaze, be honest
about what it is that we are seeing. Yes, Yes,
(48:26):
that's a critical political work for us to be able
to one sort of shape our lens, create a lens
through which we can actually see things for what they are. Yeah,
and do the work of averting.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
That, yes, And it also it makes me think that
part of the reason she is such a resilient thinker
for us is that right, so what happens how do
we decenter assists heteronormative gaze? Right? So, you know, the
Hopes doesn't have a long exegesis on that question, but
she's given us the tools to pursue that kind of question.
(49:06):
So often with thinkers when we and the way that
you read that was so was gorgeous, both informed, but
also you sounded like sort of being given wings, right,
and that's the thing, right to be given the wings
to do the thinking. So often we just mimic what
other folks. We're like, Oh, I like what that person said,
not this what this person said becomes something that then
(49:29):
we can use to create on our own. And I
think that's that's what comes up for me, you know,
is that Okay, my eyes, my eyes, my perspective, my
witness right.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And Belle was so she said over
and over and over again as a teacher, as a
professor that one of the most important things for her
to impart to her students is critical thinking, that they're
able to engage with the work, to think critically and
then to come up with new things and to work
(50:01):
with the work. She would say, I want you to
work with the work. There was a moment in loving
Blackness is political resistance. I think that is an essay
from I think it's from yearning I forget where. I
remember reading that you Know twenty years no, twenty five
years ago or so, and she talked about black is beautiful,
that jargon, that phrase that emerged in the late nineteen
(50:24):
sixties and early seventies as a way to celebrate blackness,
to celebrate beauty standards that were not informed by white supremacy.
And I remember thinking, how amazing would it be for
trans people to have a movement of transit beautiful, movement
to celebrate all the things about trans people that you
know are not CIS normative. And I literally started the
(50:45):
hashtag trans is beautiful in twenty twenty fifteen, inspired by that,
inspired by this idea that I'm not beautiful despite my
big hands, my big feet, my deep voice, my wide shoulders,
all the things that make me noticeably trans. I'm beautiful
because of those things. And that came directly from reading
Belle Hooks' work and thinking about loving blackness is political resistance.
(51:09):
Loving transness as political resistance, right, And so that that's
how I'm working with the world. You know, That's just
one way that I'm working with the work. How are you?
How are you finding that you're working with the work?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
You know, honestly, like, so much of what I have
benefited from both her work and just her friendship is.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Some sort of.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
Tidbits on how I might live a life that is
deeply invested in connectivity, like profoundly in real ways, living
out love in real time, Like I become so much
more invested in living, loving the people that I have
(51:57):
around me and the strangers that I have that I
come in contact with, living, try my best to be
better at not preaching a thing.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
But living it.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
And those are like the every day like in every
real like in very meaningful ways.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Like it's I try to take that up in the
way that I live.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
And the last thing I'll say is, you know, like
I'm profoundly shaped by her work as a black cisgender
man who's in the world thinking about a world that's
been freed up from the pangs of patriarchal violence.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
And it's an everyday work.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Every day I have to make decisions and negotiate the
ways that I move in the world, the ways that
I love, the ways that I am loved. Like and
that is like, you know, this second work that's been
taking me forever just sort of work through is directly
connected to her teaching. I mean a book is the
first iteration of it was called unbecoming Visions Beyond the
(52:59):
Limits of Manhood.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Right isn't that like such an homage to something that
Bell would have us think about? Right?
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Like, what it means is sort of unravel to look
back at the self and say, how can I pull out,
take away, do away with these things that aren't doing
me any good. So my writing, my living, my political
the texture of my political life has been shaped by
her and so many other black feminists for whom, and
(53:26):
I say this with all honesty, I would not be here.
I would not be here if I didn't have these
black women's books to pick up and help me to
love the black queer.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Man that I was taught to hate, to let that person.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Back, I wouldn't be here either. I wouldn't be here either.
How are you working with the work, your money in
your life?
Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yeah, you know a lot of it is. I keep
thinking about the word embodiment, and I think what I'm
thinking about is her honesty and the vulnerability of my
body and witnessing the vulnerability of her body, and you
(54:16):
know what it means to have a body that in
some way feels as though it's betraying you and in
decline and the way that strips you down to what's
the point? Why are we here? What's the point? And
she was this reminder. You know, there are so many
ways that she was punished for not having conventional trappings
(54:37):
to what she was doing, but she stayed true to
the point, and that is why she will live. The
work will live. And it's this reminder. Right. Wait, you
know I turned fifty last year in this sort of
to be that age, right, so you're this age and
you're like, okay, I'm over halfway done most likely? Why
(55:01):
why am I here? What am I?
Speaker 2 (55:03):
And she.
Speaker 4 (55:05):
Her example You can't think it's gonna be easy. Living
in your purpose is not easy.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yep, and going against the grain is not you know,
even her talking about opening the institute, it was her
thinking intentionally about her legacy. Why am I here? What's
the point? She did struggle with health things for many
years before she passed, and I think that prompted her
to think think very differently about that legacy. I think
(55:34):
those series of talks that she did at the New
School were so oh just they were just so good.
I've gone back and watched them many many times. It's
an honors I've gotten to participate in one of them.
I think that was her thinking about her legacy, thinking
about what she'll leave behind, and she really did want
she wanted people. She wanted love. She wanted people to
(55:56):
love on her. She wanted people to love on the work.
And she needed that and she needed that sense of
I've written over thirty books, I've been like in this
for so long, and I've been on a no fly
list and band here and food and and like just
all kinds of crazy stuff being She would refer to
(56:17):
herself as an insurgent black you know, intellectual, you know
in the early nineties that she was a real she
was a revolutionary figure, like for real, for real, And
that was not an easy rot a ho, you know,
it really wasn't. And yet and yet there was so
much love that she gave that she allowed herself to
(56:40):
receive that is deeply inspiring and empowering to think about.
I like to end every podcast with the question, what
else is true? This comes from my from my somatic
trauma healing work. What else is true? It's like what
(57:03):
it gets you through when the world is on fire,
when things are just deeply troubling. What is the thing
that you turn to? A resource that it's also true?
Like Belle Hoops. Let us know this that multiple things
can exist at the same time. So when things are
troubled for you, what else is true for you that
(57:23):
you can look to that'll help you get through? Imani
you look, you may be ready to answer.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
ROBERTA Flax recording of Afro BLUEO early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (57:36):
It is.
Speaker 4 (57:38):
It's genius and beautiful and healing.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah, I don't know that. I'm going to go listen
to it right after this. Please Diterflac Afro Blue, Darnell.
What else is true for you today?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
A good bottle of red wine, a cab specifically, and
my family.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yes, my boyfriend loves a good Cabernet too, man after
my own heart. I love it. Thank you so much,
both of you. This is everything I hoped it would be.
Hope I hope Belle feels the spirit, this energy, this celebration.
I just thank you, I just thank you so much,
(58:16):
thank you, thank you. Long live Bell Hooks. Yes, indeed, Oh,
I'm so grateful to Darnell and Imani for that healing conversation.
Love is what comes up for me over and over
and over again. And Belle has said about love that
love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect,
(58:41):
and trust. And it was wonderful talk that I alluded
to earlier with Cornell West and Bell Hooks from the
mid nineties, and they begin with the quote from from
Martin Luther King, and the beginning of the quote is
I have chosen to love. I have chosen to love.
Belle Hooks was a Buddhist, but she was deeply steeped
(59:03):
in that tradition in the civil rights movement of the
fifties and sixties, that Christian thing that Martin Luther King
talked about, that we had to figure out a way
to love each other, to be loved warriors, as Cornell
West would say. And so it's really all about love.
(59:27):
And I hope that this podcast has inspired you to
go and explore her work to grapple with it, feel
free to disagree with it, and hopefully be inspired to
think more critically about your life, think more critically about
the world around you. This is what she would want
(59:48):
for you to engage with the work, to work with
the work so that you can live a better life
for yourself and make the world better around you. So yeah,
go read your bell hooks.
Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
Often we respond negatively to the moment of process, you know,
even myself. You know, one of the things when I
said to cornellis, you know, I don't agree with some
of the things you're saying lately, But I didn't really
want to greet him after not seeing him for such
a while, with having to admit that I don't agree. Now,
(01:00:28):
think about that, we're two people who forge so much
in dialogue, and I can still feel afraid to say
to him, I don't agree with you. And I think
that so much of our shying away from anti racist
struggle is the fear that we have that when we
come together in our differences and there is disagreement, we
(01:00:52):
will have conflict and everything will fall apart. So many
people feel it's better not to come together, It's better
to stay with people that are just like yourself, where
you can feel safe, where the smooth running can happen
without any moment of chaos or conflict, but in the
true spirit of both spiritual and political revolution in the
(01:01:15):
best sense. We cannot begin to build beloved community without
embracing the moments of tension and conflict as part of
the struggle, as part of what we're seeking.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.
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Host
Laverne Cox
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