bell hooks

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
bell hooks (2014)

bell hooks (born September 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville , Kentucky , † December 15, 2021 in Berea , Kentucky; real name Gloria Jean Watkins ) was an American literary scholar and author . She was an advocate of intersectional , feminist , anti-racist and capitalism-critical approaches. Her pseudonym was the name of her indigenous grandmother, which she used in lower case.

Life

Watkins grew up in a family of African American descent with five sisters and one brother; her parents were security guard Veodis Watkins and housewife Rosa Bell Watkins. She studied at Stanford ( BA 1973) and at the University of Wisconsin – Madison ( Magister Artium 1976). She received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1983 . She has lectured at Yale University and Oberlin College . From 1994 she was Professor of English Literature at the City College of New York and in 2004 she took up a professorship at Berea College , Kentucky. She was known for her lectures, speeches, and public appearances.

bell hooks died of kidney failure in December 2021 at the age of 69 after a prolonged illness.

theory

The subjects of her writings are broad: she was particularly concerned with feminism and gender issues, anti-racism , classism and cultural criticism. In doing so, she assumed an intersectional link between the various power mechanisms, especially racism , sexism and classicism, which she repeatedly referred to in her criticism as the trinity of “ white supremacy , capitalism and patriarchy ”. This complex has to be overcome, whereby one cannot fall back on the privileges given by one of the forms of rule. Integration into the culture of whites as assimilation did not seem desirable to her either. Instead, she was looking for ways to create a culture of resistance.

“Anti-racist work, the strategy of which is aimed at these people seeing themselves as 'victims' of racism, and thereby relying on a radical effect on those concerned, is misguided. We simply have to recognize that people with many privileges that are victims in any way be used because of their political decision for the oppressed can . This solidarity need not necessarily be based on shared experience. It can be based on the political and ethical understanding of racism and the rejection of dominance. From this it can be seen how essential it is to develop a critical consciousness, a consciousness that can enable the powerful and privileged to get rid of the structures of domination in which they are rooted without having to feel like victims. This assessment does not necessarily negate the collective recognition that a dominant culture is designed to have a completely confusing and distorting effect on the psyche of people, or that this perversion hurts. "

In her very autobiographical book Where we stood: Class Matters , she emphasized the importance of class society and complained that this aspect had been ignored in various racism and gender mainstreaming discourses.

Based on Paolo Freire , she advocated education in a practice of freedom and her work consistently links her theories with pedagogical considerations. So she repeatedly commented on current topics and, as a Buddhist, also on Buddhism .

Fonts

  • Ain't I a Woman: Black women and feminism (1981) ISBN 0-89608-129-X .
  • Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (1984).
  • Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black (1989).
  • Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics (1990).
  • Breaking Bread: insurgent Black intellectual life (1991) (with Cornel West).
  • Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992).
  • Sisters of the Yam: black women and self-recovery (1993).
  • Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994).
  • Outlaw Culture: resisting representations (1994).
  • Art on My Mind: visual politics (1995).
  • Killing Rage: ending racism (1995).
  • Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996).
  • Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996).
  • Wounds of Passion: a writing life (1997).
  • (with Christopher Raschka) Happy to be Nappy (1999) (children's book) ISBN 0-7868-0427-0 .
  • Remembered Rapture: the writer at work (1999).
  • Feminism is for Everybody (2000) ISBN 0-89608-628-3 .
  • All about Love (2000) ISBN 0-7043-4664-8 .
  • where we stand: Class Matters (2000) ISBN 0-415-92913-X .
  • Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope . 2003, ISBN 0-415-96817-8 .
  • (with Christopher Raschka) Skin Again, 2004, ISBN 0-7868-0825-X .
  • We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004).
  • The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004).
  • Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009), ISBN 9780415968164 .
  • Teaching critical thinking. Practical Wisdom (2010), ISBN 0-415-96820-8 .
  • All About Love: New Visions (2018)

German

  • (with Hal Foster and Ines Lindner) GEWALT / Geschften (1994) ISBN 3-926796-34-0 .
  • Black looks. Pop Culture - Media - Racism (1994) ISBN 3-929823-14-4 .
  • Longing and Resistance. Culture, ethnicity, gender, 1996, ISBN 3-929823-31-4 .
  • The meaning of class (2019) (translation from where we stand: Class Matters ) ISBN 978-3-89771-274-4 .
  • All about love - New perspectives (translation of All about love ). Translated from the English by Heike Schlatterer, Harper Collins, Hamburg 2021, ISBN 978-3-74990-236-1 .
  • Feminism for Everyone (2021) (translation of Feminism is for Everybody ). Translated from English by Margarita Ruppel, Münster 2021, ISBN 978-3-89771-337-6 .

literature

  • Florence Namulundah: bell hooks' Engaged Pedagogy. A Transgressive Education for Critical Consciousness . Bergin & Garvey, Westport CT 1998, ISBN 0-89789-564-9 .
  • Maria del Guadalupe Davidson and George Yancy (Eds.): Critical Perspectives on bell hooks . Routledge, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-98980-0 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bell hooks. In: Luxembourg (magazine) . Retrieved December 16, 2021 .
  2. ↑ Queer author bell hooks died , Queer.de , published and accessed on December 16, 2021.
  3. ↑ Black Looks, German edition, 1994, p. 23 f.
  4. ↑ Bell Hooks: Where we stood: Class Matters; download (engl .; pdf)
personal data
SURNAME hooks, bell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Watkins, Gloria (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American literary scholar and feminist
BIRTH DATE September 25, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Hopkinsville , Kentucky , USA
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Berea , Kentucky