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¶ … Bell Hooks Argues There Must be no Split Between Theory and Practice
Hooks also argues quite compellingly about not splitting theory and practice when it comes to feminism. In other words, practice what you preach. The best theory in the world cannot help anyone if it is not put into common practice. As Hooks notes, "I have come to see that silence is an act of complicity, one that helps perpetuate the idea that we can engage in revolutionary black liberation and feminist struggle without theory" (Hooks 39). There must be a theory to believe in, and there must be action to make the theory come true and be realized. She goes on to expound on her thoughts, "By reinforcing the idea that there is a split between theory and practice or by creating such a split, both groups deny the power of liberatory education for critical consciousness, thereby perpetuating conditions that reinforce our collective exploitation and repression" (Hooks 40-41). Her argument may seem emotional, but this is an emotional subject, and her belief that splitting theory and practice only creates more problems is well spoken. Without theory and practice, no group can ever hope to make their cause understood and ultimately successful. For example, if the Revolutionaries had only voiced their theory that America should break from Great Britain, but never put it into practice, then Americans might still be British subjects. Hooks' argument is valid, and while it may seem emotional, it makes good sense.
Reading this article not only helped put the broader issues of feminism for women of color and race into perspective, it helped indicate how theories sometimes fall short of their goal. Theory and practice are intertwined, and Hooks does an excellent job of getting her point across and making it stick with the reader long after the reading is done. Feminism is more than an emotional issue, it is still an important issue facing the country's women, and reading this article has but it in several different perspectives that I might not have thought of before.
References
.Hooks, Bell. "Theory as Liberatory Practice."
Bell Hooks Argues Feminist Theory is a Social Practice Bell Hooks argues that feminist theory is a social practice for a number of reasons, including the pain of her childhood, which she believes led her to look toward theories as answers for her problems. She believes that much of the accepted and legitimized feminist theory has developed from white men and women, and much of the theory thus developed by
Bell hooks' "Seeing and Making Culture" bell hooks successfully challenges stereotypes specific to poverty by writing to two separate audiences using ethos, pathos and vocabulary common enough for most people, yet elegant enough for academics. In her essay, "Seeing and Making Culture," hooks uses an ethos way of writing when she uses quotes throughout the text. In addition, hooks also uses pathos by appealing to our emotions with the interactions between
Another provocative element of hooks' text is the way that she renders whiteness problematic and alien, while the dominant culture has always done this with blackness. The quest to know what is not 'us' and to know the 'other' she implies, is endemic to all societies (hooks 32). Yet the academy has shown scant interest in how blacks perceive whiteness, only how whites perceive blackness. This renders white people and
bell hooks, the celebrated Black feminist writer and thinker, recently penned a book called Feminism is for Everybody. It is a provocative title to be sure, but hooks is not the first writer to tackle the subject of how so-called "women's issues" can often have profound consequences on men. Literary works of fiction have long struggled with this central theme. In particular, Jean Toomer's Cane includes some powerful vignettes
Paulo Freire and Bell Hooks are both well-known for their influential thinking in the area of teaching, specifically relating to the contexts of race, gender, and culture. In his writing and teaching, Freire emphasized that that learning is an act of culture and freedom. Among his main arguments is the assertion that the current education system in many developed countries is a process of "knowledge banking" (Bentley). In other words,
Orientalism, then, allowed the West to promote its political propaganda of colonizing Eastern societies. This propaganda of colonizing Eastern societies was legitimized by the West's insistence that the East needed to progress in the same way that it did (West) right after the economic success of the Industrial Revolution. Colonization was the West's method of "rehabilitating" societies it considered as a 'laggard' -- a society that, in the West's view