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November 06, 2005
bell hooks's word choice
I didn't see a suitable moment in our recent conversation in class about bell hooks's article In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life to voice a reaction I'd had to the reading and so I thought I'd blog it.
When bell hooks begins to discuss the social and political climate of America and the role and importance photography had for black people here, she repeatedly uses the word "apartheid" (pronounced uh-part-hate). For those who don't know / didn't look it up, it's an Afrikaans (language derived from Dutch and spoken in South Africa) word that describes the state-legislated segregation based on race that occurred in South Africa between about 1948 and 1991.
While I strongly believe that this word should never be allowed to die, lest we forget the atrocity, and should be used to draw attention to similar situations worldwide, I question bell hooks’s use of it in this context.
I presume that bell hooks used the word for the latter reason above – to paint a similar situation with the same brush, drawing a parallel that makes it more explicit. As a South African, though, I see this generalized calling-the-same as possibly taking away from the experience of South Africans of color.
I worry that people who understand the experience of Americans of color might, upon reading this article, equate the American experience of segregation to the experience of South Africans of color. I believe this would stereotype and grossly limit the South African experience and quash South Africans’ ability to articulate it for themselves.
I think there’s great power in realizing our sameness particularly in issues of marginalization, however, I now realize there is a danger too. Sometimes if we share a similar aspect or trait with an oppressed or marginalized group a subtle and often convenient shift can occur and we appropriate their entire experience. We can presume understanding and identify not because we know their situation but because we know ours; the danger then lying in the fact that we no longer need to listen to them because we understand their experience to be the same ours. We no longer need to go beyond ourselves because we define the other in terms of our experience. This can feel good because it reinforces our perceptions, however, it can be extremely harmful for the other because it denies them their’s and is a further marginalization as it reinterprets their experience from our perspective, not via it’s own authentic voice.
I realize that in discussing the “isms” or various oppressions of our societies it is good not to try and counter all the talk of difference with talk of sameness. I proprose to strive for a combination of and balance between the two.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at November 6, 2005 03:07 PM
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