bell hooks
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis |
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If we want a beloved community, we must stand
for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to
privilege.
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If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t
start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with
feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my
life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think
of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is,
steadfastly, on a path about love.
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Love is an action, never simply a feeling.
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Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a
moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in
perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution;
it requires complex accounting.
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I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every
other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer...education as
the practice of freedom.... education that connects the will to know with the
will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.
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If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance
for a dialogue.
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Feminist education
—
the feminist classroom
—
is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is
visible acknowledgment of the union of theory and practice, where we work
together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation
that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university.
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Given the way universities work to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo, the
way knowledge is offered as commodity, Women's Studies can easily become the
place where revolutionary feminist thought and feminist activism are submerged
or made secondary to the goals of academic careerism.
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In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimage is inevitable.
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Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense
that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to
rebellion, however short- lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place.
That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains.
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As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism
or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that
feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge
majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of
feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from
patriarchal mass media.
(source)
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Since our society continues to be primarily a "Christian" culture masses of
people continue to believe that god has ordained that women be subordinate to
men in the domestic household. (source)
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Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root
understanding of the word ecstasy — ‘to stand outside’ —comes to me in those
moments when I am immersed so deeply in the act of thinking and writing that
everything else, even flesh, falls away.
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Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate,
transfix and transform.
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I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of
marriage in patriarchal society
— because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter
how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture
outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to
or not.
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The overall impact of postmodernism is that many other groups now share with
black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of sense of
grounding even if it is not informed by shared circumstance.
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• Each quotation
page in this collection and the entire collection are © Jone Johnson Lewis
1997-2004. This is an informal collection -- if you need citations for the
original source, I don't have those available unless they're listed with the
quotes.
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