A lost prophet who mixed her Kentucky roots, Christian and Buddhist spirituality, and intersectional feminism to dismantle the systemic barriers we have built to hold back love
Because I taught school and enjoy Paulo Freire, I long ago bought Teaching to Transgress, my only bell hooks book. Your podcast starts with where I am—someone who knows about her in the context of one of her roles—in my case, that of an educational theorist—than about her as someone whose work at the intersection of spirituality and politics gives her lost-prophet status.
I like the way Elias describes hooks as “instinctually intersectional.” I think she continually returns to Kentucky in her mind (long before returning there physically) because her background teaches her that no theory makes sense without critiques from other theoretical viewpoints. We don’t become a full-bodied political community without face-to-face conversations and attempts at working out what we mean as best we can.
One of my favorite chapters in Teaching to Transgress is the interview between “Gloria Watkins” and “bell hooks, my writing voice” about Freire. (Interesting regarding intersectionality that she identifies with both names!) Freire’s willingness, at a college forum, to have her critique him from a feminist perspective won her over. Some of her fellow feminists wondered why she didn’t dismiss Freire for what she acknowledges as his “phallocentric paradigm of liberation.” Her criticism of him through a feminist lens, though, cleared the way for other aspects of his work “to touch [her] at the very core of [her] being.” And in his subsequent books, she also saw “his willingness to struggle non-defensively in print.” I suspect that she felt that she had a role in his willingness to self-critique, as you find her feeling about the same willingness among feminists.
All of which seems to go with your lead point: she defines herself first as a seeker and not in terms of her race or gender or her feminism. Freire is a fellow seeker.
So much of this kind of cross-critique and this sense of personal and political journey is present in your discussion of hooks: her celebration of feminism as the most self-critical of modern social movements, her unwillingness to surrender an organic intellectual life to tenured academia, her easy movement from childhood memory to theory and back again. Pete puts it well towards the end: hooks is about “loving and fighting for the kid inside of her.” What a model for me.
hooks, despite reading a nonfiction book a day, also read like a child, or at least like a contemplative. She “spent years” of her life allowing one line from Berrigan “to enter me through action and experience”—Berrigan’s line about bringing down “the bridge of illusion” to make way for a bridge of reality (from her foreword in Raft from which Elias also quoted).
In a similar vein, and in that same Watkins/hooks interview, hooks explains Freire’s effect on her by alluding to and quoting Thich Nhat Hanh: “Seriously, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that a certain milieu is born at the same time as a great teacher. And he says: ‘When you [the teacher] come and stay one hour with us, you bring that milieu. . . . It is as though you bring a candle into the room.’” This is how I feel about what Pete and Elias do on this podcast: they bring a collective candle into the room. An intergenerational milieu, so to speak. Gratitude.
Great interview with Nadra Nittle, who introduced me to child liberation theology and to the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw.
I loved Pete’s aside about John Gregg Fee. What a remarkable story.
Thank you for widening my understanding about hooks. (I “favorited” several books you mentioned and allowed myself to buy one book for now: Where We Stand: Class Matters.)
The best lecture I ever saw was bell hooks and Cornel West in conversation, right as their book was published. They plainly loved each other but, while clearly understanding his postmodern critical perspective, she was having none of it. I was floored. I thought Cornel walked on water. I saw her take him apart point by point. With a smile and no big words.
I’d read Ain’t I a Woman, and knew her as a fierce critic. To see her yucking it up with Cornel and simultaneously pick apart his critique at the seams let me understand what a public intellectual could be.
Thanks to the Lost Prophets podcast, I have discovered aspects of bell hooks' life and thought that made me seek out books and interviews. But it's not just bell hooks--I discovered the podcast while looking for podcasts that discussed Ivan Illich, and you guys have opened up a whole world of wonderful thinkers for me to learn from! But, are you going to continue? Please, do!
Because I taught school and enjoy Paulo Freire, I long ago bought Teaching to Transgress, my only bell hooks book. Your podcast starts with where I am—someone who knows about her in the context of one of her roles—in my case, that of an educational theorist—than about her as someone whose work at the intersection of spirituality and politics gives her lost-prophet status.
I like the way Elias describes hooks as “instinctually intersectional.” I think she continually returns to Kentucky in her mind (long before returning there physically) because her background teaches her that no theory makes sense without critiques from other theoretical viewpoints. We don’t become a full-bodied political community without face-to-face conversations and attempts at working out what we mean as best we can.
One of my favorite chapters in Teaching to Transgress is the interview between “Gloria Watkins” and “bell hooks, my writing voice” about Freire. (Interesting regarding intersectionality that she identifies with both names!) Freire’s willingness, at a college forum, to have her critique him from a feminist perspective won her over. Some of her fellow feminists wondered why she didn’t dismiss Freire for what she acknowledges as his “phallocentric paradigm of liberation.” Her criticism of him through a feminist lens, though, cleared the way for other aspects of his work “to touch [her] at the very core of [her] being.” And in his subsequent books, she also saw “his willingness to struggle non-defensively in print.” I suspect that she felt that she had a role in his willingness to self-critique, as you find her feeling about the same willingness among feminists.
All of which seems to go with your lead point: she defines herself first as a seeker and not in terms of her race or gender or her feminism. Freire is a fellow seeker.
So much of this kind of cross-critique and this sense of personal and political journey is present in your discussion of hooks: her celebration of feminism as the most self-critical of modern social movements, her unwillingness to surrender an organic intellectual life to tenured academia, her easy movement from childhood memory to theory and back again. Pete puts it well towards the end: hooks is about “loving and fighting for the kid inside of her.” What a model for me.
hooks, despite reading a nonfiction book a day, also read like a child, or at least like a contemplative. She “spent years” of her life allowing one line from Berrigan “to enter me through action and experience”—Berrigan’s line about bringing down “the bridge of illusion” to make way for a bridge of reality (from her foreword in Raft from which Elias also quoted).
In a similar vein, and in that same Watkins/hooks interview, hooks explains Freire’s effect on her by alluding to and quoting Thich Nhat Hanh: “Seriously, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that a certain milieu is born at the same time as a great teacher. And he says: ‘When you [the teacher] come and stay one hour with us, you bring that milieu. . . . It is as though you bring a candle into the room.’” This is how I feel about what Pete and Elias do on this podcast: they bring a collective candle into the room. An intergenerational milieu, so to speak. Gratitude.
Great interview with Nadra Nittle, who introduced me to child liberation theology and to the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw.
I loved Pete’s aside about John Gregg Fee. What a remarkable story.
Thank you for widening my understanding about hooks. (I “favorited” several books you mentioned and allowed myself to buy one book for now: Where We Stand: Class Matters.)
Love this quote: "I wanted to embrace radical politics and still know God. I wanted to resist and be redeemed."
The best lecture I ever saw was bell hooks and Cornel West in conversation, right as their book was published. They plainly loved each other but, while clearly understanding his postmodern critical perspective, she was having none of it. I was floored. I thought Cornel walked on water. I saw her take him apart point by point. With a smile and no big words.
That smile--she told an interviewer, You cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.
I’d read Ain’t I a Woman, and knew her as a fierce critic. To see her yucking it up with Cornel and simultaneously pick apart his critique at the seams let me understand what a public intellectual could be.
Thanks to the Lost Prophets podcast, I have discovered aspects of bell hooks' life and thought that made me seek out books and interviews. But it's not just bell hooks--I discovered the podcast while looking for podcasts that discussed Ivan Illich, and you guys have opened up a whole world of wonderful thinkers for me to learn from! But, are you going to continue? Please, do!
Thanks, Natividad--and yes, more to come!