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Bell Hooks Aesthetic of Blackness

Bell Hooks Aesthetic of Blackness

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Antony Diniz
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1K views8 pages

Bell Hooks Aesthetic of Blackness

Bell Hooks Aesthetic of Blackness

Uploaded by

Antony Diniz
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YEARNING race, gender, and cultural politics bell hooks ‘South End Press Boston, MA Publication Acknowledgments: ‘Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications for permission to use previously published material: Zeta Magazine, Inscriptions, Art Forum, Sojourner, Framework, Emerge. ‘Special thanks 10 Katherine Wendy Hanna for her work on the bibliography. Copyright © 1990 by Gloria Watkins Copyrights are still required for book production in the United States. However, in our case itis a disliked necessity. Thus, any prop- erly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be used ‘without permission, so long as the total nunuber of words does not ex- ceed 2,000. For longer quotations or for a greater volume of total ‘words quoted, written permission from the publisher is required, Cover design by Tanya Mckinnon and Cynthia Peters “Typesetting and design by the South End Press collective Printed in the United States on acid-free paper Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-10196 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data hooks, bel Yearning. 1. Afro-Americans—Social Conditions. 2. Feminism— United States. 3. Sex Role—United States. I. Title. 185.86,H742 1990 305.896'073—de2090-10196 ISBN 0-89608-385-3 (pbk) ISBN 0-89608-386-1 (cloth) South End Press, 116 Saint Botolph Street, Boston, MA 02115 99 98 9796 95 94 93 92.91 23456789 for you to whom i surrender io you for whom i wait YEARNING merit because they are so unique. My sisters were willing to give that care, to affirm my specialness, even as they let me know there were limits, boundaries beyond which I would be placing them in the role Of subordinates. The difficulties women of color face in a white su- premacist capitalist patriarchy are intense. We can only respect and ad. mie all among us who manage to resist, who become self-actualized, We need to cherish and honor those among us who emerge as “stars, not because they are above us but because they share with us light that guides, providing insight and necessary wisdom. To be a star, a diva, carties with it responsibility; one must learn to know and respect boundaries, using power in ways that enrich and uplift. In these times that are fundamentally more anti-feminist than post-feminist, Feminist ‘movement needs activists who can carry on the work of liberation, diva girls who are on the front lin. AN AESTHETIC OF BLACKNESS. strange and oppositional T bis is the tory ofa bouse. It bas been lived in by many peo- ‘ple. Our grandmother, Baba, made this house living space. She was certain that the way we lived was shaped by objects, the way we looked at them, the way they were placed around us. She was c tain that we were shaped by space. From her I learn about aesthetics, the yearning for beauly that she tells me ts the predicament of beart that makes our passion real. A quilimaker, she teaches me about color. Her house isa place where 1am learning to look at things, ubere Iam learning bow to belong in space. in rooms full of objects, crowded with things, am learning to recognize myself. She bands me a mirror, showing me bow to look. The color of wine she bas made in my cup, the beauty ofthe everyday. Surrounded by fields of tobacco, tbe leaves braided like bair, dried and hung, circles and circles of smoke fil the air. We string red peppers fiery bot, with thread that will not be seen. They will bang in front of a lace curtain to catch the sun. Look, she fells me, what the light does to color! Do you believe that space can give ‘Ye, or take i away, that space has power? These are the questions she casks which frighten me, Baba dies an old woman, out of place. Her fu- neral is also a place to see things, to recognize myself. How can I be sad in the face of death, surrounded by so mich beauty? Death, bid- den in a field of tulips, wearing my face and calling my name. Baba can mate them grow. Red, yellow, they surround ber body like lovers in a swoon, tulips everyubere. Here a soul on fire wit beauty burns and passes, soul touched by flame. We see her leave. She bas taught sme how to look at the world and see beauty. She bas taught me "we ‘must earn to see.” 103 104 YEARNING. Years ago, at an art gallery in San Francisco near the Tassajara restaurant, I saw rooms arranged by Buddhist monk Chégyam ‘Trungpa. Ata moment in my life when I had forgotten how to see, he reminds me to look. He arranges spaces. Moved by an aesthetic shaped by old beliefs. Objects are not without spirit. As living things they touch us in unimagined ways. On this path one leams that an en- tire room is a space 10 be created, a space that can reflect beauty, peace, and a harmony of being, a spiritual aesthetic. Each space is a sanctuary. I remember. Baba has taught me “we must learn to see.” Aesthetics then is more than a philosophy or theory of art and beauty; itis a way of inhabiting space, a particular location, a way of looking and becoming. It is not organic. I grew up in an ugly house, No one there considered the function of beauty or pondered the use Of space. Surrounded by dead things, whose spirits had long ago van- ished since they were no longer needed, that house contained a great ‘engulfing emptiness. In that house things were not to be looked at, they were to be possessed—space was not to be created but owned— violent anti-aesthetic. I grew up thinking about art and beauty as it existed in our lives, the lives of poor black people. Without knowing the appropriate language, 1 understood that advanced capitalism was affecting our capacity to see, that consumerism began to take the place Of that predicament of heart that called us to yearn for beauty. Now many of us are only yeaming for things. In one house I leamed the place of aesthetics in the lives of agrarian poor black folks. There the lesson was that one had to under- stand beauty as a force to be made and imagined. Old folks shared their sense that we had come out of slavery into this free space and we hhad to create a world that would renew the spist, that would make it life-giving. In that house there was a sense of history. In the other hhouse, the one I lived in, aesthetics had no place. There the lessons ‘were never about art or beauty, but always only to possess things. My thinking about aesthetics has been informed by the recognition of these houses: one which cultivated and celebrated an aesthetic of exis- tence, rooted in the idea that no degree of material lack could keep ‘one from leaming how to look at the world with a critical eye, how to recognize beauty, or how to use it as a force to enhance inner well- being; the other which denied the power of abstract aestheticism. Liv- ing in that other house where we were S0 acutely aware of lack, so conscious of materiality, I could see in our daily life the way consumer capitalism ravaged the black poor, nurtured in us a longing for things that often subsumed our ability to recognize aesthetic worth or value. AN AESTHETIC OF BLACKNES 105 Despite these conditions, there was in the traditional southern ra- cially segregated black community a concern with racial uplift that continually promoted recognition of the need for artistic expressive- ‘ness and cultural production. Art was seen as intrinsically serving a po- litical function, Whatever Aftican-Americans created in music, dance, poctry, painting, etc., it was regarded as testimony, bearing witness, challenging racist thinking which suggested that black folks were not fully human, were uncivilized, and that the measure of this was our collective failure to create “great” art, White supremacist ideology in- sisted that black people, being more animal than human, lacked the capacity to feel and therefore could not engage the finer sensibilities that were the breeding ground for art. Responding to this propaganda, nineteenth-century black folks emphasized the importance of art and cultural production, seeing it as the most effective challenge to such assertions. Since many displaced African slaves brought to this country an aesthetic based on the belief that beauty, especially that created in a collective context, should be an integrated aspect of everyday life, en- hancing the survival and development of community, these ideas formed the basis of African-American aesthetics, Cultural production and artistic expressiveness were also ways for displaced African peo- ple to maintain connections with the past. Artistic African cultural re- ‘entions survived long after other expressions had been lost or forgotten. Though not remembered or cherished for politcal reasons, they would ultimately be evoked to counter assertions by white su- premacists and colonized black minds that there remained no vital liv- ing bond between the culture of African-Americans and the cultures of Africa. This historical aesthetic legacy has proved so powerful that consumer capitalism has not been able to completely destroy artistic production in underclass black commu Even though the house where I lived was ugly, it was a place where I could and did create art. I painted, 1 wrote poetry. Though it ‘was an environment more concemed with practical reality than art, these aspirations were encouraged. In an interview in Callaloo painter Lois Mailou Jones describes the tremendous support she received from, black folks: “Well I began with art at a very early stage in my life. As a child, 1 was always drawing. | loved color, My mother and father, real- izing that 1 had talent, gave me an excellent supply of crayons and pencils and paper—and encouraged me.” Poor black parents saw ar- tistic cultural production as crucial to the struggle against racism, but they were also cognizant of the link between creating art and pleasure. Art was necessary to bring delight, pleasure, and beauty into lives that ‘were hard, that were materially deprived. It mediated the harsh condi- 106 ‘YEARNING tions of poverty and servitude. Art was also a way to escape one's plight. Protestant black churches emphasized the parable of the tal- ents, and commitment to spirituality also meant appreciating one's tal- ents and using them. In our church if someone could sing or play the piano and they did not offer these talents to the community, they were admonished. Performance arts—dance, music, and theater—were the most ac- cessible ways to express creativity. Making and listening to black ‘muisic, both secular and sacred, was one of the ways black folks devel- oped an aesthetic. twas not an aesthetic documented in writing, but it

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