I began PgCert this term introducing myself with bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, which resonated with me as an artist who did not necessarily set out to teach, and sometimes feels restricted by it, but against those restrictions, looks to cultivate freedom of thought and practice, for myself and for my students. When hooks died in December 2021, I immediately set about trying to putting together an event on behalf of the Subjectivities and Feminisms Research Group at CCW to honour her legacy. The bringing together of staff and students across races and genders – both performing and watching, was extremely rewarding, and I would like to take my research on hooks forward further in other educational contexts at UAL.
A Queer, Black feminist and prominent scholar on race and gender, bell hooks wrote
that:
In the United States, maintaining white supremacy has always been as great if
not a greater priority than maintaining strict sex role divisions. Women are divided
by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege… Sustained woman bonding can occur
only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to
eliminate them… Solidarity strengthens resistance struggle. When white women
attack white supremacy they are simultaneously participating in the struggle to
end sexist oppression.
(Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women’. Feminist Review, no. 23 (1986): 125–38.)
and:
I think that we have to give feminist politics and feminist movements its props that
it’s one of the few movements for social justice in our nation that has tried in its
visionary aspects to highlight that interdependency between systems of
domination and has tried not to say that somehow it’s an issue of class or it’s an
issue of race, but rather, how do these issues work together to sustain dominator culture.
(Bell Hooks: A Conversation with Bell Hooks, 2020.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Q02nMr02xh2zzS3CRvJM5).
With the support of the Subjectivities and Feminisms Research Group, the Dean of Fine Art, Sophie Phoca, and the Chair of the Anti-Racist EDI Sub-Group, Jheni Arboine, I put out an open call. Expanding on bell hooks’ titles and concepts – I invited proposals for live responses of up to 5 minutes to any of the suggested themes below. The format could be a gesture, a reading, a poem, a song, a manifesto, a costume, a video, an object, a dance, an amalgamation of all or none of these! Collaborations were welcomed!
– Loving Difference as Political Resistance
– Ain’t I a Womxn: celebrating femaleness across genders, races, classes, disabilities and non-disabilities
– Undoing the Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy
– Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black and Brown: feminism and anti-racism
– Revolutionary Mutuality: proposals for radical minoritarian coalitions
– Alternative Masculinities
I wrote a story for Canvas as follows:
This International Women’s Day, UAL’s Subjectivity & Feminisms research group is staging a public cabaret performance and video evening to honour the late bell hooks. To be held on Tuesday 8 March, 5.30pm-7.30pm at Chelsea College of Arts, the range of acts promises to be as exciting and diverse as its staff, student and guest contributors.
The Subjectivity and Feminisms Research Group has been co-convened by Dr Maria Walsh and Dr Mo Throp since 2004, and one of the on-going research questions for the Group is whether and how subjectivity is a transitive process, and whether and how it is attached to identity (race, gender, sexuality, disability etc.).
Research Group member Dr Lana Locke, who is leading the Ain’t I a Womxn event, explains how she initiated it to “both communicate and challenge” the group’s continuing discussions around difference: through hooks’ writing and through seeking submissions beyond “a thus far predominantly White and middle-classed membership, which we want to change”. She takes inspiration from hooks who, in conversation with transgender actress Laverne Cox said, “I am actually critical about the notion of safety in my work… White people love to evoke the safe spaces!… I am very interested in what does it mean for us to cultivate together a community that allows for risk: the risk of knowing someone outside your own boundaries; the risk that is love.” (hooks, 2014)
An anti-racist, feminist, queer African American scholar, hooks died in December 2021. She leaves behind her a legacy of refusal of all forms of violence and discrimination, combined with a spirit of kindness, openness and simplicity in her messages. In putting the event together, Locke highlights two of her texts: Ain’t I Woman (1981) – examining the history and perpetuation of racism and sexism against Black women – and Feminism is for Everybody (2000) – written by hooks specifically to help those who either did not know or misunderstood what feminism was.
Contributors include: Jheni Arboine, Agnes Brodje Stiernstedt, Roshni Bhagotra, Joa Blumenkranz, Cécile Emmanuelle Borra, Jo Bruton, Quilla Constance, Fran Cottell, Rosemary Cronin, Bernadette Enright, Keli Garrett, Tara Jerome-Bernabe, Ying Liu, Lana Locke, Catherine Maffioletti, Yulia Rotkina, Abigail Sia, Mo Throp, Maria Walsh, Xiao Xie, Yifei Xie.
We recorded the event, so a link to the recording will follow – watch this space!