Bell Hooks “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance”

Frederick Douglas devalues the role of his mother by not appreciating the struggles that her mother who was working for the white family of Mr. Stewart as a maid, located several miles from her home, went through in order ensure that her family receives that mother care. According to Hooks, the failure of Frederick Douglass to appreciate her mother’s struggles to make things better for her family is visible when he later says he never enjoyed his mother’s “soothing presence, her tender and watchful care” and his mother dies he never felt any emotions of grief for her, just as he would respond at the death of a stranger (178). She says by Douglass failing to recognize the “quality of care that made his black mother travel those twelve miles to hold him in her arms”, he is in fact devaluing her role, given that she was able to do this under harsh racist conditions (178).

Hooks further criticizes “mother worship” in the black communities because she argues it is a sexist response to devaluation that doesn’t take into account the “particular circumstances of black women in relation to black men and families”. This delegates women’s role in the struggle for freedom to merely “natural role” by implying that women’s determination in the struggle is not emanating from their choice and will, but is a matter of their natural responsibility (Hooks 179).

According to Hooks, building a home is politically radical because it is an embodiment of freedom from domination and racism. Home also offers an opportunity for one to freely deal with the challenges of dehumanization; it is a perfect place where motivations for resistance could be brewed, and black community dignity restored. It would therefore symbolize a radical step against domination and devaluation. She remarks that “one’s homeplace was the one site where one could freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist” (176). Resistance is considered a politically radical move against political oppression and racial segregation.  It is in homes also that people could be free from objectification and from being subjects of an oppressive master. Finally this act would provide a safe place to nurture forces that would be valuable in the struggle for freedom.

The restoration of dignity at home, according to Hooks, is undertaken by building a strong foundation that can recover the lost perspective and reevaluate self-consciousness. This occurs when black women renew their political commitment to the value of home, by responding to the needs and concerns of young black women, who are the next generation with the responsibility to provide nurturance to home. The purpose of this is to infuse the ideals and value of black dignity on the young generation that is still confused in their struggle to achieve self-definition and self-growth (183). Under these circumstances, “black women can renew their commitment to black liberation struggle, sharing insights and awareness” and in solidarity be able to realize the feminist vision (183).

Hooks’s understanding is a critical challenge to the perspective offered by Kant’s account of the use of public reason. While Hooks believes that reason can be collectively nurtured in the private sphere of home to achieve a public function, for example by teaching black women about the meanings they are groping with and self-definition to achieve the collective freedom, Kant believes that enlightenment is one’s emergence from self-incurred immaturity”, by freeing self from the guidance of social institutions to achieve self-fulfillment(1996).

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