Communion: Bell Hooks, Me and Our Thoughts on Love (Part One)

So last night I started reading another book by Bell Hooks… It centralizes on the Search for Love. It examines the dynamics of the family and the patriarchal system… She analyzes how these effects shape how we envision romantic relationships, and how those decisions help or hinder us in finding love.

Now, normally I would say Hooks has a tendency of impressing me. Her ability to conceptualize abstract constructions and apply them to the dynamic of relationships is innovative… and yet, even with my continual underlining of this book I have yet to be moved.

Maybe its’ because I feel as if I could have written this, and I think she has more to offer than my simple examinations or understanding of love and relationships.

Or maybe because her quest for fulfillment and love mirror mine… and though she is the voice for the marginalized, the silenced and the downtrodden .. nevertheless she is preaching to the choir.

For many reasons, I don’t feel the pain depicted in her loss of acceptance from her family, though I can honestly say I experienced something similar, and have yet to entirely recover from it.

Though I can empathize with her quest to find love outside of herself (when ultimately freedom and the actualization of love is an internal struggle, while the connections we form are the consequences of those developments), I am still unmoved.

Maybe it’s because I am frustrated. Frustrated at the notion of what we represent. As women we are acculturated, taught to be secondary, until it is apart our collective consciousness. Because of this we have an inherent need to prove that we are worthy of love. That our worth equates to the evaluation or devaluation of the people around us, while the manifestation of love (or our connections) is the measuring stick with which we define ourselves…

By discarding love for power, we perpetuate the patriarchal system. Acquiring control at the loss of our internal sense of self, of worth, and love.. is the new status-quo.

By disguising desperation and neediness as love.... we are given a false map, blindfolded, then asked to follow it in the hopes of seeking fulfillment… and no matter how lost we get, we rarely connect within ourselves to take off the blinders, and even when we do we rarely question the map, let alone ask anyone else for directions.

Nevertheless I learned today that I live between and within two factions:
The first faction lives in the past… They yearn and plead in loud clamors for me to discard love entirely. Or if I so chose to engage in the notion of marriage (cause god who wouldn’t want to get married!?!?), I should do it soon.
Conformity and Submission is key…and in return I may acquire and retain my sense of sanity, comfort, wealth, and potential autonomy…. In exchange I get to allow someone to take of me (have a roommate so to speak), remain alone (emotionally and psychologically), play into what society has laid out for me… and be safe…. For the rest of my life…

Sounds tempting…

The second faction I would like to call ‘the iconoclasts‘… they think it’s okay to destroy what we currently have in place…. They love the notion of dismantling all modes of constructions that beget domination. Which is nice on paper… but I left that idealistic sense of anarchy at the door when I was 15, and I don’t think I want to relive that period ever again…

So, why do I think this is ridiculous? Well…. It’s one thing to destroy the world, it’s another thing to reconstruct it.

They’ve spent so much time braking down walls, and still have yet to engender ways of creating a new world (and the ramifications of that world) to take it’s place. There is no discourse in how to enable girls to balance actual love and autonomy, let alone the ways in which society can generate a transformative way of creating such connections.

I remember once in my feminist theory course, everyone was all about dismantling the notion of a woman’s work within the home. And my caveat to that was… who replaces that role? Do we denigrate men into a role subjugation? And what are the consequences of such an upheaval? Why would someone want to dismantle a foundational part of our existence, something many derive power from….?
For example, women of color, derive a significant amount of power as the provider (and emotional bedrock) for their families….. They are forces that connect and strengthen our ties to the past, ourselves, and others. Why would anyone want to dismantle that?

Instead why can ‘t we just change our outlook, nurture the roles all people fill, instill respect and self-love and hope that filters out into the world…? We might not be able to change the way things are, but we can help ourselves and the people within our own worlds…. And if we play our cards right that should be enough.

Maybe if I read more I’ll change my mind about this book… maybe not… I’ll let you know.