Edward Said & Bell Hooks Term Paper

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Orientalism, then, allowed the West to promote its political propaganda of colonizing Eastern societies. This propaganda of colonizing Eastern societies was legitimized by the West's insistence that the East needed to progress in the same way that it did (West) right after the economic success of the Industrial Revolution. Colonization was the West's method of "rehabilitating" societies it considered as a 'laggard' -- a society that, in the West's view and standards of modernity, had trailed behind other cultures throughout history. Colonization for Said is the "annihilation of the Asiatic society, and the laying of material foundations of Western society in Asia." The acceptance of the concepts of the Orient and Orientalism marked the validation of the intended colonization of the West of the Eastern societies. Colonization passed as a form of rehabilitation and democratization of a society is, interestingly, still practiced today, as was exemplified in the U.S.'s propaganda of declaring war against nations (such as Iraq and Afghanistan) that were allegedly "threats" to national (and international) security.

In a similar vein, hooks presented a critical analysis of the continued racial and economic superiority of white Americans and the increasing marginalization of black Americans. What hooks was trying to elucidate in "Outlaw Culture" was the existence of class divisions in the society based not only on one's socio-economic capacity, but also on race differences. This observation had survived the civil rights movement of the 1960s, surfacing once again in the early 1990s as hooks tried to make sense how the new culture, which she termed "outlaw culture," was created and developed in American society. The development of an "outlaw culture" was not consciously observed in American history because, as hooks argued, "earliest models for black intellectual life were not academics.

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..These writers were readers, thinkers, political activists committed to education for critical consciousness..." By stating this, hooks illustrated outlaw culture as emerging from communities, groups, and individuals and not from established social institutions.

The defiant nature of outlaw culture makes it an image of "otherness," in the same way that the West considered the East or Orient as "the other" side of high, sophisticated, and complex culture. Like Said, hooks believed that history played a very important role in reinforcing the black Americans as the "other," the marginalized group in the affluent American society. Class divisions based on racial differences was not phenomenon that naturally emerged, because this was the result of "[t]he nation's collective refusal to acknowledge institutionalized white supremacy is given deep and profound expression in the contemporary zeal to reclaim the myth of Christopher Columbus as patriotic icon." This passage resounded Said's discussion on colonialism; in this statement, hooks related how Columbus' legacy in American history was actually the symbol that marked the origins of white supremacy. For hooks, Columbus as the "patriotic icon" was a historical symbol that reminded her of the 'victimization, degradation, and exploitation" of "red and black people" by the "strange white strangers."

Gaining control in the class divisions of American society is then a heritage that white Americans inherited from these "strange white strangers" that validated their feelings of superiority against other races. Indeed, hooks' observations on the otherness or 'outlaw' nature of black Americans in American society were results of the "assumption that it was the whiteness of these explorers in the "New World" that gave them greater power...The key word, the one that was synonymous with whiteness, was 'civilization'.".....

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