In Conversation with bell hooks: Theory, Practice, and Becoming
Reading Theory as liberatory practice by bell hooks (1991) has felt like a transformative experience in itself: filling the margins with thoughts, reflections, and connections has elicited overwhelming excitement, gratitude, and resonance at a cellular level. Theory as liberatory practice feels like a window into hooks’ mind and existence, and it is thrilling to recognize so many parallels to my own life within her words. Through reading and reflection, I have become aware that I, like hooks, have been “doing theory” for as long as I have been able to think. Only now I also have language and a framework to understand and deepen this reflexive process. I also have a newfound understanding of myself within what hooks calls the “identity” of practitioner (p. 3). hooks’ words provide a roadmap, revealing how the seemingly disparate pieces of me can coalesce into a more coherent whole. Moreover, encountering this reading in the context of my first MA-IS course feels like a homecoming: MA-IS is where I will find the next several iterations of myself, as well as my place within academia and perhaps even society as a whole … all while retaining the authenticity that defines me.
hooks’ essay called forth a long-forgotten memory of my first exposure to women’s and gender studies. As a first-year student at the University of Guelph, I walked into what felt like a room filled with women’s rage. At 19, I was still raw from the trauma caused by my first boyfriend, a malignant narcissist who had taken great pleasure in tormenting me with physical, psychological, and sexual violence. When I entered that room, I did not have the capacity to wrestle with such seemingly-abstract concepts like patriarchy. I would love to say that I sensed the ickiness underlying the academic takeover of feminism, but I do not recall giving it that much thought before dropping the course. Looking back through my present lens, it is easy to see that the trauma I was reeling from stemmed from the same patriarchy and misogyny that my professor spoke of, but I have compassion for the version of me that was too consumed by survival to contemplate deconstruction.
In addition to doing theory, reflexivity is something I have always engaged in despite not having language to understand it. I am constantly thinking, reflecting, revising, and integrating my understanding of myself and the world. Intersectionality demands that I acknowledge the privileges and vulnerabilities I carry through life: I benefit from whiteness and the legacy of settler colonialism, yet being Autistic and ADHD (AuDHD) in contemporary Western society is inherently disabling; although I am queer, I benefit from being cisgender, and a lifetime of adapting to patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality (comphet) has taught me how to please and appease men; I was raised and am now raising my children below the LICO, but I am privileged by an education that provides pathways to greater financial security. Reflexivity, intersectionality, and social justice are at the core of why I am pursuing an MA-IS in the first place: to engage these concepts through hooks’ work feels powerful.
I see so many parallels between Theory as liberatory practice and the debate about applied behavioural analysis (ABA) within autism advocacy spaces. ABA is a major issue of contention: the medical and educational systems uphold ABA as the “gold standard” approach to autism despite the harmful effects described by Autistic adults. And since ABA is a lucrative industry, individuals and organizations alike benefit from perpetuating the status quo. Recently, I witnessed a dramatic conflict between two Autistic mothers at opposite ends of the ABA debate: Eileen earns her living as a vocal proponent of ABA, representing Autism Speaks (A$) and posting about her life raising a profoundly autistic child. In addition to being generously compensated by the dominant systems, Eileen is immensely popular on social media. The other figure in this debate is Henny, an autistic savant, published autism researcher, and #BanABA founder. Her work is highly critical of ABA and its proponents, and exemplifies the agitation and disruption that hooks describes as vital to transformative change. Henny has spoken out about efforts to discredit and bury her work within academia and medicine, and I have witnessed the backlash she encounters when speaking out on social media. Although I do not agree with everything she says, I admire Henny’s willingness to be the agitation and disruption necessary to create fundamental, transformative change within autistic support spaces.
Near the end of Theory as liberatory practice, hooks (1991) speaks about her insistence on writing in a way that keeps her work accessible to everyone, even when it is produced within academia. This resonates deeply for me, reinforcing my commitment to embrace my authentic voice as I write, regardless of the intended audience. My academic and activist pursuits are inextricably (and intentionally) intertwined, and every attempt I have ever made at writing another way has failed spectacularly. It is here, as I reflect on the parallels between hooks’ writing and my own, that my reflective analysis deepens.
What I enjoy most about hooks’ work is that it feels like a conversation with a friend: her voice is clear and authentic, and she speaks with, rather than at, her readers. This quality is something I have also been told about my own writing, and for many years I dismissed this praise based on the notion that writing is something that anyone can do just as easily as I. It is incredibly difficult for me to write openly about the parallels between hooks’ writing and my own, in part because I am deeply averse to giving the impression of boasting. In fact, I am more confident minimizing my accomplishments than acknowledging them.
A few days ago, I told a new friend that I am pursuing a Master’s degree. Her response was one of genuine excitement and congratulations, followed by:
“Wow, that’s amazing. You must be so proud of yourself!”
For a moment, I did not know how to respond. Finally, I replied, “Well, yes, I am. It’s been a lifelong dream … but it’s probably going to take me five years to complete.”
The conversation wrapped up soon afterwards, but I am still pondering it days later and recognizing it as one instance in a longstanding pattern of minimizing my own achievement. I cannot separate this tendency from my Autistic identity: many of us, myself included, struggle with a fear of being perceived, often due to past experiences with social interactions that have gone awry. The reality is that I have had to overcome innumerable obstacles to get to this point, not the least of which has been my own imposter syndrome. I deserve to be proud of myself. hooks (1991) encourages feminist scholars to persist in the face of dismissal, devaluation, and backlash: I fully intend to do exactly that, one course at a time.
References
hooks, b. (1991). Theory as liberatory practice. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 4(1), 1-12.
Finding a Home in Community Studies
My lifelong fascination with people has always been multidisciplinary. Although I cannot recall when my childhood dream of becoming an anthropologist waned, I suspect it was around the time I realized that fieldwork would require getting literal dirt on my hands, and that’s one sensory nightmare I prefer to avoid. My first undergraduate degree included courses in psychology, sociology, English, political science, human development, and philosophy, among others. Over the next two decades, my work and further education spanned the social and human services, until a profound burnout forced me to reconsider my path forward. Losing my mom to cancer in 2018, discovering and embracing my AuDHD identity, and discovering intentional communities further cemented my pathway into MA-IS and into Community Studies (CS) specifically.
At its core, CS asks how communities can be designed to serve their members holistically and support human flourishing, while also functioning as healthy and sustainable systems. Central to this inquiry is the challenge of balancing individual needs with collective wellbeing, as well as identifying what changes are necessary to make such communities possible. Within this framework, purposive action and transformative change emerge as key concepts, particularly as they relate to dismantling and reimagining the settler colonial, White supremacist, capitalist patriarchy that underpins Western social structures and systems. Taking a critical approach, CS acknowledges that our current neoliberal systems offload responsibility for wellbeing onto individuals, while simultaneously oppressing and disempowering all but a select few. A salient example of this is the way women and mothers are disproportionately burdened with responsibility for collective wellbeing, as evidenced by historical patterns of blaming women and mothers for all manner of personal and social problems (Kinser, 2010).
Several MA-IS 601 readings and discussions are directly relevant to Community Studies. Newell’s conceptualization of interdisciplinary studies as reflexive, iterative, and emergent mirrors the development and flow of community work at the grassroots level. Similarly, hooks’ insistence that theory and practice are inseparable foregrounds the lived experiences of oppression and marginalization that community-based work must address, while Sheldrake’s commitment to questioning dominant assumptions reflects the kind of critique necessary for transformative change. These ideas can be applied to the structure of contemporary communities, particularly the shift from communal, interdependent structures toward nuclear family models shaped by industrialism and capitalism. I experience the consequences of this shift as a lone parent of AuDHD children, navigating life without a true village and relying instead on limited paid supports, which are themselves a form of privilege that is contingent on precarious and temporary disability-related funding.
Community Studies is inherently interdisciplinary, encompassing the social sciences and humanities (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, geography, gender, and disability studies), communication and linguistic fields (e.g., narrative storytelling, cultural and linguistic studies), applied and practical disciplines (e.g., human services, education, health sciences), structural and systemic disciplines (e.g., economics, political science, law, public administration, systems theory), as well as creative disciplines (e.g., performing and visual arts). Its orientation toward theory is reflected in the emergent and reflexive use of critical, action-oriented, and grassroots approaches to social change. Rather than treating theory as abstract, CS applies it in a practical way to make sense of, question, and transform social structures and dynamics, as demonstrated by Pam Warhurst (2012) in her TED talk How We Can Eat Our Landscapes. She explains how a dedicated group of community members recognized a need (i.e., food insecurity) and took action without waiting or asking for permission: what began as a seed swap and community gardens expanded into community education, engaging local businesses, and creating the Incredible Edible Green Route to guide vegetable tourists around town. In her example, everyone is positioned as both a stakeholder and a beneficiary of grassroots solutions to shared problems.
While I am confident in my choice to focus on CS, I still wonder how I can possibly narrow my studies amid my expansive and interconnected interests. I suspect that the answer is to allow the MA-IS program to guide me in the responsive, iterative, and emergent way it is intended to. A second, more practical question concerns program structure: when courses are listed as electives across multiple focus areas, how are they applied to MA-IS degree requirements? For example, MAIS 616 is listed as an elective in CS, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, and Writing and New Media: will it be counted toward my focus area or toward my non-focus area requirements?
References
Kinser, A. E. (2010). Motherhood and feminism. Seal Press.
Warhurst, P. (2012, August 9). How we can eat our landscapes [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes
Candice Reich 