Hi all- so, I have a feeling this may not be exactly what was assigned, BUT I decided to keep this week’s blog post in the weird hybrid outline-form that I usually utilize when outlining articles to use for papers. I originally sketched this out in bullet points, planning to piece it back together into an actually essay type thing for the blog post. But I think leaving it like this would be best for me in terms of actually using this for writing seminar paper in my other class. The article I’m writing about is bell hooks’ “Writing the Subject: Reading The Color Purple”

-       bell hooks thinks that it is not “unusual or even interesting” 455 to write about a black woman who is explicitly detailing sex in letters to god

o   she thinks the graphic descriptions of sex conform to current contemporary expectations in women’s writing

-       hooks argues that celie is “Talking sex” And is largely defined by sex. she says this is an inversion of the classic victorian novel, where the contemporary heroine talks sex explicitly

o   she quotes Rosalind coward: “there’s a danger that such structures reproduce the Victorian ideology that sexuality is somehow outside social relationships. the idea that a woman could become her own person just through sexual experiences and the discovery of sexual needs and dislikes again establishes sexual relations as somehow separate from social structures”

-       hooks is critical that walker uses sexual desire as a way to “disrupt and subvert oppressive social structure because it does not necessarily conform to social prescription,” but she says that walker misses a key point- in the book celie’s sexual desire is not considered threatening or dangerous (mainly because Mr. is not threatened by celie’s desire for shug).

o   in this way, homophobia is not present in the novel

o   hooks describes celie as being rejected by shug avery, because the acknowledgement of lesbianism is never validated, so she has no social reality where she can form an ongoing relationship with her. hooks argues that this prompt rejection is what leads to celie’s reconciliation with MR, her oppressive former husband. hooks’ main critique is of this liberalism: “sex between shug and celie does not threaten male-female bonding or affirm the possibility that women can be fulfilled in a life that does not include intimate relationships with men. “ Hooks is basically critical of the lack of tension, she writes “Walker constructs an ideal world of true love and commitment where there is no erotic tension- where there is no sexual desire or sexual pleasure.”  hooks uses this as a launching pad into a discussion of the novel as an inverted pornographic narrative that allows readers a voyeuristic look into celie’s path from sexual victim to sexually awakened woman, where the natural conclusion readers arrive at needs to be ‘anti-male domination.’

§  hooks outlines the standard pornographic narrative, relying on Annette Kuhn’s essay “Lawless seeing.” hooks’ main point here seems to be that walker’s work inverts a classic pornographic narrative, mainly by writing towards a white  female audience, and constructing “a fiction in which it is the masculine threat, represented by black masculinity, that must be contained, controlled, and ultimately transformed.” this is where she moves to discuss the role of mr and his spiritual  460transformation.  hooks writes, “Since sexuality and power are so closely linked to politics of domination, Mr. must be completely desexualized as part of the transformative process.”  460

·      This here moves us into hooks’ analysis of the role of the “erotic metaphysic” that walker uses to talk about spirituality. She writes, “spiritual quest is connected with the effort of characters in The Color Purple to be more fully self-realized. This effort merges in an unproblematic way with a materialist ethic which links acquisition of goods with the capacity to experience emotional well-being. Traditionally mystical experience is informed by radical critique and renunciation of materialism. Walker positively links the two.” (461)

o   This is really where hooks launches into her hard-hitting Marxist critique of the book. She is essentially critical of walker for writing entrepreneurship as a solution to capitalist oppression. Celie’s shift into the role of being a capitalist entrepreneur, hooks argues, is not seen as a negative because Celie is cast as being inherently non-threatening and seems to be naturally inclined towards victimhood. hooks then contrasts this state of perpetual victimhood with Sofia, who actively resists her oppression both publically and privately and is in turn punished severely. hooks writes, “It is not without grave and serious import that the character who most radically challenges sexism and racism is a tragic figure who is only partially rescued- restored to only a semblance of sanity.” (462) hooks also writes critically of walker’s unwillingness to harshly condemn the rape of black women by white men in the same way she does when black women are abused by black men.

o   hooks then comes back to the Marxist angle by criticizing the spiritual component of the novel as being divorced form historical reality.  hooks accuses walker of undermining the necessity of collective struggle by placing the emphasis instead on individual spiritual struggle. she argues that celie seems to come upon her liberation simply by entering into a capitalist economy and by cultivating her own individualistic sense of spirituality. “walker compares the structure of the color purple  to the form of the historical slave narrative, and again accuses walker of appropriating the form while doing away with any and all of its radical potential. “By de-emphasizing the collective plight of black people, or even black women, and focusing on the individual’s quest for freedom as separate and distinct, walker makes a crucial break with that revolutionary African-American literary tradition...furthermore, by linking this form to the sentimental novel as though they served similar functions, Walker strips the slave narrative of its revolutionary ideological intent and content, connecting it to Eurocentral bourgeois literary traditions in such a way as to suggest it was merely derivative and in no way distinct” 465 hooks takes the a step further by arguing that walker ignores the slave narrative’s tradition of using literacy and writing as an act of resistance or liberation, because Celie “is empowered not by the written word but by the spoken word- by telling her story to shug.” 466

§  think here about the blues as a mode of knowledge

·      “That celie and Nettie’s letters are basically self-serving is evident when it is revealed that there has never been a true correspondence” 467