An Analysis of Postmodern Blackness by Bell Hooks

When the essay was first written during the 1990’s, the main point was that postmodernism was probably the most well-known trend with scholars and different academic people for its thoughts of "heterogeneity, the decentered subject...recognition of Otherness" which was just a number of different ways for saying, culture was attempting to help empower the underestimated and overlooked voices in society.

Nonetheless, those main scholars of postmodernism were basically following a "do as I say, not as I do" display. They would attempt to challenge for better approaches for considering, or challenging against old mindsets, while in the meantime falling prey to their own particular old thoughts regarding there being "no significant association between the black experience and critical thinking about aesthetics or culture". Hooks utilizes essentialism as the primary method for uncovering the postmodernist falseness overrunning culture. Essentialism challenges the idea that one truth or standard exists to which every one of us ought to work towards or to submit to. Postmodernism works against essentialism since essentialism takes away the potential outcomes for boundless perspectives or points of view in which we can see the world and live by.

Bell trusts that postmodern culture hopes to rid of the idea of essentialism yet still supports its practicality, on the grounds that the discussion being had in postmodernism is "fundamentally to a particular gathering of people that offers a common language established in the very master narratives it claims to challenge." In spite of the falseness postmodernism portrays within its perspective of essentialism, in any case, Bell discovers some support in postmodernism. By uncovering essentialism as a false, Bell contends that postmodernism has made a longing that joins everybody who has ever felt devalued or misunderstood. Bell at last considers postmodernism to be doing great, and she sees that the task of removing essentialism can possibly free those who are truly oppressed. They just should see the bounds of their present postmodernist society first.

Compared to most theories on postmodernism, Bell sees next to no portrayal of the voices of black individuals especially those voices of black females. Some portion of this is a result of the fundamental racism in the school of thought, which as per Bell Hooks is both a reason and an impact of the conviction of African American researchers that there is little in postmodernism that is applicable to the black experience. The irony of this all is that postmodernism depends on the possibility of specificity and assorted variety of experience, and Hooks challenges that black postmodernist writers have engrossed, acknowledged, and confirmed through their works, the racial oppression that they have tried to challenge.

Be that as it may, Bell guarantees that ongoing advancements, particularly deindustrialization, have made the likelihood for compassion across a number of identities. There are white working-class individuals who are encountering the same "oppression" as the ones which black individuals have to face. However, the focal worry of this paper is that black researchers should utilize the critique of "essentialism" that is vital to postmodernism without dismissing the possibility of a black experience. Most crucial, African-American researchers, such as Bell Hooks, ought to draw in with individuals in the society, particularly artists, whose work is likewise a type of analysis.