bell hooks - Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness
hooks, bell. ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media No.36 (1989): 15–23.
"We are wedded in language, have our being in words. Language is also a place of struggle."
(page 16)
"I am waiting for them to stop talking about the "other", to stop even describing how important it is to be able to speak about difference. It is not just important what we speak about but how and why we speak. Often this speech about the "other" is also a mask, an oppressive talk hiding gaps, absences, that space where our words would be if we were speaking, if there was silence, if we were there. This "we" is that us in the margins, that "we" who inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of resistance. Enter that space. Often this speech about the "other" annihilates, erases. No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself a new. I am still author, authority. I am still the coloniser, the speaking subject and you are now at the centre of my talk. We greet you as liberators. This "we" is that us in the margins, that "we" who inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of resistance. Enter that space. This is an intervention. I am writing to you. I am speaking from a place in the margins where I am different, where I see things differently. I am talking about what I see."
(page 22)
"Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated and transformed through artistic and literary practice."
(page 23)
(page 16)
"I am waiting for them to stop talking about the "other", to stop even describing how important it is to be able to speak about difference. It is not just important what we speak about but how and why we speak. Often this speech about the "other" is also a mask, an oppressive talk hiding gaps, absences, that space where our words would be if we were speaking, if there was silence, if we were there. This "we" is that us in the margins, that "we" who inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of resistance. Enter that space. Often this speech about the "other" annihilates, erases. No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself a new. I am still author, authority. I am still the coloniser, the speaking subject and you are now at the centre of my talk. We greet you as liberators. This "we" is that us in the margins, that "we" who inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of resistance. Enter that space. This is an intervention. I am writing to you. I am speaking from a place in the margins where I am different, where I see things differently. I am talking about what I see."
(page 22)
"Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated and transformed through artistic and literary practice."
(page 23)