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This article engages bell hookss concept of radical black subjectivity through the lens
of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self. Relying on the Zen theorist Dogen and on resources
from Japanese aesthetics, I argue that non-attachment to the self clarifies hookss claim
that radical subjectivity unites our capacity for critical resistance with our capacity to
appreciate beauty. I frame this argument in terms of hookss concern that postmodernist identity critiques dismiss the identity claims of disempowered peoples. On the one
hand, identity critique has an emotional component, as it involves questioning the self
and possibly letting go of aspects of that self in which a person has inevitably made
emotional investments. On the other hand, it has an aesthetic component, as it opens
a space for the creative crafting and recrafting of identity. Japanese aesthetics emphasizes that all aesthetic appreciation is accompanied by feelings of mournfulness, for the
object of aesthetic appreciation is transient. Linking hookss liberatory aesthetics with
the resources of the Japanese tradition suggests that mournfulness in the face of self-loss
necessarily accompanies all instances of critical resistance. Thus non-attachment
becomes a useful framework in which to understand both the emotional and aesthetic
components of empowered identity critique.
If identity has become suspect, identity politics has been prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to death. To espouse identity politics
in the academy today risks being viewed as a member of the FlatEarth Society. Like essentialism, identity politics has become the
shibboleth of cultural studies and social theory, and denouncing it
has become the litmus test of academic respectability, political
acceptability, and even a necessity for the very right to be heard.
(Alcoff 2000, 313)
Hypatia vol. 27, no. 4 (Fall 2012) by Hypatia, Inc.
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addressing immediate and glaring injustices, but ultimately the claimants are
expected to get over their divisive political stance, as well as their essentialist
account of identity that this stance reflects.
Hooks refuses to cast identity claims in these dialectical terms. She envisions
black identity occupying a stance of critical resistance that is oppositional without
being merely reactionary, and she describes this creative sense of oppositionality in
aesthetic terms. As she says, there is a connection between our capacity to engage
in critical resistance and our ability to experience pleasure and beauty (hooks
1990, 111). Japanese aesthetics can help make this connection clear. With its
emphasis on the aesthetic appreciation of impermanence and the emotional qualities of such experience, it shows that an empowered and creative sense of selfidentity cannot be separated from a sense of self-loss. Addressing this loss, the
Buddhist notion of non-attachment to the self becomes a model through which to
understand the relation hooks sees between critical resistance and aesthetic experience. On this model, the radical subjectivity of no-self becomes a rich resource
for critical discourse: It supports a notion of identity qua radical subjectivity without falling back into essentialist thinking; and it provides a coherent framework
in which to work through the emotional complexity of identity critiques.
OVERVIEW: THE DOCTRINE OF NO-SELF AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
FOR CRITICAL DISCOURSE
The doctrine of no-self is best understood in the context of other important Buddhist terms, such as emptiness, impermanence, and dependent arising. The notion
of emptiness does not refer to simple nothingness or to the nihilistic negation of
existence. Rather, the doctrine of emptiness asks us to take an unrelentingly honest look at the immediacy of lived experience and to recognize the fundamental
impermanence of all that exists. In other words, it asks us to reflect on the idea
that we always experience life in its passing. In this continual flux, beings have no
permanent nature and are thus empty of independent existence. Because no
being exists independently, all are said to rely on one another in a web of mutual
interdependence, or what Buddhism calls dependent arising. The self, also lacking
independent existence, is called no-self. Again, this does not mean that the self is
simplistically non-existent, but that its manner of existing cannot be separated
from the web of mutually interdependent relations that sustain it.
From out of themes such as no-self, impermanence, and mutual interdependence, comparative philosophy has come to share with feminist thought a
concern for what both groups call the relational self. Comparative philosophy
tends toward an extreme form of relational personhood that I call constitutive
relationality. For example, contemporary work in Confucian role ethics holds that
a person is constituted entirely through her roles and relations. A person is a
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In the concluding section of this essay, I will offer an alternative interpretation of the doctrine of no-self that answers these three objections, thus
highlighting the potential usefulness of the doctrine within critical discourses
such as feminism and race theory.
BLACK ORPHEUS
AND THE
DIALECTIC
OF
SELF-OVERCOMING
I frame my reading of bell hooks in the context of a brief but illustrative story
about Jean-Paul Sartre and the poets of the Negritude movement, an anti-colonial movement of the 1930s involving black intellectuals and artists in France,
French-speaking Africa, and the African diaspora. In this story, Sartre writes the
essay Black Orpheus as a preface to the first published volume of Negritude
poetry. This project presents him with a challenge, for on the one hand, Sartre
the philosopher is committed to debunking essentialist accounts of identity. On
the other hand, Sartre the political activist is committed to the anti-colonialist
agenda of the Negritude movement. Problematically, for Sartre the philosopher,
the poets of his book are self-consciously preoccupied with the search for their
essential black identitytheir negritude.
Trying to navigate this issue, Sartre spends a portion of his essay explaining
that it is necessary through a poetic expression that the black man in his
present situation must first take conscience of himself... (Sartre 1976, 11). In
taking conscience of himself, Sartre admits that the black man may find it
appropriate to speak of his racial identity in terms such as the black soul (17).
But, as Sartre eventually concludes, one must at some point come to reject any
belief in the inner homogeneity of negritude (57). He explains why this notion
of black identity will one day be outdated:
In fact, Negritude appears as the weak stage of a dialectical
progression: the theoretical and practical affirmation of white
supremacy is the thesis; the position of Negritude as antithetical
value is the moment of negativity. But this negative moment is
not sufficient in itself and the blacks who employ it well know it;
they know that it serves to prepare the way for the synthesis, or
the realization of a human society without racism. Thus Negritude
is dedicated to its own destruction, it is passage and not objective,
means and not the ultimate goal. At the moment the black
Orpheus most directly embraces this Eurydice, he feels her vanish
from between his arms. (60)
In this passage, Sartre relies on a dialectical model to explain progress toward
the eventual overcoming of an essentialist account of identity. At an early stage
of the dialectic, when a persons identity is damaged due to a history of oppression, that person needs to build up a functional sense of self-worth, which may
Leah Kalmanson
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involve empowering talk of his or her soul. But this sense of self, no matter
how empowering a person may find it in the short term, must eventually be
discarded. The ultimate goal lies in overcoming these divisive identity claims to
make possible a non-racist society.
On this dialectical model, the black soulthis fleeting Eurydiceis as illusory as the white soul, but the black man simply has yet to fully embrace this
existential situation. Despite the attempt at a philosophically nuanced account
of black identity, Sartre nonetheless implies that the Negritude movement is a
reactionary position that must eventually be overcome, and black identity is an
illusion that must eventually be discarded when the black man achieves the existential crisis of the modern European male.
Versions of a dialectical model influence projects of identity politics to this
day. This is evident in questions about the goals of the people involved in
identity politics: Are they working to make their own cause obsolete? That is,
after working to expose and overcome the oppression that afflicts their particular
group, will they be out of jobs if and when their work becomes successful? One
may be tempted to answer this question affirmativelyafter all, no one wishes to
promote oppression simply for the sake of continuing the work of identity
politics. As Sartre says, the Negritude movement must be overcome to pave the
way for a society without racism. And who doesnt want that?
However, an affirmative answer conceals certain assumptions about the nature
of identity and the nature of progress. Specifically, the idea that identity politics
should one day be unnecessary reveals a kind of utopianism, which equates
progress toward the utopian ideal with the progressive erasure of all conflict.
From this perspective, it is difficult to say whether a society without racism is
not simply a society without race.
One may rightfully have suspicions about the apparent effacing of difference
that this utopianism implies, but a negative answer to the question about obsoleteness and identity politics threatens to take us from the extreme of utopianism
to the extreme of nihilism. In other words, it invites an attitude of defeatism,
which asks: if the overcoming of all oppression is impossible, then why work to
change anything at all? At both extremes, identity politics remains caught in the
dialectical bind. At the one end, insisting on personal empowerment is dismissed
as a nave belief in an essential identity; at the other, personal empowerment is
at best an attempt to make do under present circumstances while remaining
resigned to the idea that no lasting victory against oppression is possible.
RADICAL SUBJECTIVITY: BEYOND
THE
DIALECTIC
OF
SELF-OVERCOMING
In her work on radical subjectivity and elsewhere, I see bell hooks searching for
a way out of this dialectic. She recognizes that essentialist accounts of identity
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I identify the empowering potential of artistry in everyday life as a third component in hookss vision for radical subjectivity. As I interpret it, this aesthetic
dimension helps to refine the radicalness of the creative changes that make possible
statements such as I am no longer the same person or I am of two minds. One
does not become a new person through a brute leap in consciousness, or through
extreme detachment, in which the old self is unemotionally discarded. And one
does not experience subjective multiplicity as the chaotic fracturing of identity.
Rather, moments of personal rebirth or subjective complexity have an emotional
resonance that can be described in aesthetic terms: such moments may be beautiful,
moving, or even tragic. The capacity to appreciate the aesthetic dimension of ones
own identity, even when this involves emotional pain, is a mark of radical
subjectivity.
Thus I interpret the connection hooks sees between our capacity to engage
in critical resistance and our ability to experience pleasure and beauty to lie in
the empowering potential of having such an aesthetic perspective on ones emotions as they relate to the creative crafting and recrafting of identity (hooks
1990, 111). Based on this empowering potential, hooks invokes the possibility
for a liberatory aesthetic that can harness the creativity of subjectivity in ways
that oppose social determinism and transform community life. She describes this
creative potential while recounting her reflections on an essay in Japanese
aesthetics, which she discusses with her sibling:
After reading Tanizakis essay on aesthetics In Praise of
Shadows, I tell this sister in a late night conversation that I am
learning to think about blackness in a new way... . My sister has
skin darker than mine. We think about our skin as a dark room, a
place of shadows. We talk often about color politics and the ways
racism has created an aesthetic that wounds us, a way of thinking
about beauty that hurts. In the shadows of late night, we talk
about the need to see darkness differently, to talk about it in a
new way. In that space of shadows, we long for an aesthetic of
blacknessstrange and oppositional. (hooks 1990, 113)
As indicated earlier, radical black subjectivity is not strange and oppositional through being simply reactionary. The above turn to aesthetics indicates
that the driving force behind the capacity for non-reactionary oppositionality is
artistic in nature. The drama and creativity of radical subjectivity are terms of
this liberatory aesthetic. Here, hookss use of oppositionality challenges normal
associations with this word: What is oppositionality if not a reaction against that
which one opposes? What might it mean to be oppositional as an end in itself?
Can one appreciate oppositionality for its own sake? Taking a cue from hookss
emphasis on artistic practice, the next section turns to Japanese aesthetics to
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explore the emotional complexity contained within the Buddhist idea of nonattachment as a key to understanding oppositionality in non-reactionary terms.
LIBERATORY AESTHETICS
AND JAPANESE
AESTHETICS
The doctrine of no-self has an immediate affinity with two of the above components of radical subjectivity: multiplicity and changeability. As stated earlier, the
Buddhist themes of emptiness and impermanence point to the perpetual transitoriness of individual existence. Thus the subject is necessarily changeable. Moreover, given that the self is a series of changing states, none of which correspond
to any true self, the various states do not represent different versions of one and
the same self, but different selves. As Vrinda Dalmiya writes, drawing on Mark
Sideritss analysis of Santideva, the future states considered as mine are really as
other to the current me as some contemporary state of another (Dalmiya 2001,
70). Thus the subject is necessarily a multiplicity. What makes this connection
between Buddhist themes and bell hookss work most interesting is the potential
for the doctrine of no-self to engage her vision for liberatory aesthetics. This
potential hinges on another key Buddhist concept, non-attachment.
The roots of attachment lie in a failure to accept the continual arising and
passing away of the selfs experiences and in a desire to cling to some experiences while rejecting others. Thus Buddhism holds that the proper attitude
toward lifes impermanence is one of non-attachment. Whereas some may read
non-attachment as a kind of cool detachment, meaning to distance oneself
emotionally from lifes transience, not all interpretations of it offer emotional
escape from the pain of loss due to impermanence. Notably, the thirteenthcentury Zen Master Dogen does not suggest overcoming attachments by retreating from the world and worldly relations. On the contrary, Dogen claims that
non-attachment is achieved through a heightened sense of responsibility for and
responsiveness to other people: Just practice good, do good things for others
without thinking of establishing your own name, and truly benefit others without
earning anything for yourself. To break free of the self, this is the first matter of
concern (Yamazaki 1972, 189).3 That the practice of non-attachment should
involve a sincere and emotionally mature involvement with others and their
concerns is somewhat counterintuitive. Yet the rich connection between nonattachment and compassion is a central theme within Buddhism in general and
in the Japanese Zen tradition of which Dogen is a part. This is especially evident
within traditional theories of art in Japan, which, under the influence of Buddhism, show a marked preference for artistic themes meant to inspire attitudes of
non-attachment and emotional engagement at the same time.4
This emotional dimension is usually described as a deep and sad mournfulness
that accompanies aesthetic appreciation. Two terms in particular, aware and sabi,
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Here, Kenko does not deny the regret that must accompany the passing of
beautiful things, such as blossoms and full moons. Their passing is unavoidably
sad. But, it would be wrongheaded to claim that the possibilities for aesthetic
appreciation are exhausted when flowers wither and moons wane. To the
contrary, the fullness of aesthetic experience includes beauty in its demise as well
as at its height.
Robert Carter summarizes the mournful and aesthetic dimensions of impermanence as follows:
The fleeting quality of life, and existence generally, creates a sense
of melancholy, of sadness, even to the edge of despair, for the
beauty of the world, together with the joys of the world, are
transitory and always already disintegrating and decaying. Our
recognition of impermanence carries with it a sadness; and yet,
awareness of impermanence also carries with it an intensified
sense of the preciousness of each moment and of each of the
things of this world. (Carter 2008, 82)
As Carter makes clear, the aesthetic appreciation of transitory beauty leads
not to morbidity but to a deep sadness, which cannot be separated from a deep
appreciation of life as it is in its constant arising and passing. To evade this sadness is to fail to appreciate life as it is or to impose a false sense of permanence
on what is actually in constant flux. The deepest appreciation of life in its lived
immediacy will not erect emotional barriers against the impermanence that
eventually carries away all that one might appreciate. Such appreciation brings
inevitable sadness, but it also grants a valuable and meaningful aesthetic awareness, which would be impossible without the accompanying mournfulness.
Thus, in recognition of this ever-impending sense of loss, the aesthetic appreciation of impermanence calls for an attitude of non-attachment, which enables
one to savor beauty while it lasts and let go of it when it passes. However, to be
non-attached to beauty is not simply to be anti-beauty, just as non-attachment
to the self is not simply anti-self. Non-attachment is not a reactionary stance.
Rather, to be non-attached is to be open to, and to care deeply for, life in the
present moment, while recognizing the futility of ever preserving, as if in stone,
that for which one cares.
THE CREATIVE POWER OF CRITIQUE: NON-ATTACHMENT
NON-REACTIONARY OPPOSITION
AND
The above reflections on transience and non-attachment point to the deceptively simple insight that with all change comes loss. In order to seize the creative
potential of change, one must be emotionally equipped to deal with the inevita-
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ble loss. The doctrine of no-self speaks to the lived experience of the perpetual
changes and losses of subjective existence. In the constant flux of impermanence,
my own identity is a fleeting thing. I am constantly required to adapt myself to
new contexts, to let go of past selves in order to move forward, and to manage
the often competing identifications that express the multiplicity of my subjective
life. On the one hand, the doctrine of no-self speaks to a sense of freedom:
Because I have no single core self, my constant negotiations with identity are
not anchored to one dominating narrative. Yet on the other hand, the doctrine
of no-self also invokes a perpetual sense of loss: Because I have no single core
self, and because my present identity is fleeting, my past selves are gone in a very
real sense. As the Japanese aesthetic tradition helps to make clear, in order to
appreciate myself fully, I must appreciate my capacity for freedom as well as my
capacity for loss. Hence non-attachment to the self is a liberatory practice
focused on the creative potential of subjective existence in a world of change
and instability.
This is especially evident in Dogens unique interpretation of Buddhist
doctrine. Commentator Hee Jin Kim describes Dogens transformative philosophy
as follows:
As he probed the ethos of impermanence, thoroughly indigenized
by the native Japanese mind, Dogen did not indulge in aesthetic
dilettantism and sentimentalism as a way to escape from the fleeting fates of life but, instead, examined the nature of impermanence and its ultimate companion, death, unflinchingly,
attempting to realize liberation in and through this inexorable
scheme of things. In his view, things, events, relations were not
the given (entities), but were possibilities, projects, and tasks that
could be lived out, expressed, and understood as self-expressions
and self-activities of Buddha-nature. This did not imply a complacent acceptance of the given situation, but required our strenuous
efforts to transform and transfigure it. (Kim 1987, 136)
The transformative potential of Dogens philosophy lies in his explicitly
non-transcendent view of the role of nirvana as a so-called achievement in
Buddhist practice. For Dogen, nirvana does not mean a state beyond the
constant arising and passing away of the impermanent world, and achieving nirvana does not mean transcending or escaping ordinary, everyday existence. He
writes: Understand that birth-and-death itself is, just in other words, nirvana.
There is nothing one should avoid as birth-and-death, and there is nothing one
should seek as nirvana.5 No enlightened state offers an escape from the interpersonal involvements of everyday life or overcomes the impermanence of such
involvements. To the contrary, realizing liberation involves a compassionate
commitment to the world in its lived immediacy.
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This reading of nirvana has important implications for the doctrine of no-self.
By complicating the notion that the self is, in any simple way, to be overcome,
Dogens philosophy allows us to reject an interpretation of no-self as ego-transcendence. He advises: You should know that there are innumerable ways-of-being
within yourself; among them, there is birth, and there is death.6 In this passage,
Dogens words cannily address notions of the multiplicity and changeability of
identity. On his view, striving against or seeking escape from the continual birthand-death of the self is counterproductive. Based on his ideas, it is possible to
envision a person living with her constantly shifting identity in ways that harness
creativity while not denying the reality of self-lossthat is, one can imagine her
practicing non-attachment and being emotionally engaged at the same time.
Relying on Dogens unique views of Buddhist practice, we can now articulate
(1) a non-dialectical understanding of the relation between identity politics and
identity critique, and (2) a non-reactionary sense of oppositionality. First, his
non-transcendent model of Buddhist practice lends itself to an analogously nondialectical view of identity politics. If one rejects a simple progression in which
the achievement of identity is followed by the overcoming of that identity, then
one can exit the terms of the dialectic altogether, and can shift the focus in
identity politics away from questions of the authenticity of identity and onto the
reality of oppression. Moreover, taking the focus away from the authenticity of
identity frees up the creative potential for identity-production that hooks sees in
the project of radical subjectivity.
Returning to the Sartre example, this means that Negritude, contrary to what
Sartre says, need not be dedicated to its own destruction; rather, it is dedicated
to the destruction of those forms of oppression that make the expression of
Negritude impossible. When Negritude reflects what hooks calls radical subjectivity, it retains its urgency, relevance, and creative forceand it would do so
even if all oppression in the world were overcome.
Second, Dogens non-transcendent philosophy sheds light on what it might
mean to be oppositional without being reactionary. When the conventional
notion of nirvana is rejected, the practice of non-attachment can be interpreted
neither as the attainment of a pure state free of all attachments, nor as a stance
of knee-jerk reaction against that to which one is attached. Such a reactionary
position attempts simply to shut out the immediacy of lived experience, and this
impulse to retreat from life runs counter to both the teachings of Japanese
aesthetics and the transformative philosophy of Dogen. As these traditions show,
non-attachment is a liberatory practice in and of itself. The non-transcendent
take on Buddhist doctrine does not dismiss the quest for personal empowerment
as a nave attachment to an essentialist identity-construct. Rather it shows that
the quest is a never-ending process and that empowerment is a sense of self-efficacy that must be continually renewed in response to changing circumstances. In
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of her deep connection to that community and her emotional involvement with
the very practices that she questions.
THE RADICAL SUBJECTIVITY
OF
NO-SELF: EMPOWERMENT
THROUGH
SELF-LOSS
826
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NOTES
1. I do not set out to show that hooks espouses Buddhism or that most Buddhists are
friends of feministsalthough it is interesting to keep in mind hookss personal connection to Buddhism. Not much attention is given to connecting her work as a cultural critic
and feminist with her work as Buddhist practitioner and contributor to publications such
as Shambhala Sun and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. For more fruitful conversations
between feminism and comparative philosophy in general, see McWeeny and Butnor
forthcoming.
2. For other takes on what hooks means by radical subjectivity, see the section titled
Radical Black Subjectivity in Davidson 2009; the sixth chapter of Ziraek 2001; or Alexander 1992.
3. My translation from Yamazaki 1972, a collection of Dogens teachings purportedly
recorded by his disciple Ejo.
4. For more on non-attachment in Japanese aesthetics, see Odin 2001.
5. Shobogenzo, Shoji. My translation from Dogen 197172, vol. 4, 397.
6. Shobogenzo, Zenki. My translation from Dogen 197172, vol. 1, 416.
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