what if?

Ah ---~! The power of positive thinking is such a refreshing take on the world and in terms of this class, a powerful re-imaging of the binaries of minority and social relationships. When bell hooks writes of a love that is free of power and domination, she directly states that the king of all dominating systems of power is patriarchy, a system “of domination [that] relies on socializing everyone to believe that all human relations, there is an inferior and superior party, one person that is strong, the other weak, and that is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless” (bell hooks, 97). What I also found quite interesting was her following argument that the transmission of the absence of love prevails throughout most of mass media. Looking back on the fiction we’ve read for class, as well as common representations of minorities in film and television, hooks’ argument rings true. Similar to the gun-totting, hip-hop persona that most black males embody on television, the black female body is often marked in direct correlation to this prevailing notion of absent love. Without a positive, all entrenching ‘love ethic” to surround herself with, the minority woman (who is at the very bottom of the ladder of representation and opportunity) can find power only in navigating common scenarios of sexual dominance and violent relations.

What is most powerful of hook’s argument for a love ethnic is the fact that her essays are coupled with selections from “african love stories” the first of which is entitled, “Ebube Dike!” Unlike the violently sexual and graphically abusive texts we read so far in class, “Ebube Dike!” offers another representation of black love, one that sits squarely on a strong foundation of wholesome, complete love. There is education, there is female empowerment and there is a masculine figure who does not represent the evils of patriarchy. That is, what I’m trying to say, ultimately offers a “what if” scenario in the critical and cultural analysis of sexuality and representation of sexuality in ethic literature. What if hooks’ love ethic can prevail and offer a better representation of the miniorities, already heavily shadowed by concepts of power and abuse? How can this wholesome, complete revised perspective, so offered in “Ebube Dike!”, affect our understanding of love and ultimately, of sexuality?