Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

hooks does not follow traditional academic formats and writing styles. Her lack of citations, footnotes, and bibliographies have caused many to criticize her work as not scholarly enough. She writes in a clear, accessible style full of stories and personal experiences that steers clear of technical, overly abstract, academic jargon is so that her writing will be accessible to a general audience and not just a narrow, academic subculture. She wants her writing to be relevant to the daily lives of those whom society has marginalized. She is less concerned with the need for academic acceptance and more concerned with the needs of those whose lives have been defined by the margins: minorities, the working class, prisoners, the oppressed. She wants someone whose lives have been relegated to the outskirts of society to be able to pick up one of her books, read it, and be transformed.

hooks’s use of plain diction appears prominently in the two interviews, one with Ron Scapp and one with herself, a playful self-dialogue. Writing in the interview format is more accessible, as the reader can “hear” the two voices in dialogue as they speak in friendly and honest conversation. She says that the interview format allows an intimacy and familiarity not possible with the essay.

She fears that much of feminist theory has become so abstract and difficult to understand that it ends up shutting out those who most need it. She also cautions against an anti-intellectual backlash that says that all theory is worthless. She sees the need for theory in everyday life because theory allows one to question, understand, and challenge the various systems of oppression. When she discovered theory in college, she found a way to connect her feelings of alienation in the classroom to the larger global struggle, connecting to the experiences of the marginalized peasants that Paulo Freire wrote about.

For theory to be relevant, it must be accessible, but it also must be tied to practice; otherwise, it is useless. She has seen too many people pay lip service to ideas but then they have not followed through and committed to such ideas through their actions. One strategy that hooks has relied on to put theory into practice is having every student in the classroom write a short paragraph and read it aloud so everyone’s voices can be heard and recognized. This practice of hearing every voice allows a diversity of experiences to be recognized and affirmed.

Only when theory is combined with practice (praxis) will the traditional paradigm of the classroom be overturned and the practice of freedom can prevail. In addition, such daily reflection and practice have the power to move beyond the academy and transform spaces beyond the classroom, so that theory can truly become a lived reality for all.