One Way to Subjectivity: Bell hooks on Postmodernism Blackness

Abstract

Postmodernism is a new style that emerged in American culture after World War II, characterized by formalization, decentralization and commercialization. Bell hooks’ Postmodernism Blackness argues that there is an antagonistic relationship between whites and minorities. In turn, postmodern art is an important way for minorities to challenge white hegemony and build subjectivity. The author takes Captivity by Sherman Alexie, a postmodernist writing on the Other as an example to explore the validity of this theory. On the acknowledgement of the Anglo world’s long-standing oppression of Indian ethnicity, Captivity deconstructs the white imagination of Indian ethnicity and reconstructs a narrative about white, Native American as well their relationship from an Indian perspective. At the same time, the protagonist of Indian ethnicity in Captivity has an ambiguous relationship with the white character and presents an image that conforms to white stereotypes, reflecting the author Alexie’s oscillating emotional position between whiteness and Indianness, which is rooted in his specific individual experience. Through an analysis of the context as well the text, it can be seen that bell hooks successfully portray the merging of postmodernist claims of decentrality and minority liberation demands, reflecting the significance of postmodernism for minority construction of subjectivity, but simplifies the issue of identity, ignores the complexity of identity in the real situation, and thus sees national liberation as the only way out for the ethnic minorities.