Reading Bell Hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism Through The Lens of Triple Oppression Theory

Abstract

The concept of triple oppression theory was first coined by Louise Thompson Patterson to introduce the stratified oppression of black women. Later the concept was developed by some black socialists one of whom was Claudia Jones who popularized it with the assertion that black women synchronously encounter three kinds of oppression based on race, gender, and class. As the theory underlines that there is a relation among these three types of oppression, it considers it necessary that all three types need to be overcome at once. Considering the triple oppression theory (also referred as double jeopardy, Jane Crow, or triple exploitation) and Bell Hooks’s monograph, this article aims to underline how the three malign thoughts, namely racism, capitalism, and patriarchy cooperate with each other to subjugate, colonize, oppress, and exploit their others. It concludes that the incentive of oppression, subjugation, colonization, and exploitation, which is likely to be named as ‘the imperial desire’ is a primordial archetype in human nature. It is a matter of the greed for the power. Hence, it is likely to assert that all the malicious and catastrophic praxes are the resultant of the pursuit for power. Accordingly, to minimize the destruction and malicious resultants stemmed from that instinctive primordial imperial desire, (desire for controlling political, economic, cultural assets of the others), it is essential to disperse and diffuse the power. As postmodern scholars put it: ‘if power is everywhere, then it is nowhere”.