ABSTRACT
Recently, there has been an apocalyptic turn with regard to race: enthusiastic calls for the end of blackness.1 bell hooks, however, is more nuanced in her position and does not think the end of blackness is needed. What is needed is to forsake a certain style of thinking about blackness. Hence, hooks’s tone and mood are both less apocalyptic precisely because she uses a language that enables her to rethink blackness beyond the restrictive structures of an either/or logic. While avoiding the extremes of acting out or harboring denial in response to blackness, hooks decides to work through blackness. She writes:
Recent critical refl ection on static notions of black identity urge transformation of our sense of who we can be and still be black. Assimilation, imitation, or assuming the role of rebellious exotic other are not the only available options and never have been. Th is is why it is crucial to radically revive notions of identity politics, to explore marginal locations as spaces where we can best become whatever we want to be while remaining committed to liberatory black liberation struggle.2
