STUDENTS' RESPONSES TO HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. AND CORNEL WEST
Gates seems to put a similar spin on the concept of race as Butler puts on gender. His use of quotation marks ephasizes the socially-constructed nature of "race." Other than the color of skin, there is not really a fundamental sameness in black people; yet Americans and others have constucted this faulty idea of a separate "race," much as they conceptualized the ideals of "woman" and "man," which aren't real (in the sense that they occur natrually and spontaneously). (Julie Wroblewski)
Gates seems to contradict himself slightly: in "The Master's Pieces," he insists that "only the master's tools will dismantle the master's house," but in the other essay he champions starting indigenous forms of criticism. (Julie Wroblewski)
The one thing that most of the critics seem to agree on is the need for visibility. Gay/bi/lesbians, women, blacks, etc. must acknowledge their histories and experiences, and other people must learn that these are real voices. It's not a politicization of "pure education": everything is always and has always been politicized (albeit unconsciously). We only notice it in these situations because it flies in the face of the usual agendas. (Julie Wroblewski)
Both Gates and West talk about traps. The first one is the trap of trying to defend blacks by showing/proving that they are in fact the same as white people, thus disregarding cultural differences; and the second trap is the mistake of lumping all blacks together into one big group--disregarding differences among blacks themselves. But unlike a theorist like Derrida, who tends to leave the reader with a feeling of nowhere-nothingness, Gates and West want to deconstruct as many harmful categories as they can--just not at the expense of dissolving all political identities. They do not want to claim or imply that there is nothing unique, idiosyncratic, innovative, or beautiful about black culture, and they don't want to deny the unavoidalble relations between politics and race. Both seem to agree that even social change needs to begin with theory, with overturning the conceptual bases that shape the outworkings of society. (Seth Warren)
Gates and West are very interesting contrasts to the others we have been reading. We would never have heard a phrase like "intellectual freedom fighters" from them! (Joe Tennis)
Community is something that demands a lot of attention here, as opposed to other theories we have studied. I think it can go back to what Gates said in his convo speech: that identity is how you look at yourself in relation to other people, and not how you construct yourself from your own original ideas--that everything is in relationship with everything else. (Joe Tennis)
What next?