Anti-theory stances themselves rest on unacknowledged patriarchal theory

Evidence

I was reminded recently of this dangerous anti-intellectualism when I agreed to appear on a radio show with a group of black women and men to discuss Shahrazad Ali’s The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman. I listened to speaker after speaker express contempt for intellectual work, and speak against any call for the production of theory. One black woman was vehement in her insistence that “we don’t need no theory.” Ali’s book, through written in plain language, in a style that makes use of engaging black vernacular, has a theoretical foundation. It is rooted in theories of patriarchy (for example, the sexist, essentialist belief that male domination of females is “natural”), that misogyny is the only possible response black men can have to any attempt by women to be fully self-actualized. Many black nationalists will eagerly embrace critical theory and thought as a necessary weapon in the struggle against white supremacy, but suddenly lose the insight that theory is important when it comes to questions of gender, of analyzing sexism and sexist oppression in the particular and specific ways it is manifest in black experience. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 148

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier anti-intellectualism argument established in this very chapter (hooks frames it as ‘this dangerous anti-intellectualism’), and parallels the double-standard where theory is celebrated against racial oppression but dismissed on gender. — connects to: Remaining silent when theory is dismissed is complicity in anti-intellectualism; Anti-ideological fact-finding denied the powerless any route to theory; Anti-binary theories can align misogynists with radical feminists — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 629 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Antifoundational theories involuntarily grow their own hidden foundations #expands (0.88)
• Theory saturation makes any separatist stance itself another named theory #expands (0.85)
• Anti-ideological fact-finding denied the powerless any route to theory #expands (0.80)
• Refusing to acknowledge a woman’s own ethical framing paradoxically strengthens the misogyny feminists oppose #exemplifies (0.75) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2242
• Anti-binary theories can align misogynists with radical feminists #exemplifies (0.72) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 629