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Reject their totalizing understandings of race only by abandoning essentialism can we construct

new understandings of blackness in the world and challenge the nihilism threatening productive

movements.

Bell Hooks 90[P!"#$%R& '()*+&%!!,- Postmodern *ulture vol.

http/00www.africa.upenn.edu0)rticles12en0Postmodern1'lackness13456.html00liam7

It is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about heterogeneity - thedecentered subject- declaring breakthroughs that allow recognition of otherness- still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized

audience- one that shares a common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to

challenge. 8f radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a critical break with the notion of 9authority9 as 9mastery over9 must not simply be a rhetorical device- it must be reflected in habits of being-

including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter. "hird:world scholars- especially elites- and white critics who passively absorb white

supremacist thinking- and therefore never notice or look at black people o n the streets- at their jobs- who render us invisible with their gaze in all areas of daily life- are not likely to

produce liberatory theory that will challenge racist domination, or to promote a breakdown in

traditional ways of seeing and thinking about reality, ways of constructing aesthetic theory

and practice. rom a different standpoint Robert !torr makes a similar criti;ue in the g lobal issue of )rt in )merica when he asserts/ "o be sure- much postmodernist criticalin;uiry has centered precisely on the issues of 9difference9 and 9otherness.9 n the purely theoretical plane the e

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criti+ues of the )sub-ect) when they surface at a historical moment when many sub-ugated

people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time. *riticisms of directions in postmodern thinking should not obscure insights it may offer that open

up our understanding of )frican:)merican e