Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance

1
Eating the Other Desire and Resistance

• bell hooks

2

• Discusses eating the other in terms of
  possession, appropriation, etc.
• States difference can seduce precisely because
  the mainstream imposition of sameness is a
  provocation that terrorizes
• White men having sex with colored (sic) women as
  a rite of passage

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• claiming the body of the colored Other
  instrumentally, as unexplored terrain, a symbolic
  frontier that will be fertile ground for their
  reconstruction of the masculine norm

4

• The desire to make contact with those bodies
  deemed Other, with no apparent will to dominate,
  assuages the guilt of the past, even takes of the
  form of a defiant gesture where one denies
  accountability and historical connection. Most
  importantly, it establishes a contemporary
  narrative where the suffering imposed by
  structures of domination on those designated
  Other is deflected by an emphasis on seduction
  and longing where the desire is not to make the
  Other over in ones image but to become the
  Other.

5

• It is the young black male body that is seen as
  epitomizing this promise of wildness, of
  unlimited physical prowess and unbridled
  eroticism. It was this black body that was most
  desired for its labor in slavery and it is this
  body that is most represented in contemporary
  popular culture as the body to be watched,
  imitated, desired, possessed.