In her introduction, hooks outlines her sometimes contradictory relationship to popular culture. Discussing popular culture critically, for hooks, is "a powerful way to share knowledge, in and outside the academy, across differences, in an oppositional and subversive way."(p.4) However, argues hooks, most cultural critics do not make their criticism part of a coherent political project, and engage with popular culture "simply as a masturbatory mental exercise that condones the movement of the insurgent intellectual mind across new frontiers… [or as a] justification for movements from the center into the margin that merely mimic in a new way old patterns of cultural imperialism and colonialism."(p.5) Boundary crossing is a luxury for those with epistemic privilege, since, writes hooks, she is "constantly amazed at how difficult it is to cross boundaries in this white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society."(p.5) This limited scope of cultural criticism need not be its final perspective. Hooks sees cultural criticism as containing the potential for being "a vital location for the exchange of knowledge, or the formation of new epistemologies."(p.6)

In this chapter, hooks critiques Madonna as pop cultural icon and transgressive figure for many cultural critics. Originally, states hooks, Madonna was presented as an adventurer, a risk taker in control of her own ever-changing image and destiny. As such she provided an exciting role model. But, asks hooks, "[w]hat is the material girl to do when she has fast become a grown woman in an economy of cultural images where so much of her mass appeal was deeply rooted in the romance of rebellious youth?"(p.12) Madonna's insistence on her revolutionary status belies her commodification and appropriation into a capitalist logic of representations of women and sexuality. Resistance is reduced to ostensibly trangressive sexuality (which in fact replicates gendered, heterosexist, and racist relations of domination).

Gayness, for example, is represented in Madonna's work as merely "a demand that difference be appropriated in a manner that diffuses its power."(p.16) S/M loses its "subject-to-subject" dimension and its complex situation in relations of power. And white supremacy is overlaid throughout. "Increasingly", writes hooks, "Madonna occupies the space of the white colonial imperialist, taking on the mantle of the white colonial adventurer moving into the wilderness of black culture (gay and straight), of white gay subculture. Within these new and different realms she never divests herself of white privilege."(p.20)

In this chapter, hooks examines the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in the context of developing a critical black masculine identity. Basquiat is concerned with the violent colonization of the black male body and mind, taking the "Eurocentric valuation of the great and beautiful and [demanding] that we acknowledge the brutal reality it masks."(p.28) The black male body in his work, reminiscent of colonial relations of subject-self and object-other, "becomes iconographically a sign of lack and absence."(p.28) However, the black male for Basquiat is also complicit in colonization, "by virtue of a shared obsession with conquest, both sexual and political."(p.31)

Ultimately, in both of these films, although issues of race and gender are raised, the status quo is re-affirmed at the endings. "Both suggest", writes hooks, "that otherness can be the place where white folks—in both cases white men—work through their troubled identity, their longings for transcendence."(p.62) Epistemologically, white cultural imperialism and colonialism is perpetuated.

The issue of censorship has been a significant one for radical intellectuals, and hooks makes clear her dismay with the use of censorship as a strategy of the left. Given that censorship is most often used to erase progressive voices, "[t]he political imperative of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech."(p.65) What hooks terms "regulatory silencing" has dangerous implications for anyone involved in liberation struggles, and should not be used by them as a tool for change. Rather, contends hooks, "any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and in practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent."(p.66)

To a marginalized movement, dissent can be threatening. Unity seems like the best strategy in the face of adversity, especially if disagreement presages appropriation by opposition forces. However, in critiquing arbitrary divisions of public and private space, progressive groups run the risk of having private disputes aired.

Hooks argues that dissent and diversity are necessary for a movement to grow and change positively. Thus, "all our progressive political movements must work to protect free speech… We remember the pain of silence and work to sustain our power to speak—freely, openly, provocatively."(p.72)

In this chapter, hooks shows how so-called "new feminism" is being incorporated into the commodification of sexuality, and is "being brought to us as a product that works effectively to set women against one another, to engage us in competition wars over which brand of feminism is more effective."(p.74) Hooks discusses her decision to participate in a mainstream public dialogue about feminism, and the consequent negative appropriation of her theory into a sexist and phallocentric discourse.

In this chapter, hooks indulges in a deliciously sarcastic shredding of Paglia's work, arguing that Paglia and her followers "make feminism most palatable when they strip it of any radical political agenda that would include a critique of sexism and a call to dismantle patriarchy, repackaging it so that it is finally only about gender equality with men of their class in the public sphere."(p.87)

In this chapter, hooks examines some examples of "new feminism" to show how it is both commodified theory and how it elides issues of race and class, "how it cleverly makes it seem as though these discussions never took place within the feminist movement."(p.93) Rather, argues hooks, in their theory and interaction (she cites Naomi Wolf's aggressive body-politic, p.95), these feminists ignore the substantial body of work which takes up issues of race and class, and universalize the category of "woman". "Power feminism" as espoused by Wolf denies all political accountability, all participation in systems of exploitation, privilege, and oppression, and ignores vast numbers of people whose lived experience belies this erasure. As a result, feminism is divested of its radical political significance, and transferred to the private sphere of individual self-worth. As hooks acidly concludes, "Feminist movement is not a product—not a lifestyle."(p.99)

Continuing the critique from the previous chapter, hooks argues that recent writings by young, white, privileged women "strive to create a narrative of feminism (not a feminist movement) that recenters the experience of materially privileged white females in ways that deny race and class differences, not solely in relations to the construction of female identity, but also in relation to feminist movement."(p.102) This erasure, states hooks, is "opportunistic".

Although hooks concedes that Roiphe's work draws attention to some of the excesses of the feminist movement, she notes that it does not acknowledge the work of other feminists who have launched similar critiques. Rather, Roiphe, like Madonna, prefers to cast herself as a revolutionary or maverick, who in fact re-asserts the status quo.

In this chapter, hooks takes up the issue of "rape culture", in the context of racism and patriarchy. "Black males", writes hooks, "utterly disenfranchised in almost every arena of life in the United States, often find that the assertion of sexist domination is their only expressive access to the patriarchal power they are told all men should possess as their gendered birthright."(p.110) Moreover, "[m]any black men have a profound investment in the perpetuation and maintenance of rape culture."(p.110) One major obstacle to the dissolution of this culture, argues hooks, is the coding of male aggressiveness as erotic. Thus, she proposes, to begin to oppose rape culture we must express our eroticism and desire in ways that reject phallocentrism, sexism, and misogyny.

Gangsta rap has been the source of much mainstream cultural hysteria and hype in recent years. However, notes hooks, "[t]he sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy."(p.116) Thus, "[r]ather than seeing it as a subversion or disruption of the norm, we need to see it as an embodiment of the norm."(p.117)

hooks and Ice Cube in dialogue.

The commodification of blackness, particularly within the academy, erases a history of radical struggle. When "the discourse of blackness is in no way connected to an effort to promote collective black self-determination, it becomes simply another resource appropriated by the colonizer."(p.150) Thus, an effective politics takes a clear look at differences within a racial identity, instead of promoting a false image of unity under one category of identification.

Commodification of Malcolm X, reduction of his politics.

Hooks wants to see a system of representation that affirms the presence and subjectivity of those who are poor, arguing, "[s]ince many folks will be poor for a long time before those changes are put in place that address their economic needs, it is crucial to construct habits of seeing and being that restore an oppositional value system affirming that one can live a life of dignity and integrity in the midst of poverty."(p.170) This movement can be linked in coalition with other movements for social justice.

In this chapter, hooks explores the issue of internalized racism expressed as an aesthetic which privileges whiteness. In a racist patriarchal system, blacks who looked and acted most like whites stood the best chance of being appropriated into the society (though never as a true member). Embracing of liberal individualism resulted in "concrete rewards for assimilation."(p.176)

In this chapter, hooks argues for a reclamation of Malcolm X's theory on gender.

In this interview for Angry Women, hooks speaks about a politics of desire and becoming. She writes, "we have to consider "positionalities" that are shaking up the idea that any of us are inherently anything—that we become who we are. So a lot of my work views the confessional moment as a transformative moment—a moment of performance where you might step out of the fixed identity in which you were seen, and reveal other aspects of the self… as part of an overall project of more fully becoming who you are."(p.210)

Concluding with some thoughts on subjectivity, hooks argues that exploitation is achieved through objectification of an Other. She posits "recognition of the Other" as necessitating negotiation which precludes development of exploitative relations. Evocative of Martin Buber's "I-Thou" paradigm, hooks argues for "mutual recognition (what [she calls] the 'subject-to-subject' encounter, as opposed to 'subject-to-object')."(p.241)

Chapter Twenty, "Love as the Practice of Freedom"

Further developing the trope of desire which she introduced in the previous chapter, hooks argues that "[t]he absence of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arises from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of the spirit and an overdetermined emphasis on material concerns."(p.243) Evocative of Collins' notion of faith in activism, hooks's argument centres on the potential for systems of domination to appropriate and consume political visions which are not informed by love. This attention to love, which necessitates mutual engagement with other subjects, allows political projects to address multiple axes of domination and power, without reducing others to objects. Dominance requires violence to sustain itself. "A love ethic", writes hooks, "emphasizes the importance of service to others."(p.249) Thus, this notion of love contains both the need for engaging with others as subjects, and a commitment to service and action.