Reading Reflection. Marginality as Site of Resistance. Communications & Media Essay

Marginality as Site of Resistance
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Marginality as Site of Resistance
Bell Hooks is asking readers to think of the ‘margins’ of a social formation (or society) as important sites of knowledge production and new ways of being and potential liberation in the world. He makes this argument between pages 341 and 343 of his text. He also suggests that "the margins" are powerful sites of resistance to dominant discourses and the systems of power that produce marginalization. We might mobilize Hooks' arguments to think about "cultural work" or "cultural texts" as sites of resistance by considering how cultural work and texts can be aligned to talk of liberation and encourage people not to stay in spaces where they are confined or imprisoned. This text relates to one of the other readings for this week, by Favianna Rodriguez and Julie Perini since they focus on exploiting margins of a social formation to achieve political liberation.
The words that Bell Hooks writers on Sites of Resistance resonate on what we see where we look. For instance, it is common to see people defending place on mainstream spaces and refusing to get silenced. It is also common to see people resisting the usual suspects; individuals who are resisting potential allies as well. People also resist complex circumstances, but the individuals oppressing tem are in plain sight, whether or not they are acknowledged (Hooks, 1984). This has resulted in people defending space on the margins, what they consider their sites of resistance, although some of the sites exist in cyber worlds. Further, the manner in which Bell Hooks has presented his idea of resistance makes it easy for the reader to bring the powerful words to one’s little corner of resistance.
The text shows that marginality in not only a site of deprivation but rather a sit of radical possibility since it is a space of resistance. Hooks argues that it gives one the ability of radical perspectives from where one can create and see, and imagine new, alternative worlds (Hooks, 1984). It is within this space that one can figure out the importance and ways of liberating themselves and others by ...