Bell Hooks

I founds Bell Hooks article titled "Eating the other: Desire and Resistance" to be quite compelling.  The direction and summary of the article can be found in one section on page 367.

"Commodity culture in the United States exploits conventional thinking about race, gender, and sexual desire by "working" both the idea that racial difference marks one as Other and the assumption that sexual agency expressed within the context of racialized sexual encounter is a conversion experience that alters one's place and participation in contemporary cultural politics.  The seductive promise of this encounter is that it will counter the terrorizing force of the status quo that makes identity fixed, static, a condition of containment and death."

Boldly, Hooks suggests that a sexual encounter with the "Other," can be seen as a right of passage, or as a powerful expression of males in society.  I chose to view this article more broadly as it later states "difference can seduce precisely because the mainstream imposition of sameness is a provocation that terrorizes" (367).

This difference that people seek, or as Hooks calls the Other, is quite seducing, but I believe it can relate to many different topics.  As we are discussing postmodern theorists and ideals, we know that each of these great thinkers were trying to create something new.  The architects we discussed were trying to create something entirely different.  This search and success of finding what is different is seducing in society, especially amongst postmodern thinking.

Even considering the fashion industry, designer constantly look to find what is new, and that is seducing to them.  On the other hand, many people strive to set themselves apart on the fashion scene, whether they disagree with commodification or simply seek uniqueness.  They strive and crave what is different. "The seductive promise of this encounter is that it will counter the terrorizing force of the status quo" (365).  Todays culture does not want similarity, we crave the seductive difference.