Remembering bell hooks: A Reflection on Lesser Known Contributions to Black Non-Monogamous Thought.
I.
February brings with it the regular opportunity to reflect on both love (i.e. “Valentine’s day”) and the essential contributions made by Black folks to the very fabric of our democratic society (i.e. Black History Month). But for us, something feels a bit different about this season for the celebration of black history and love.
Late last year, the world lost a bonafide race scholar, feminist pioneer, author, activist and overall giant, bell hooks. For those interested in the intersection of race and love, her influence is par none. She wrote extensively about how, for Black people living in the Americas, experiences with love, connection and the profound transformative promises these phenomena offer, is filtered through racialized, gendered, sexualized, and classed lenses. She had an unique ability for capturing one of life’s greatest wonders–love–and communicating not only its essence but also its practice.
hooks was as concerned as much about liberation for Black folks as she was about love–often thinking about them working in tandem. Best exemplified in her book All About Love, many remember hooks for her idea of “love as action”. For hooks, love is not necessarily something that we feel, but rather something that we do. While in many places, hooks was concerned with the possibilities and pitfalls for heterosexual relationshps among Black folks, others will also point to important work she’s done in thinking about Black lesbian relationships too. As they should, these works are important in their own right.
Sadly, though, many omit hooks’ contributions to Black non-monogamous thought. For example, in her book Communion: The Female Search for Love, where she challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love, she also explores the idea of “circles of love”–which are intimate relationships that allow for sexual intercourse between more than one partner–saying that these relationships may be favorable to women in the progressive era.
Although Communion was published in 2002, hooks continued thinking about Black women, non-monogamy, and liberatory sexual freedom until at least 2008 when she published “‘Who’s Pussy Is This?’: A Feminist Comment” reflecting on Spike Lee’s 1986 debut film, She’s Gotta Have It. Many of our readers may be more familiar with the Netflix adaptation of the film, but our focus here, remembering hooks, turns on her analysis of the film in its original format.
II.
Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It centers around Nola Darling (portrayed by Tracy Camilla Johns), a non-monogamous Black woman entertaining three relata. Throughout the film Nola’s Black non-monogamous existence and relationship practices confront the bounds of normalcy and respectability–not only is Nola a black woman herself, but each of her three relata (Jamie, Mars, and Greer) are cisgendered heterosexual black men. On one hand, it is unusual to see Black women in film managing three sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved; on the other, many might think that it is even more uncommon for cis- het- black men to consent to these kinds of relationships. After all, many still believe that consensual non-monogamy is “Some white people shit.” At the time of its release, Lee’s portrayal of Darling disrupted the more common narratives told about love, monogamy, and consensual non-monogamy.
After (more or less) successfully sustaining her three ongoing sexual relationships for most the movie, the flim ends with a partnerless Nola resigned to singledom after attempting to pursue a monogamous relationship with Jamie. Lee’s resolving the film in this way introduces a critical ambiguity. It’s in this ambiguity that we find the film’s power to compel us to think, reflect, and engage the work more fully. What is the “it” that Nola’s “gotta have”? Is “it” monogamy? Is “it” sex? Is “it” solitude?
hooks remarks that the film’s release in 1986 drummed up quite a bit of social and political discourse. Viewer’s quandaries spanned quite a wide range: was the film ‘a woman’s’ story? Did the film depict a radically new image of Black female sexuality? Can a man really tell a woman’s story? Is Nola Darling a liberated woman or a whore? In some places, folks have openly asked whether Nola is polyamorous, generating the question of whether monogamists can tell the stories of non-monogamists? Should they?
On our view, the film does not provide a straightforward pathway to the conclusion that Nola is polyamorous, although she is unquestionably engaged in non-monogamous relating throughout most of the film. Perhaps for hooks, the space to explore polyamorous identity is foreclosed for Nola. She writes that, Nola is not depicted as an autonomous agent, “as an independent longing for sexual expression, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Instead her assertive sexuality is most often portrayed as though her body, her sexually aroused being, is a reward or gift she bestows on the deserving male.”
Charging Lee with missing the mark of telling the story of a truly sexually liberated Black woman, hooks’ take on, what she calls a “very soulful film,” is ultimately that the frame of sexual liberation for Black women is decidedly far too narrow. hooks argues that Lee’s creation of Darling is informed by “the tendency to see liberated women as sexually loose.” Instead of exploring lesser known pathways to sexual liberation (i.e. the lack of sexual arousal or sexual desire among many polyamorists who are also asexual or otherwise located on the ACE spectrum), “Nola expresses again and again her eagerness and willingness to be sexual with men as well as her right to have numerous partners.” This reflects ideologies of earlier feminist waves that held “that feminist liberation was often equated with sexual liberation” and that this sexual liberation was to be found in thinking about women as being “desiring subjects” themselves, rather than merely the “desired objects” by men.
On hooks’ account, “Nola Darling is the perfect embodiment of woman as desiring subject — a representation that does challenge sexist notions of female sexual passivity.” A close intersectional analysis also reveals that Lee does not depart far from a racist white imagination that has framed black women in particular as sexually assertive, incapable of chastity or monogamy, and as responsible for the robbery of “the [alleged] male right to initiate sexual contact in [B]lack culture.” Ultimately, Darling is punished for her sexual assertiveness and has it weaponized against her when, while raping Nola, Jamie asks “Who’s pussy is this?” to which Darling’s response is “Yours.”
For hooks, She’s Gotta Have It’s Nola Darling’s attempted embodiment as a “desiring subject” is ultimately what leads to Darling’s subjugation by subterfuge. “Men do not have to objectify Nola’s sexuality because she objectifies it [herself]. In so doing, her character becomes the projection of a stereotypical sexist notion of a sexually assertive woman ,” hooks concludes, “she is not in fact liberated.”
III.
Our reading of the film is compatible with hooks’ perspective, though we don’t take a stance on the question of whether Nola is liberated or not. It is more useful to point out complications for Nola’s liberatory pursuit on other fronts. We also want to highlight a few considerations that, from the perspective of 2022, we think fell out of hooks’ 2008 scope. In hooks’ own view, “readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.” Hindsight’s corrective view on matters of the heart needn’t be antagonistic and we hope our tone is read more celebratory than criticizing as hooks’ thought is the foundation on which our considerations build.
With hooks, we do agree that the film is not a woman’s story. Nola acknowledges as much in the opening scene when she says:
“I want you to know the only reason I’m consenting to this is because I wish to clear my name. Not that I care what people think, but enough is enough. And if in the end, it helps some other people out, well, then, that’s fine, too. I consider myself normal, whatever that means. Some people call me a freak. I hate that word. I don’t believe in it. Better yet, I don’t believe in labels. But what are you gonna do? This was the deal.”
For Nola, it is more about public perception and the perspectives others have of her and her non-monogamous lifestyle. It is not a story about whether or not Nola is in fact a sexually liberated Black woman, but instead about what folks think of Black women they believe to be sexually assertive. Disavowing the thought that this film is a Black woman’s story, hooks writes that, “Filmmaker Spike Lee acknowledged that he intended to focus critically on [B]lack male behavior in the film, stating that ‘I know that [B]lack men do a lot of things that are fucked up and I’ve tried to show some of the things that we do.’” The message is resounding, She’s Gotta Have It is not a Black woman’s story.
In spite of all the “fucked up things” Black men do, Lee embeds possibility for non-monogamous virtue among Nola’s relata. Neither Mars nor Jamie really rock with Greer and they each see Nola’s relationship with him as more or less disposable. Yet among Mars and Jamie themselves, Lee introduces the possibility for a sustainable metamour relationship. A more transformative representation of this possibility, however, oughtn’t rest on the disposability of any of her relationships; solidarity is cheapened when built on jeering attitudes. Among Black non-monogamist, polyamorists, and polycurious folks, the possibility of polyandry (a wife with multiple husbands) or of any polyamorous dynamic where Black men “share” Black women is incredulous to many. Jamie and Mars’ portrayals as metamours might provide a blueprint for forging friendships among heterosexual black men who share a hinge partner.
There is space to be critical of whether the film is intended to portray a polyamorous relationship at all. Many polyamorists are quick to point out that “polyamory is not (all) about sex.” While disputes over these kinds of claims dissevers polyamorists into political factions omnidirectionally–separating sexual conservatives from more liberal or progressive Black sexual politics–the truth is that many polyamorous relationships are sexual. To claim that Nola’s relationship isn’t polyamorous because of how sexual they are is a mistake.
We take a different angle, although it is perhaps no less politically divisive than the first. Throughout the motion picture, Nola is not presented as being in any sort of formal romantic relationship with her suitors. On one hand, some polyamorists might be displeased by this acknowledgement of a lack of formality; especially among those for whom relational anarchism resonates. Romantic relational formality, the thought might go, is but another relic of mononormativity that polyamorists should reject. For polyamorists of this political ilk, no tension arises for Nola’s characterization as polyamorous.
On the other hand, however, it might be that plural informal relationships are more true to mononormativity’s form. In the Americas, attitudes around having multiple relationships are relaxed when/if relationships are in a “just dating” or “talking” stage. These relaxed attitudes, however, are in many ways what monogamy’s valorization depends on. By judging these informal plural relationships to be less valuable than “official” ones, stakeholders in romantic love fortify “true love’s” or “real love’s” standing as dyadic–composed of two and only two people. In fact, we believe this point is not unrelated from Lee’s offering a monogamous relationship with Jamie as a pathway to salvation for Nola–a pathway to “respectability”. So, it actually makes no small difference that Jamie, Mars, and Greer are not referred to as Nola’s “boyfriends” or “partners”.
Building on hooks’ insights, PBG goes even further suggesting that the film is more about the “impossibility of being” for Black women who might have non-monogamous or polyamorous desires. PBG sees Nola as compounded by intersecting oppressions which complicate the ‘possibility of being’ for Black women and takes this to be Lee’s aim in making the film. Aside from the documentary styled testimonials by Nola’s relata which are often disparaging, Lee hits his target in the scene where an assortment of black women appear in Nola’s dream attempting to burn her alive (Yes, you read that right.). While the movie has been characterized as going against a more conservative black sexual politics of its time, it is not a story of liberation but one of the subjugation of Black women who have desires for more than one sexual or romantic partner. Whether intentional or not, sexually positive or sexually assertive black women are shown to face unique vulnerabilties around being shamed, harassed, having their sanity questioned, and the possibility of being raped… nothing more.
IV.
Unquestionably, She’s Gotta Have It is an important moment in Black cinematic history, and more specifically a moment in Black non-monogamous history. hooks’ engagement with the movie reinforces her thought that “No aesthetic work transcends politics or ideology.” She answers her own question of “Can a man really tell a woman’s story?”, arguing ultimately that they can but this is no indication that they will do it well.
Similarly, there ought to be space for responding to the question of whether monogamists can tell the stories of non-monogamists and whether or not black feminist analyses of non-monogamy or polyamory have been appropriately wide in their scope. Though we remain noncommittal on these questions (insert polyamorous joke about “commitment issues”; *HARD eye roll*), this reflection on hooks’ contributions to Black non-monogamous thought provides a basis for responding to that question with more thorough detail. It is our hope that it pushes us to think, reflect, and engage with non-monogamous thought more critically.
*PBG Peace sign & Urfavfilosopher looking away in the distance with philosophical puzzlement.
