A Rhetorical Analysis Of Bell Hooks Understanding Patriarchy

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pseudonym, bell hooks, is a black woman who is often cited for her work as a writer, feminist, and cultural critic. As a passionate scholar, she is a leading intellectual of her generation and has published dozens of books and articles that discuss topics such as masculinity, patriarchy, feminine consciousness, representation, and politics. In 2004, hooks wrote her essay, “Understanding Patriarchy” in which she explores her understanding of patriarchy in American society and proposes a call to action to improve gender issues. hooks is able to develop her ideas through her complex rhetorical choices that all add to the overall effect of the essay. hooks is able to make and maintain claims that

Purpose holds up every piece of writing and guides the writer as well as giving meaning to the audience. hooks’ purpose is to challenge the current patriarchal system through educating readers on the reality of today and the ways in which patriarchy functions and encourage them to accept it for what it is and begin to create change from that. In order to fulfill her purpose, hooks employs a variety of tools that aid in building credibility and her rhetoric overall. hooks is able to impressively structure her essay to make statements that make her writing feel more honest, self-reflective, and make the entire essay feel like an argument that everyone should read. She writes in reference to herself that in this essay, “I stressed that feminist advocates collude in the pain of men wounded by patriarchy when they falsely represent men as always and only powerful… As long as men are brainwashed to equate

The ways in which these aspects portrays themselves to an audience can be telling of the effectiveness of a literary work. By weaving in objective facts, personal anecdotes, scientific opinions, and her own solutions, hooks is able to link together ideas in a cohesive understanding that makes each main claim stand out. As hook is writing about a specific concept (“patriarchy”), it is imperative that she define the word and use that to her advantage of analysis. hook defines patriarchy as, “a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence,” (1). This specific order of words and definition indicate hook’s tone towards the concept and further the rhetorical purpose. Later in the essay, hooks refers to the psychotherapist, John Bradshaw’s definition of patriarchy as useful in that it reinforces the idea that it is a social organization that is characterized by male power and domination (3). This comparison of definitions is utilized to draw the differences between the opinions between hook and her