Imperialism(s) and the Toxicities of the Advanced Capitalist World

This chapter provides a discussion of the significance of what hooks means by “the imperialism of patriarchy” in Ain’t I a Woman, as a theoretical precursor to what becomes white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in Feminist Theory. To do this, this chapter will make hooks conversant with racial imperialism (s), through Angela Y. Davis’ work from the 1970s to 1981, which becomes integral to hooks’ view of capitalism as advanced capitalism. What this chapter explicates is how, for hooks, advanced capitalism constitutes itself on the toxicities of racism, classism, and sexism, intersectionally imposed on black womanhood in a capitalist setting, through the capitalist relationship between imperialism and patriarchy. From this, hooks’ view of capitalism as advanced capitalism is assessed in terms of hooks’ understanding of imperialism, first, by placing hooks in conversation with studies on imperialism in the 1970s, and secondly, by having hooks hold dialogues with how imperialism is envisioned by John A. Hobson, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Schumpeter.