If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a
transformative impact then a critical break with the notion of
"authority" as "mastery over" must not simply be a rhetorical device, it
must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as
well as chosen subject matter. Third-world scholars, especially elites,
and white critics who passively absorb white supremacist thinking, and
therefore never notice or look at black people on the streets, at their
jobs, who render us invisible with their gaze in all areas of daily
life, are not likely to produce liberatory theory that will challenge
racist domination, or to promote a breakdown in traditional ways of
seeing and thinking about reality, ways of constructing aesthetic theory
and practice.