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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- In the midst of Black Lives Matter, there is both a renewed urgency to protect marginalised groups and a simultaneous backlash against it. Is this because of ignorance or is there a valid concern?
Friendly critics draw a distinction between the goals and methods of social justice activism. While the intentions are good, the dominant display of social justice activism is contributing to a political culture that strips complex issues of nuanced discussion. There are no two sides to the debate, not even multiple perspectives on a complex issue, but instead a subtle but powerful moral pressure to conform to the prevailing social justice orthodoxy, for fear of being labeled racist or oppressive. Think moral outrage, cancel culture, middle class women being derogatorily referred to as Karens, or the dilemma for people who resonate with JK Rowling’s opinions on biological sex, but in no way want to be transphobic. Even if activists are completely right on these issues, this isn’t a good strategy to get the rest of the world on board.
We are in a paradoxical landscape where unacknowledged trauma shapes all sides, and the dominated become the dominators, balkanising into smaller tribes that speak largely to their in-group. This highly polarising activism plays into the hands of the far right who capitalise on an increasing allergy to ‘woke’ activism. It’s Trump’s trump card in the 2020 US presidential election.
Our intuition is that these polarising tendencies have psychological roots that need to be understood and integrated. The promise is a mature form of activism that can vigorously stand with those who are oppressed, whilst finding a language and form that inspires the majority to stand with us. Not from a place of fear or silent coercion, but empathy and integrity.
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I keep on coming back to this video because it is so refreshing and humbling to hear Bayo be so brave to admit that he does not know where his politics of falling into the 'monstrous messianic middle' will ultimately end up...........yet I believe he invites us all to fall with humility, compassion and empathy together.......
Together in the holding of our entangled unfolding...........falling into deep witness/withnessing of fragmentation, discoherence and lostness.................We see each otheir, we hear each otheir, we hold each otheir............through 💚
I want to say this not as a fight, but to perhaps expand the conversation a bit. I am really struggling with why criticism of certain methods only begin when people on the oppressed side employ them for survival means. As a black person, talking about social injustice is a huge risk that I take because I know I'm possibly tanking my professional profile. As a woman, I often have to choose between my personal comfort/safety, or keeping quiet about sexism at large or in the work place. But I've never heard a collective concern about censorship or cancel culture in regards to this.
But suddenly when oppressed people begin to demand accountability and consequences for bigotry, it becomes a national concern.
And I'm not asking you agree with me, I'm asking that you explore why this is the case
Thank you for raising this. Seems like "identity politics" was the dominant form of oppression in the Americas for 400 years, but the second us white people are confronted with it, now it's too divisive. What a coincidence!
Yes i think your words and questions are very valid. Im thinking it is the notion of binary thinking that results in this reaction of the nation. One way or the other. Historical perspective, lived experience, is another facet of how this all roles out and i guess Bayo is talking on an intellectual level without breaking it down. Maybe thats a binary in itself.. Intellectual and experiential. These discussions certainly open up much in the mind and heart, which i think is part of standing at the cross roads. Ive yet to find many men in my day to day life that can discuss rationally sexual politics... Hopefully we can all stand at the crossroads singularly and together.
There is no identity politics as viral and defended as white abled cishet male identity and associated political privilege. There is no cancel culture as pervasive as dominant white heteronormative culture that is so afraid of critical and embodied engagement with difference
@@asawilder637 Yes.
thank you for presenting this as a genuine Conversation that is much needed rather than a hostile one way argument.
Phenomenal discussion, profound, wonderful. Thank you 🌱
I am arriving at this conversation in the wake of revelations about Jessica Krug, whose 2018 "Fugitive Modernities" received glowing reviews from a number of respected historians. I am now reading through her work and it's truly unbelievable how prescient and relevant this discussion is. I am very interested to hear how this situation might effect thinking on the matter. Like Bayo Akomolafe, she argued that we must look to a politics of refusal and reject colonial and liberal notions of racial identity. She too turns to historic and geographic spaces of fugitivity to reclaim a radical vision of the future outside the dominant narratives and ideologies. I was not familiar with her work before, but it turns out she grew up in the same small suburban Jewish community as me in Kansas. 6 years my elder. I didn't know her, but I know the community she comes from and the early education she recieved. What can it mean that she was interested in these same ideas and in building a new future through picking up threads of a fugitive past while at the same time deceiving and lying to everyone close to her for over a decade? Many Black scholars praised her research as groundbreaking/transformational, but how can we read her theories about identity formation now without thinking only of the elaborate fraud and deception she was perpetrating. In addition to claiming an identity of "Carribean-rooted Bronx Blackness," she also described herself as an "unreformed and unrepentant child of the hood," from "el barrio," while in reality she came from em almost entirely white community and attended an elite private high school with a tuition over $20,000 a year. Can we still take her scholarship seriously? If not, what does that mean about the importance of "authenticity?" I am not an expert in the field, nor do I know her personally, but certainly her "cancellation" will be a major issue for years to come. What she did was incredibly harmful, not just to the people around her and the people she defrauded out of $, but to the intellectual traditions and political causes she professed to believe in. How do we deal with people who recognize the malleability of identity categories and use this knowledge to cash in on their material and social advantages? If we are supposed to look towards those lost histories that managed to escape the violent gaze of the archives, how do we know if someone is just completely full of shit? Surely no one would defend her actions as some kind of radical rebellion against traditional notions of biography or linear time? I do wonder if this is what she misguidedly thought though. Thank you for this. Looking forward to the next one.
Fascinating and profound. I wasn't expecting to be transformed today, but here we are. I came for an intelligent critique of the left and am leaving with more understanding of the value they bring in addition to the value of what they miss. The clarity generated by this conversation is beyond precious. And Bayo is just a genius, full stop.
The left? I never heard this mentioned, left and right, isnt that exactly what Bayo is talking about? Binary thinking.
I deeply relished the live call and am so thankful to be able to listen again. Thank you for the recording!
"Holding The Gaze"... I love this expression of the energy behind well intentioned Activism. I See this also that people unknowingly lock themselves in oppressive or divisive relationships... just making the dance look a little different. We must explore and strive for true Freedom
Love this very much. Thank you all of you, so much. Also I can imagine you ( all of you) in the kitchen at my home. Always a good feeling of friendship when I get that picture in my heart. Not all at once though as my kitchen is smallish. There is a warmth and commitment that makes me feel alive even while I am niether an intellectual or (nor)? an academic. There's so much heart and so, much of it reaches some place within me.
a few sections of thoughts pop up in me now. what isabelle masado wrote feels exciting to me - it tilts my head just a wee bit at a new sort of angle when looking at dominant/other-than-cancel-culture's reaction to 'cancel culture'. in that new-to-me head tilt i notice that the culture that 'cancel culture' is responding to is also a cancel culture. without specifically naming either of them blue and blinding my eye - if i looked at a rainbow's undivided color band, it does feel like they might-could be near one another, if i were making certain kind of associations. or like, they are a similar texture of sandpaper in the way that they are both seeming to say 'no' to the other (and to specific others within the other's realm, such as sexism saying 'no' to women). sort of like that. ---------------------------------- another thought is that, i say this with a question mark because i have read quite a bit about the origin of crenshaw's intersectionality and also i am not at all a specialist in either crenshaw or the term intersectionality; thus, i might have some facts wrong. the way i heard bayo discuss intersectionality reminded me of - like it felt like bayo was saying to crenshaw's instersectionality some sort of audre lorde words of, 'the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'. also, my impression was that the term intersectionality was being conflated-synonymous with cancel culture in the way bayo was speaking. yet, in one [vox] article i read about crenshaw and this term, she was quoted, saying, 'intersectionality ‘isn’t an effort to create the world in an inverted image of what it is now." and that crenshaw is, “not really concerned with shallow questions of identity and representation but ... more interested in the deep structural and systemic questions about discrimination and inequality.” this mirrors other readings i have found; my understanding is that activist culture has more or less taken the term intersectionality and run with it - such that the speed and force of that action has caused the meaning to blur. ------- as i understand the story of this word, it is situated, emergent from within the US court 'justice' system. specifically to say something like, "i need you, justice system, to see this synergistic harm that does not yet seem to have a name. because, if you see it, you 'justice system you, then i might be able to save literal bodies from the bowels of your literal incarceration cells." ---- and that these literal life saving attempts do not necessary need to interfere or be in polarization with desire for metaphoric incarceration liberation - into beautiful, broad thinking-dreaming-being life outside of this system, life where there is no thought-regard whatsoever for the system's gaze. all of these ways (creating words for working within literal jail systems and think-being-beyond metaphoric jail systems) feel like both they contribute towards the sort of 'truly intelligent/true liberation' spoken about by the host around min 41. both consciousness liberating and literal liberating attempts all feel deeply creative, intelligent and tied to vital-life, to me. to me, it feels more tender, more nuanced, more supportive, inviting more movement to thinking-being in general - to understand intersectionality in such terms. too, in my understanding of crenshaw's intersectionality origins there is precisely not an attempt to create an inverted power order. so, that feels different than what bayo is suggesting in this interview. ------------------ some of the residual words floating in my ear, that clung to me as i went to walk after listening to this are something along the line of, cancel culture is causing harm, mental incarceration cells. bayo doesnt want to cancel it because canceling it would be to give it to much power or so but... (it is inbetween those lines that i heard, [but also it should stop.]) and i felt my mouth purse at that like some too acidic food hit my tongue. like i was being duped - like i was being told in cold that cancel culture is but because bayo didnt want to yet take on the responsibility of saying it in such a blunt way. -------- and i feel so much aligning in that too. for, for myself i do not like cancel culture. for better or worse it feels bad to me. very uncomfortable, very closed off. very much like if it were a liquid and you poured it on a plant, that plant would die. and by cancel culture here i mean both the empire sort of sexism, etc systemic oppression cancel culture that isabelle masado's comment help me call by this new name, nor do i like the cancel culture that seeks inverted social power relations via using this word intersectional. ------------------ so, anyway, tonight as i part these comments i feel my body turning in like a pruning, aging person, contracted cuz i feel some closing off happening, a self-protect move from something or another that feels still a bit present here which i dont want inside of my lungs - as i also meanwhile continue to wobble towards-and-with many here, in a seemingly similar direction with similarly hued bright hearts - towards spaces and relations where there is a more feeling of movement, towards more open terrain of conversation, amongst all the relations. thank you all here.
This is just brilliant. What a wonderful discussion and perspectives. Thank you
I love the idea of composting old ideas.
Naming- even Plato understood how controversial it is.
that which you seek has been around for 2000 years but practiced very badly. Jesus' teachings fill nearly every hole in this discussion.
We need other ways to exercise collective power - YES! One possibility is practicing Not-Knowing Radical Relationality... what transforms is the relationship, the we, the us.