In addition to being really tired today, I have not had a chance to write my post on liberation as a process because i’ve been enthralled with a conversation we’ve been having over at brownfemipower’s post entitled Oprah, Mamihood and the “progressive” movement.
Here’s a quote to get you hot and bothered:
But this seems to be a trend in radical/progressive circles. There is a lot of talk, a lot of masturbating to theory, a lot of fighting over who is the most radical.
So you can blame my lack of posts on brownfemipower, Oprah, and great conversations with friends.
Share This
I really loved that post on Oprah, too. It’s unfortunate that it’s so easy for us to get caught up in snarling.
One of the reasons I was attracted to british cultural studies is that it avoided “looking down our noses” and “low culture” and ways of seeing how poeple didn’t swallow, whole cloth, all the bad messages found in POP culture.
but, this will turn into a dissertation if i keep writing. but i’m glad to see someone else that found tha tpost wonderful, too. I keep meaning to write about it at the blog. too scatterbrained some days.
I always get really disturbed when folks who are challenged to stretch start complaining about being accused of not being radical enough. It’s deflection, plain and simple. If I say, a wwoman who defines as feminist and radical should really be looking at including a critique of sex and sexuality into her feminism, this is an invitation to do some work independently. It’s not an invitation for her to start griping at me about my questioning if she’s radical. If I was dealing with a white anarchist who had no race politic and asked him or her to stretch to encompase more of what’s actually affecting potential allies and that person turned on me and accused me of questioning their radicality, would that make the illogic clearer? This is me venting because everytime I request that folks actually occupy the political spaces they define as filling, they freak and turn my challenge into some sort of personal attack on their radicality. If this is all they can do in the face of an honest set of questions from a powerful potential ally, what exactly does that say about their radicality, exactly?
And just for the record, I think Oprah is dangerous, possessing of money and influence which is currency in most circles, but lacking in any but the most basic sort of analysis.