this has taken me 3 days and now it's as clear as it will ever be.
Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider (Penguin Modern Classics) (p. 104). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
I'm not sure I understand that sentence. When it was published in 1984 Audre Lorde was a professor and the essay was her response to her participation in a conference in New York.
She defines herself as a Black lesbian feminist - is that an expression of differences or similarities. She mentions 'tools' in the context of 'a racist patriarchy'.
She advocates interdependency (between women) as the way towards change.
There was a sticker on a bin on the Dewsbury Road that said something like 'racism is a product of capitalism'.
by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone , so as to create .... for all of us a community .... where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.
the back of my Labour Party Membership card.
which seems to deal with plurality and interdependence.
Audre Lorde also says that the demand for the oppressed to explain to their oppressors their existence, needs and differences is an old and primary tool which diverts the oppressed's energies and keeps them preoccupied with the concerns of those in power. But isn't trying to 'dismantle the master's house' also an exhausting diversion, and preoccupation with the concerns of those in power.
Can her essay title be used to say you cannot use the tool of capitalism - competition - to dismantle capitalism.
And, perhaps, (I am thinking as I write) unless capitalism is replaced by socialism, we cannot achieve that ideal community. The problem is that those currently with the power to change the system have a vested interest in not changing it. Audre Lorde is dead. If she wasn't would she want to widen out her aversion to a 'racist patriarchy' to capitalism? Would she object to a three word definition of herself as privileged published academic?
Silence is a tool used by those who feel powerless
that we have something worth saying,
that our voice, though unique, resonates with the rest of humanity
that we will get whatever out of our heads,
that our words, flung out there where we can see them are somehow more real than when they are racketing around inside
that because they are more real someone might notice them.
It might make me feel better but does it serve any purpose? It's a bit like the community discussion groups (master's tool) so popular under the last decade or so of Conservative governments. I might make the time to try and find out what they have achieved other than making the participants feel heard. And thereby distracting them.
Maybe.
Trying to use silence as a tool might explain why people don't vote.
In the run up to the 2019 election, people-in-the-street interviews on the news kept saying, "I've always voted Labour but this time I thought I'd give Conservative a try". The Conservatives had formed the Government for the previous 9 years. Maybe they assumed the Conservatives would form the Government again and that if they had a Conservative MP then they would benefit. Maybe the feeling was that their MP somehow had the power to make their voice heard, their existence valued, their needs met, their differences respected.
Maybe it did. According to Liz Truss, we'll have to wait till 2024 to find out if those constituencies that swung stay Conservative or swing back.
2024 is a hundred years since the first Labour Government.
Since 1924, there has been a Labour Government for 33 years and a Conservative government for 64 years. If I trawl back to 1834, the first Conservative government, the 64 is increased to 99 years.
Conservative is the default Government in our consciousness, capitalism the default mode of thought.
How to not dismantle that but build a different house?
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