"Can cyberspace be a cultural space that addresses the social?" Sara Diamond, Electro-Nomads-1994."Can cyberspace be a cultural space that addresses the social?" Sara Diamond, Electro-Nomads-1994.
"American Standard Code for Information Interchgange: ASCII-A seven bit code representing text, graphics, and control charcters for use in the computer...Ascii lacks the accented characters and ligatures that are widely used in (many) languages. The fact that the Internet assumes a 7-bit ASCII characxter set ammounts to an implied bias against languages other than English..." Bryan Pfaffenberger, (Internet in Plain English.)
"Pig neva know the use a him tail so till butcher chop it off." (Ray Chen, Jamaica/Toronto, "A is for aringe," 1995.)
"It is by the way by the way taught by way thought thought by the way thought it is thought by the way thought that conscription that a colonel that made of following and that having been asked and having asked for it they would come and should respect his prejudices." Gertrude Stein, Lucy Church Amiably, 1930.
"For the seventeenth time the text's attracting clumps of word, clusters, magnetic the way a field draws the flitting yellow butterflies of summer and also the architects who think up plans to make them dissappear." Nicole Brossard (translation Patricia Claxton,) French Kiss.
"Aunt Emily's journals of letters to Nesan read like two different stories-which they are.
'Dear Madam;
This will acknowledge your letter of the 31st... This will also advise you that a Mrs. T. Kato is a Japanese national living in Japan at the outbreak of war, all property belonging to her in Canada vests in the Custodian...'
A toneless form letter. I wondered what Aunt Emily's letter to the custodian had been. 'Tell me what happened to my mother's tiny house-the house where my sisters were born, with the rock garden in front and the waterfall and goldfish. Tell me what happened.'" (Joy Kogawa, Obasan.)
"Alba went up to them and pointed to mural on the other side of the street. It was stained with red paint and contained a single word printed in enormous letters: Djakarta.
'What does it mean, companero?" She asked one of them.
'I don't know,' he replied.
And none of them knew why the opposition had painted that Asiatic word on the walls; they had never heard about the piles of corpses in the streets of that distant city. Alba climbed on her bicycle and headed home." Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits, 1982.
"In the apocathary of the hundreds of stories that I was taught by both my families, most are not used as simple entertainment. In the forloric application, rather, they are conceived of and handled as large group of healing medicines, each required spiritual preparation and certain insights by the healer as well as the subject. These medicinal stories are traditionally used in many different ways;to teach, correct errors, lighten, assist transformation, heal wounds, re-create memory. Their main purpose is to educate and enrich soul and worldly life.
It must be noted also that many of the most powerful medicines, that is stories, come about as a result of one person's or group's terrible and compelling suffering. For the truth is that much of the story comes from travail, theirs, ours, mine, yours, someone we know, someone we do not know, far away in time and space. And yet...these stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present and even future ills..." Clarissa Pinkola Estes, from "The Gift of Story."
"I should explain that as my mental faculties increased, I found that it was not only possible to pick up on the children's transmissions; not only to broadcast my own radio messages, but also...to act as a sort of national network, so that by opening up my transformed mind to all the children I could turn into a kind of forum in which they could talk to eachother, through me. So, in the early days of 1958, the five hundred and eighty one children would assemble in the lok sabha, or parliment of my brain." Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.
"Mama, I think you must be ill and keeping it from me. Your writing is shaking. Yesterday, hidden up in a tree, I threw a stone... Now he's in bed, with a gash in his forehead...At ten o'clock they told us (he) was dead. Mama this is all very strange. The priest said that the young man had been ill for a long time wth a weak heart. You see, I didn't kill him. He let himself die, and nobody knows why. Does this happen often, to boys who are not yet twenty years old?"
"Tete Blanche" by Marie-Claire Blais, English Trans. 1961.
"I present you with a little monologue in which the word "fille" represents successively, sex, filiation, virginity, celebacy, and prostitution. There were three children in our family, two boys and a daughter, (fille.) Look at me in that photo, it's from when I was still an unmarried young girl. (jeune fille.) But I never married, I stayed a spinster, (fille.) And look what I've become, I'm a prostitute (fille) now!"
Louky Bersianik, from: The Euguelionne.
"In French, as in English, the masculine is assumed to be neutral, that is, inclusive of all humans. The feminine, on the other hand, is specific to women. The result is the sexualized presence of women in the meanings of words, and the syntactic absence of gender categories, like 'man.' This is more pervasive in French, because nouns have a gender, and adjectives and verbs must agree with them. Although they may pose as innocent grammatical categories, it is apparent that they too are politically invested..."
from Works In Progress: Building Feminist Culture, ed. Rhea Tregebov, 1987.
"This stoopid art-speak ( the converted use of academic/patriarchal language to convey a feminist/artistic sensibility) is something that fascinates me, but it takes me half an hour to figure out what the fuck they're saying. I love it, but it bites my butt ..." Mystery dyke.
"In Claire Harris's 'Where the Sky is a Pitiful Tent' we find historical slippage between fact-the historical narrative of Guatemalan revolutionaries-and poetry-the intimate lyric of personal anguish, terror and frustration." (from Wendy Waring's Strategies for Subversion)
Braiding my hair the mirror propped on my knees
I gaze at your sleeping vulnerable head
before the village we smile or
don't smile
we must be as always
while the whole day aches with
our nightmares.
(My mother had left us alone while she went to look for a lawyer who would take my father's case. And because of that she had to work as a servant. All her salary went to the lawyer. My father was condemned to eighteen years in prison...)"
Policeman Cleared in Jay-Walking Case
"Recognise this edge
and the air carved with
her silent
invisible crisis
Observe now this harsh world
full of white work or so
you see us
you full of
white fire white heavens white words."
Claire Harris,
Toronto.
"It is common knowledge among feminists that social and political theory was, and still is, written by men, for men and about. The classical theorists of political philosophy are all firmly within "the male-stream:" their subject matter reflects male concerns, deal with male activity and male ambition and is directed away from issues involving, or of concern to, women. As a consequence, women do not appear as actors in the realm of social and political thought. When she is present, women is either partial figure engaged in activities which can easily be described by direct analogy to men (as with the Marxist worker-a sexless creature) or she is an ideological construct of the male theorists imagination-we see "Woman" in all her glory rather than real women.
The legerdemain by which real women are made to disappear from theories about human society and polity deserves close attention.
From: "Vanishing acts in social and political thought:Tricks of the Trade," (by Beverly Thiele.)
Decontextualization: Abstracts from reality. Ideology, consciousness determine what is important, essential, universal (male) and what is deleted as insignificant and irrelevant (female). Different treatment of men and women- what men are/do/can be vs what women are for. |
| Universalism: Obscures bias in decontextualisation e.g. Language which claims to be generic obscures partiality. |
| Naturalism: What is 'natural' ceases to require an explanation (e.g. Marx) Ambivalence regarding 'nature' and 'natural' reflects the purpose of naturalism in theory i.e. to exclude women. |
| Dualism: Differentiate male from female and invest male pole with positive values and female with negative value viz. |
"Women's desire for safety and fairness in our lives does not necessitate hating men. Trying to educate and inform men about how their feet are planted on our necks doesn't translate into hatred either. Centuries of anti-racist struggle by various people of colour are not reduced, except by racists, to our merely hating white people. If anything, it seems the opposite is true. People of colour know that white people have abused us unmercifully and it is only sane for us to try to change that treatment by every means possible.
Likewise the bodies of murdered women are strewn across the lanscape of this country. Rape is a national pastime, a form of torture visited upon all girl and women, from babies to the aged. One out of three women in the U.S. will be raped in her lifetime. Battering and incest, those home-based crimes, are pandemic. murder, of course, is men's ultimate violent "solution." And if you're thinking as you read this that I'm exaggerating, please go get today's newspaper and verify the facts. If anything is going down here, it's woman-hatred, not man-hatred, a war against women. Wanting to end this war doesn't equal man-hating. Opposition to either movement aligns one with the most reactionary elements in American society."
Barbara Smith, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, 1983.
Open Lettre, November 11 1997
anarcho@geocities.com
dear anarchist guys;
Hey, your FAQ's are very elaborate and helpful, a real accomplishment. Very accessable and detailed.
I have one friendly question: Why the FUCK can't you put "(sic)" beside hundred-year old quotations like:
"Once equality has triumphed and is well established, will there be no longer any
difference in the talents and degree of application of the various individuals? There
will be a difference, not so many as exist today, perhaps, but there will always be
differences. Such diversity, far from constituting an affliction is. . . one of the assets of
mankind...an important argument in favour of equality."
"The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man
by man."
"The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys..."
And Emma Goldman, as you may have noticed, is, like many of your quotees, DEAD, and in no condition to qualify her copious use of the expression, "Man" to convey "Humanity."
If you read her autobiography, you will notice that much as she had a beautiful, emotive way with turn-of-the-century, pre-"Feminist" Anglo, she also had the habit of obsessively dating some pretty screw-ball MEN, by anyone's standards, hence her possible preoccupation with the word.
I also use the word "Man," as in, "I mean it, Man..." as one might use "buddy" "jack", or "baby." It is a question of who I am addressing, and just as I wouldn't use "homey," if I was talking to Emma Goldman, I think it's only fair that if you are trying to do outreach using turn-of-the-century lingo, you might consider the alienation inherent in; "What wonderful results this unique force of man's individuality has achieved when strengthened by cooperation with other individualities," Emma Goldman, (precious untouchable anarchist rube).
Anarchists and feminists have fought along side eachother for a long time, and a major front for feminists has been language.
The effect of the last quotation is to exclude, the impact deliberate or not, and I am sure it was not so; simply put, to make all feminists, feel like this is not a conversation about them. I am a stanch anarchist, I have been to jail many times for my beliefs, and my herstory means a great deal to me. I am also a feminist, I do not feel that these two philosophies are mutually exclusive. As Emma Goldman might have put it, the Kronstadt sailors are dead- we are alive. Turn of the century anarchist writing is full of beautiful turns of phase, such as "Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man?"
"How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might
the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or
filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to
this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to
all and that the earth belongs to no one.'
Please consider the greater resonance of these words. I reiterate Leda Rafanelli, who wrote in the last years of her life, "I see comrades who, because of a word or two which offends them, forget the brother/sisterhood, the solidarity that should bring us anarchists together. It is natural that there should be some disagreements among us. But when someone expresses his/her opinion on people or facts, those who oppose those judgments should do so without personal antagonism.Viva l'Anarchia!"
-Sue Real, Toronto, 1997.
"Although I am as staunch a feminist as
anyone, I am not that big a fan of "sic"
because whatever a person's limitations,
they have a right to their words.
Also, if I change someone's words (with little "sics"), am
I really hearing what they wanted to say? Ninteenth century anarchist
women used "man" and "mankind" a lot, true, but I think that it was in a
way an appropriate reflexion of their beliefs and underlying
assumptions. Didn't they believe in a masculine ideal, towards which
women (crippled by patriarchy) had to strive in order to become equal
with men?
Today, the language of "man" and "mankind" does not suit anarchist women
well, because by and large we think that there is an ideal of freedom
towards which both men and women must strive. We no longer equate
masculine gender with the fullness of human experience. We are more
conscious of how patriarchy can cripple males as well as females.
And naturally enough we want a new language, to reflect our new ideals
and values. Nevertheless, such changes in language have to be allowed
to develop, it can't be forced. For one thing, new language tends to
become a "jargon", which used outside the circle of people in the know
only confuses and alienates people instead of opening up communication.
I am thinking of how I came home from college bright-eyed and full of
big words; my family was furious, thinking I was patronizing them by
using language they couldn't understand. Demanding that people use a
different vocabulary often strikes people the wrong way. (Also, it drove
me crazy when my mother made fun of my "feminist jargon" because having
to say in five hundred words what I could say in one forced me to (1)
take the time to let her think over each new idea and (2) I had to face
all too often how little I really knew, if I COULDN'T explain the ideas
in familiar language.)
Finally, I tend to oppose anything which is used to stop the flow of
ideas and discussions, and I don't know about you folks, but in my
experience the old PC vocab charge is one of the favorite tactics of
people out to control a meeting.
I think the best that we can do is to circulate new language and let
people use it who want. But when the goal is to find common ground with
people (who are not self-defined anarchists or feminists) be forewarned
that excessive use of new terms, or the insistance on PC language, is a
quick way to lose the person's interest.
I learned the most by listening to what people have to say and by
expressing my thoughts without recourse to jargon. In this, my friends
helped me a lot -- making me explain every single unfamiliar term until
I realized that I ought to just shut up already with the jargon and say
only what I actually WANTED to say. If what I wanted to say was
"Capitalism is already a failure if you measure profits in a society's
ability to meet the needs of its people, instead of in dollars" than
THAT is what I learned to say, instead of "Capitalism is evil; what the
world needs is Anarchy." Because eventually, I have found, if you win a
person around to agreeing that Capitalism does not succeed in meeting
people's needs, you will be ASKED for an alternative vision.
This is nevertheless, not the time to use terms like "Anarchy" and
"Socialism" unless you are sure that the person you are talking to is
already open to those ideas. To most people, the terms (as fond as we
are of them) are indelibly associated with unpopular ideas. Treat
"Anarchy" as a jargon term, and instead describe what you mean, and you
will win far more support.
To quote the much-maligned Emma Goldman, "Ignorance is the most
dangerous element in society" -- and many people know it. That is why
self-described anarchists are regarded by many as dangerous lunatics; we
are associated with the image of destruction of the social order, and so
assumed to be anti-Values, as if we had no values or creative ambitions
of our own. It is assumed that out of our ignorance of important social
values we would simply destroy everything - the sacred along with the
problematic. What we CAN do, if we want, is to show instead a
bigger-hearted and more socially profitable route to preserving common
values.
I know that I am going to hear some outraged responses to my assumption
of "common values"!! So I will try and pre-empt the indignant by saying
that no, I do not share common cause with fascist leaders who cover up
their real ambitions under the term "Family Values". However, I do
realize that many citizens are easily wooed by the fascists because they
appeal to what people care most about -- a desire for prosperity and
peace (at home), and a secure (nationalist) pride in oneself. We can
attack fascism best by (1) pre-empting their claim to understand the
"common values" and (2) by showing their claims to be hollow and
misleading.
Here's to solidarity,
Jackie -MujeresLibres