2004-12-08 - 7:03 p.m.
I feel like the left has become so clunky, out of touch, almost non-existent. Perhaps I feel this way because this is how I am “supposed” to feel, because if I feel no one is organizing, why should I. This is not the trap I am falling into though, I know resistance and critical thought exists. What I am really hung up on is how to make our (those of us who identify as progressive, radical, or whatever) knowledge strategic, useful, effective. I don’t think this means dumbing down messages or making our ideas “less radical,” but questioning what those ideas are.
What I mean, I guess, is that I was struck by a conversation in my Hollywood and the Education of America class today about how strategies developed during the 1990’s to educate and dialogue around the issues of social justice, and cultural power and inequity, such as racism, classism, sexism and homophobia, need to be made more relevant to this cultural moment. Our professor pointed out that now people may think they “know” about these issues, while ignoring underlying structures, oppression and history. For example, someone might think that because they watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy they “know” about issues in the gay community and that they don’t need to examine their own homophobia or heterosexism or learn about the struggle for LGBTQ rights (or even what that stands for).
I was thinking about how already, at 23, I feel out of date. I realize I can’t just keep condemning contemporary culture and inwardly wishing that it would stop being so horrible and so oppressive. I have to find ways to really organize within it, to make resistance viable. I realize I am writing this as if it is my own individual struggle, but what I mean is that together we must create this new kind of orientation and struggles. We need to draw on and learn from the past, respect our elders and ancestors and simultaneously trust our contemporary knowledge and creativity. But I already feel so stuck, like my patterns of thought are already so ossified, that I cannot communicate outside of a particular style of speech and interaction which is informed by a particular leftist, academic discourse. I don’t think it’s the academia itself that is a problem in itself, we all know we need certain languages for certain conditions, but what happens when that is the only way I really feel comfortable talking about difficult issues? For formulating dissent?
