worsement:
“We can consider the relationship between the negativity of the figure of the feminist killjoy and how certain bodies are “encountered” as being negative. Marilyn Frye argues that oppression involves the requirement that you show signs of being happy with the situation in which you find yourself. As she puts it, “it is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and be cheerful. If we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our situation.” To be oppressed requires that you show signs of happiness, as signs of being or having been adjusted. For Frye “anything but the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean, bitter, angry or dangerous.”
—Sara Ahmed, “Feminist Killjoys (and other willful subjects)”
Occupy Chicago HQ | 500 W Cermak, Chicago, IL | May 12 & 13, 9am-4pm
Deadline for Submissions: April 15
Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANG8) and Occupy Chicago are organizing a democratic counter-summit in opposition to NATO and the G8. We are looking for a wide range of workshop presenters to help facilitate a re-imagination of our future. Keynote speakers will include Malalai Joya, who is a former Afghan member of parliament and internationally renowned opponent of NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan, and Rainer Braun, a member of the International Coordinating Committee of the European No to NATO network.
The purpose of this summit is threefold:
- To educate our communities about war, austerity, global capitalism, and corporatization in the 21st century
- To mobilize our communities for radical democracy
- To present alternative visions of the world we all know to be possible
Read the workshop call in its entirety here.
rogueish:
“There are several ways to conceive the demand for wages. One could describe it as a proposal for reform-specifically, a policy or program designed to rationalize the wage system by making up for some of its deficiencies. Although this description is accurate to a degree, to get a sense of what is missing from it, consider the difference between a demand on the one hand and a request or plea-a first step in an effort to seek compromise or accommodation-on the other hand. Neither the policy proposal, with its aura of neutrality, nor the plea, with its solicitousness, manages to capture the style and tone of the demand for wages for housework; none of them conveys the belligerence with which this demand was routinely presented, or the antagonism it was intended thereby to provoke. Although the demand for wages may have been, at least in part, a serious bid for reform, there seems to have been little effort on the part of its proponents to be seen as reasonable or to meet others halfway, and little interest in working within the logic of the existing system and playing by its rules.”
— Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries
