We Realize That The Liberation Of All Oppressed Peoples Necessitates The Destruction Of The Political-economic

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation.

The Combahee River Collective, “Section 2: What We Believe,” The Combahee Statement, 1977, (included in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and The Combahee River Collective, ed. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Haymarket Press, 2017, pp. 19-20).

Banned Books Week is the annual celebration of the freedom to read.

From the website! Banned Books Week 2021 is September 26 to October 2. Learn more at https://bannedbooksweek.org/

love love love this

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: imagery by season

This is a masterlist of posts about Buffy’s imagery by season. Most written by me, but not all. I started the series as an attempt to explore the visual side of Buffy, which is often not given very much credit outside of showpiece episodes. Perhaps because of the show’s lower-budget aesthetic, or perhaps because the show has always been more well-known for its wit. But imagery can be meaningful even if it isn’t “pretty.” I found that each season was rich with visual motifs that echoed the ideas the season was exploring. Sometimes those motifs had to do with the content of the shot, and sometimes they had to do with the way the shot was composed. Season six, for example, has many images of fire, and season three has many instances of characters wielding crosses. Whereas season two has a gothic atmosphere that affects the “mood” of shots as much what the shot is looking at. Or season seven uses heavy foregrounding and backgrounding effects to frame the action in a way that emphasizes the subjectivity of perspective.

The intention of the series is not to identify every single motif in every season of Buffy, or to describe every theme. I tried to limit myself only to motifs that had an undeniable visual component. When picking images for season four’s “identity” motif, for example, I didn’t consider it good enough just to show a random image of Faith in Buffy’s body, and let the reader remember that Faith had stolen Buffy’s identity in that shot. Because in that case, the visuals weren’t necessarily doing obvious thematic work. The story was. But that shot in which Faith-as-Buffy stares at herself in the mirror, and at the audience by proxy? That sort of image suggests self-contemplation, and highlights the bizarreness of the fact that it’s not Buffy staring at you. Which absolutely connects to ideas around identity. In other words, I tried to limit myself to images where it really is the image that matters, and not just the context. Even if the context is relevant to what makes the image work.

Adding commentary to all of the posts is an ongoing project. For now I’ve marked all entries that have some sort of explanation attached–whether in essay format or in the tags–with an asterisk (*). 

Season One:

iconography * | horror * | the unexpected  *

high school is hell * | youth; age; the horror of adulthood * (by @visitingthefuneralhome)

Season Two:

voyeurism ( 1 * / 2 / 3 ) | duality * | romance | loss | desire | the gothic *

revivification * | transformation * (by @visitingthefuneralhome)

Season Three:

alter egos * | names | high school | decay * | imprisonment * | precipices * | community * | propriety * | rebellion * | authority vs leadership * | crosses * | crime and punishment * | law and order *

Season Four:

the panopticon ( 1 / 2 / 3 ) | identity * | magic | guns and the military | science and technology | authority * | magic vs science *

Season Five:

mortality * | blood | myth * | strength * | family | love * | boundaries * (more on this motif in no place like home specifically) | grief * | crazy *

Season Six:

the fourth wall | voyeurism and surveillance | fire ( 1 / 2 * ) | disorientation | sex | death * | collapse * | depression | guilt | puppetry * | alcohol * | food ( 1 / 2 * ) | control * | light * | black and white * | the mundane *

Season Seven:

gaze * | frames | isolation | captivity * | touch | the unsafe house * | windows and doors | reflections | communication | perspective | beneathness | overlays * | blindness (and sight) * | foreground/background *

delighted for this to pop up when i searched ‘public humanities.’

If I ever became unimaginably wealthy, my first act would be to purchase the rights to the Shrek franchise, including all associated media and ancillary intellectual properties, then immediately release the whole lot to the public domain. Not because I particularly enjoy Shrek as a character, but because such a popular character entering into the public domain would immediately become an omnipresent and inescapable cultural fixture, and it amuses me to imagine future anthropologists trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Other Conservations: What else it could mean to invest in material heritage

[Collective Liberation]: Disrupt, Dismantle, ManifestFRIDAY, JUNE 4, 202112 Noon EDT / 9 am PDTPresenter: Ayesha FuentesThis open, moderated conversation inv...

“Other Conservations,” a conversation with Ayesha Fuentes, conservator and professor at University College London, from [Collective Liberation]: Disrupt, Dismantle, Manifest, an unconference sponsored by Museums and Race, Death to Museums, the Incluseum, Museums Are Not Neutral, and others, June 2021.

Chiara Fumai and the Dead Feminist Society | Affidavit | Alison Gingeras

Extrapolating from Rome’s dogmas, it dawned on me how Fumai’s suicide could be recuperated as a form of martyrdom—her posthumous legacy undergoing a similar beatification process.

"Extrapolating from Rome’s dogmas, it dawned on me how Fumai’s suicide could be recuperated as a form of martyrdom—her posthumous legacy undergoing a similar beatification process,” Allison Gingeras.