Report Blog Entry
When a group has no specific task (and consciousness raising is a task), the people in it turn their energies to controlling others in the group. This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents. Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and personal power games rule the day. When a group is involved in a task, people learn to get along with others as they are and to subsume personal dislikes for the sake of the larger goal. There are limits placed on the compulsion to remold every person in our image of what they should be.-- Joreen Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
The end of consciousness-raising leaves people with no place to go, and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there.
miss me with that lord of the flies bullshit kthx
6 Kudos
Comments
Displaying 1 of 1 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
Soy Boy LaCroix
This is my first time reading anything of Jo Freeman’s, although I have heard of her BITCH Manifesto. This passage is super resonant as someone with some familiarity around my local political organizing scene. These dynamics are going to be present, and it’s good to keep focused on particular goals in spite of disagreement to keep from breaking off into factions over personality disputes. Thanks for sharing this, I ought to look over more of her work.
I've seen it in real life, too, but I think it's even more pronounced online, when people don't really have anything to work towards, just a rough set of values and, in the worst case, no way to spread them than to "cancel" those who aren't already sharing them. Obviously social shaming does serve an important function, but if all you have is a hammer and all that.
by Nein MC; ; Report