we won’t cancel adrienne maree brown!
Bad news adrienne maree brown, we already canceled us — for realz!
I’mma start saying I’m a big fan of adrienne maree brown. I’ve read and re-read Emergent Strategy and gifted a lot of people with it. Pleasure Activism is my jam. We Will Not Cancel Us left me a little baffled, though. I was down with adrienne’s analysis of the call out and cancel culture. I was like “about time.” Honestly, adrienne has been touching on that phenomenon since Emergent Strategy and warning against its destructive effect on movements.
I didn’t get why adrienne felt the need to back peddle and, frankly, apologize for telling the truth. Mind you, I ain’t read the original post that became the core of the new book (which I read in a single sitting). I take it some people found some of adrienne’s metaphors problematic. Likely people with degrees, and who make their living pointing out the ways other people’s thoughts are problematic. It would take a masters degree to understand the apology couched in We Will Not Cancel Us and, fortunately adrienne is adept enough to bob and weave through the theoretical mumbo jumbo.
I get why cancel culture is the way it is. People who have converted to a certain analysis have to prove and reprove their allegiance by posturing. It’s like pack animals vying for the position of alpha—only instead of the fittest beast getting to be in charge, the one with the most honed rhetorical skills wins. People who lack those skills don’t even get to play. And even though these aren’t battles of physical strength, the loser often suffers a kind of violence.
Like adrienne makes clear, it’s not about speaking truth to power. I’m pretty sure everybody who gets what I mean by call out culture knows I’m not talking about a tactic to restrain oppression. People know I’m talking about the bullshitty catching people saying something that might be found offensive if the person has studied up and gained enough political savvy to recognize. I’m also not talking about troll hunting, where someone is intentionally speaking to offend.
What I’m talking about is what I am damn sure people who are in the conversation most likely get and that is it’s damn near impossible to have a thought that doesn’t trigger someone. The idea that we could live in a world where no one was ever triggered is privileged thinking. I have to get well enough to understand what about this person’s words has me about to snap, or cry, or leave. Often it ain’t even about what that person said, but something that happened to me long before I met that person. I can’t make that person pay for what my father did, or what my boss did, or what that assailant did.
Still, We Will Not Cancel Us was a good read, although I don’t think the people who need it most will even bother. For them, I’m sure adrienne maree brown was canceled long ago.
