Larry Achiampong and David Blandy explore the impact of eugenics, scientific racism and Black resistance: https://web.archive.org/web/20250930203332/https://www.bcaexhibits.org/exhibits/challenging-the-narrative via @FINOkoye
#historyOfScience #science #raceMaking #institutionsDeceive #racism
‘The schoolteacher does not inquire when she questions a pupil, any more than she informs when she teaches a rule of grammar or arithmetic. She “teaches”, she gives orders, she commands.’
And, we might add, she assigns, as we read further on:
‘The apparatus of compulsory education does not communicate information, but imposes semiotic coordinates on the child with all the dual bases of grammar (masculine-feminine, singular-plural, subject of the statement-subject of the utterance, etc.). The elementary unit of language is the instruction.’
(Deleuze, Guattari, 1980, pp. 95-96)
#educate #obey #obedience #beliefs #school #education #imagination #training #institutionsDeceive #learn #learning #teaching #teach #adultDomination #teachers #Deleuze #Guattari #language #semiotics #domination
So here is more for you @geriruth
At the end of this speech to teachers, #Baldwin restated the thesis in these words, more frequently quoted:
"I began by saying that one of the paradoxes of education was that precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."
#teach #learn #class #society #obey #obedience #teaching #learning #control #school #education #imagination #performance #ranking #meritocracy #practice #training #merit #institutionsDeceive #JamesBaldwin #reform #teachers
"The paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society."
James Baldwin to teachers in 1963: https://richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm
#obedience #adultDomination #growth #willingness #control #merit #personalDevelopment #school #education #imagination #performance #ranking #meritocracy #practice #training #merit #institutionsDeceive #learning #teaching #Baldwin #reform #adultism #teachers
'Three syntactic patterns appear consistently:
• Passive constructions, such as “Data shall be retained,” which avoid naming the actor.
• Nominalizations, such as “submission,” which replace verbs like “submit” to obscure who acts.
• Instruction templates without subjects, such as “Confirm identity before approval,” which issue commands without specifying any agent.
'Each of these forms is grammatically acceptable and often institutionally adopted. What unites them is that they structurally remove the subject, the speaker, and the agent.
'Why This Has Consequences
'Where no one is named, no one is held accountable.
[…]
'Formality, once a guarantee of procedure, becomes a mask for the absence of responsibility.
'Documents continue to function. Authority continues to be exercised. Yet no one signs, and no one speaks.'
https://www.agustinvstartari.com/post/who-gave-the-order-when-ai-issues-commands-without-a-speaker by @agustinstartari
#responsibility #accountability #ethics #authority #technique #risks #assessment #algorithms #technocriticism #judicialBias #institutionsDeceive #ethics #justice #law #publicLaw #bias #justiceSystem #judiciary #genAI #generativeAI
"Freedom can be granted, but it remains a “legal fiction”. […] Rights cannot be bestowed upon those constructed as Slaves, non-Humans, or property, especially when such a status is the contingent basis of the worldview through which rights are given their coherence."
by Scott Campbell @susurros
“Peace, within an antiblack world, is a fallacy (much like freedom). The metaphysical infrastructure that supports the fiction of the white human is sustained by antiblack violence.”
by Calvin Warren, in Ontological Terror
(continued) 🧶
#othering #modernity #whiteness #whiteFragility #whiteSupremacy #quotes #antiBlackness #slavery #BlackMastodon #AfroPessimism #beliefs #institutionsDeceive #justice #judicialBias #legality #legitimacy #IHL #internationalLaw #law #OPT #WestBank #JewishSupremacy #liberation #israelPalestine #raceMaking
"Palestinians despise the courts. We hate the sight of a judge, knowing all too well that they are no different from the interrogator. We loathe the law and all it stands for in our context—a tool for oppression cloaked in legality. Even the lawyers, perhaps universally disliked, evoke our mistrust. But for us, the courts represent more than frustration; they are the place where our oppressive conditions are translated into legal language, where the weight of colonial domination is formalized with a veneer of legitimacy."
by Abdaljawad Omar, in “The ICC warrants: Palestinian skepticism and the glimpse of justice,” 2024, https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/the-icc-warrants-palestinian-skepticism-and-the-glimpse-of-justice/
cited in https://fallingintoincandescence.com/2025/05/18/afropessimism-and-palestinian-liberation-an-essay/
#othering #modernity #whiteness #whiteFragility #whiteSupremacy #quotes #antiBlackness #slavery #BlackMastodon #AfroPessimism #beliefs #institutionsDeceive #justice #judicialBias #legality #legitimacy #IHL #internationalLaw #law #OPT #WestBank #JewishSupremacy #Mondoweiss
‘It is in each individual's conscience that society stakes its destiny. The most admirable institutions are mere relics if the persons who are supposed to preserve them do not respect their spirit and are incapable of adapting them to circumstances .’
Corine Pelluchon in her book ‘Éthique de la considération’, 2018
#entitlement #institutionsDeceive #institutions #readFriday #book #philosophy #politicalphilosophy #socialdivide #democracy #ecofeminism #CorinePelluchon #Pelluchon #consideration #ethics #institutionsDeceive
"Modern civilisation has a number of extremely delicate and highly interconnected components whose graceful degradation is effectively impossible."
It is "much easier to break things than to build them up. The government administrations of Britain, France and Germany for example, were set up at a time in the nineteenth century when the rising middle classes demanded a properly functioning state[…]. It took perhaps a generation for professional, neutral public services to fully emerge."
"Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together."
https://braveneweurope.com/aurelien-the-end
#civilService #statehood #bureaucracy #complexity #risk #digitalization #quantification #technocracy #quantitative #repair #mitigation #redundancy #resiliency #Deregulation #Economics #politics #EUPol #EU #Europe #institutions #institutionsDeceive #finance #globalisation #NeoLiberalism #Privatisation #technique #technoCriticism
What NGOs like Greenpeace ultimately offer, according to @ClementSenechal, is “environmentalism as spectacle.”
'Of particular interest is Sénéchal’s treatment of the past and present of Greenpeace. Quite visibly at odds with his former employer, the author takes Greenpeace as representative of the decadence of official environmentalism. Eschewing a coherent critique of the environmental crisis, organizations like Greenpeace, according to Sénéchal, are more devoted to agitprop demonstrations and photo ops better geared to satisfying activist egos rather than advancing strategic goals.
'These contradictions were apparent from the 1970s':
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/environmentalism-climate-activism-ngos-policy
@climate 🧵
#activism #spectacle #environmentalism #book #agitprop #joy #career #struggle #struggles #liberation #demonstrations #militancy #militants #activism #activists #protests #politicalPhilosophy #institutionsDeceive #politics #lobbying #lobbies
(continued)
The director of the institution, Pierre Silviet-Carricart, has been charged of the case of sexual assault. François Bayrou asked the investigating judge for a meeting at his place. The discussion was around the risks for the Bayrous' son, then a student at the boarding school. François Bayrou's wife attended the director's funeral in 2000.
At Parliament, on 11th February 2025, François Bayrou was representing the government for the weekly question-and-answer session. When asked about #Bétharram, he stated before the National Assembly that he had "never been informed of any violence, and even less of sexual violence".
#availability #family #adultDomination #adultism #criminality #criminalNetwork #schoolNetwork #sexualViolence #rapeCulture #silentiation #adults #publicHealth #torture #boardingSchool #adultism #beliefs #values #family #children #education #childhood #learning #catholic #catholics #religion #institutionsDeceive #France #Bayrou #schoolViolence
François #Bayrou is the current Prime Minister of #France.
In 1996, violence was denounced in the elite catholic school of his constituency. He made an official visit as both the then Minister of National Education and a member of the National Assembly for a seat in Béarn (the province of the school). He told the regional press: "The people of Béarn felt these attacks with a sense of pain and a sense of injustice. […] All the checks were favourable and positive."
#Bétharram #availability #adult #family #adultDomination #adultism #criminality #criminalNetwork #schoolNetwork #impunity #ascendancy #sexualViolence #rapeCulture #intimacy #adults #violence #publicHealth #torture #boardingSchool #adultism #adultDominance #beliefs #values #family #children #education #childhood #learning #catholic #catholics #religion #institutionsDeceive
"Stating the outcome a policy is supposed to achieve isn’t a policy." 🧵
"Frontline staff who understand the system and understand why it isn’t working are always seen as the problem, never the solution. Politicians, civil servants, consultants, management boards, working groups – all [generally] assume they’re the solution."
https://commonweal.scot/an-empty-promise-that-explains-everything/
#care #children #oversight #governance #politics #policies #parenting #management #ThePromise #KeepThePromise #Scotland #institutionsDeceive
“The TikTok campaign paid for by the National Liberal Party fits a pattern of unethical strategies by the major parties, including the use of fake accounts, bots and trolls, and the creation of fake media sites to promote their candidates and attack their opponents,” says Liana Ganea: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/romanian-election-undone-by-tiktok/
#propaganda #elections #campaign #Romania #TikTok #institutionsDeceive #manufacturingConsent #infoWar #Russia #Ukraine #TruthDig #interference #influence #NATO
[A long thread ball 🧶]
#Work is a matter of power and domination.
#Work should be a concern of political theory.
Here is the introduction from Kathi Weeks' book 'The problem with work: feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries': https://libcom.org/article/problem-work-kathi-weeks @politicalscience
#fetishism #manufacturingConsent #believe #beliefs #faith #hope #institutionsDeceive #politicalTheory #growth #consumerism #economy #shopping #capitalism #workCulture #jobs #KathiWeeks #imagination #feminism #Marxism #antiwork #politics #postwork #book #buying #consuming #consumption #workEthics #Foucault #bioPower #bioPolitics #MaxWeber #longRead
[…]
"What makes the ‘#growth mentality’ so appealing, Carol Dweck discovered, is that it creates a passion for learning rather than this thirst for approval. Its hallmark is the belief that human qualities like intelligence and creativity, and even relational capacities like love and friendship, can be cultivated through effort and practice. Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, they don't actually see themselves as failures in these situations, they see themselves as learners."
Samah Karaki, doctor in #neuroscience, wrote in her book "Le talent est une fiction"
#learning #raceMaking #adultDomination #patriarchy #growth #talent #teaching #joy #willingness #antiPsych #psychology #control #merit #success #doubt #personalDevelopment #school #assignments #assessments #education #imagination #performance #ranking #SamahKaraki #meritocracy #practice #training #diversityOfPractice #institutionsDeceive #science #believe
"This article presents how global governance […] targets moved from sovereign to corporate entities and its source from multilateral financial institutions to domestic U.S. institutions. […] The article describes the recursive process that led the U.S. government to assume global regulatory powers and to initiate deglobalization in its trade war against the European Union and China."
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/719925 @economics
#globalGovernance #Iran #history #war #boycott #geopolitics #sanctions #reputation #politics #publicOpinion #research #institutionsDeceive #economy #foreignRelations #multilateralism #deglobalization #hegemony
Our #institutions are vulnerable to sudden, catastrophic failures with no repair. Do not believe them:
"In most settings, climate and sustainability professionals are not getting paid to change important things, they’re getting paid to protect important things from change.
"Climate/sustainability #expertise has become a profession, like any other. Its primary offering is least-cost plans for incremental-but-socially-credible action. Generally those plans defend organizations from criticism and pressure by making serious-sounding commitments to big-but-distant goals (like, “Net Zero by 2050”), paired with incremental and inexpensive steps in the near term. The two are then “triangulated” with arguments that small steps today are “in line” with a future of bold action. The key deliverable is the claim that the triangulator’s employer is “doing enough.”
"The definition of “doing enough” becomes the critical battleground with advocates and regulators who want more action. With triangulation, we see the deployment of bolt-on solutions purpose-machined to preserve the value of slow approaches, assets, and expertise. We see an emphasis on things like charitable gifts, ESG ratings, operational climate emissions (and carbon offsets), business-case sustainability commitments (small steps that pay their way) and employee behavior (“Remember, everyone, recycle your coffee cups and don’t forget to show up for tree-planting day!”), and messaging (from outright greenwashing to empty declarations of support for climate justice).
"The promise of #triangulation—the optics of serious commitment, but an action agenda that doesn’t upset existing management priorities and revenue centers—has proven attractive to those at the top, for understandable reasons: If you’re an executive without any particular insight into the crisis yourself, hiring triangulatory experts allows you to cover your butt without any obvious downside. It’s a plug and play solution, allowing you to keep focused on the business models that have been earning well so far. It limits exposure to the gulf between slow approaches and fast realities. And it works perfectly fine, as long as your decision-making horizon is very close, measured in quarterly reports, and uninterrupted by any sudden changes.
[…]
"Triangulation makes most institutions worse at strategy. It makes professional expertise gained within its programs pre-outdated. It hamstrings the ability to spot opportunity and the skills needed to move disruptively to seize it.
"Triangulation makes a professional more secure in their job for now, but less prepared for the future; triangulated strategies protect organizations from pressure to act now, but they weaken the organization’s capacities to change. Everything worth talking about is outside the boundary of the currently acceptable debate in most professional circles, because every triangulated position and expertise bubble creates the boundary it needs to stay safe. If you are relying on advice being given within triangulated boundaries to try to figure out what’s going on, you’re outsourcing your strategic acumen to people who’s core skill is avoiding the question."
Alex Steffen: https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job @anthropocene @climate @sociology
#discontinuity #priorities #believe #faith #hope #ecology #institutionsDeceive #economy #consumerism #capitalism #climateBreakdown #climateCrisis #globalHeating #climateChange #conflation #reality #environment #pollution #sustainability #sustainableDevelopment #greenwashing
@maugendre @climate Here is a follow-up four years later:
Professor Julia Steinberger wrote a geopolitical roundup: "Exposing the secret history of the making of the climate crisis should change everything about how we act to stop it."
https://jksteinberger.medium.com/what-we-are-up-against-2290ba8c4b5c
#opinion #influence #neoliberalism #capitalism #cultureWars #massExtinction #climate #activism #climateActivism #climateChange #globalHeating #climateBreakdown #institutionsDeceive #geopolitics #domination #money #extraction #fossilFuels #thinkTanks #oilAndGas #JuliaSteinberger
"There is a conflation of capitalism with reality, that this is the only way things operate. There are other ways of organising our relationships with nature and each other."
Patrick Bresnihan in The Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2024/08/08/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-but-curtailing-it-is-the-discussion-nobody-wants-to-have/ @anthropocene 🧶
#media #press #believe #faith #hope #ecology #institutionsDeceive #ecologism #politicalEcology #degrowth #growth #consumerism #quotes #quote #economy #shopping #capitalism #climateChange #conflation #reality #globalHeating #environment #pollution
