I always think the strongest slogans are the ones which become stronger when their opponents try to subvert them— to me, all the attempts to do that for Black Lives Matter just made its opponents look like shits.
I expect the people who “Make America Great Again” was for felt similar about me— either I might go “it wasn’t ever great” or “it’s very great now as you starve in poverty,” both of which are antagonistic in different ways.
I’ve been thinking about how some communications is designed to degrade over time, to become weaponised? Like often someone will say something horrible with a qualifier, and go “look at what I really said; I put a qualifier in!” But the qualifier is dropped in the version of the message that spreads, and that’s why it’s effective even if no one involved in the production of it realises. So I guess it’s about the decomposed slogan, for me? I keep thinking about how a cat’s piss is odourless when it’s released, but gets smellier and smellier as the chemicals in it degrades. “Communication is like a cat’s piss!” I shout, as people edge away from me frightened
You’re absolutely right that slogans like “rest is resistance” or “joy is resistance” can serve as entry points for people who are new to the ideas of liberation and resistance as we discussed before. However, as you elaborately pointed out: slogans are inherently limited. They are oversimplified and are co-opted or misinterpreted, especially when divorced from the deeper context of struggle. “Resist” is a more direct and unambiguous call to action, but it requires a collective understanding of what resistance entails. Whether that's through direct action, community building, or dismantling the system.
The danger, as you noted, lies in conflating resistance with passive acts of self-care or joy. While rest and joy are vital for sustaining the movement, they are not, in themselves, acts of resistance unless they are consciously tied to the broader struggle against oppression. This is where accountability and collective action come into play.
You wrote: "A call-to-action that calls for inaction is no call at all. Equating resistance with virtues like joy/rest/love do all of the concepts involved a painful disservice to each other.
The metaphorical equation of joy is resistance is conceptual displacement. Muddying and conflating the necessary act of resistance with other actions has set a precedent where any act of happiness can be reasoned as resisting."
This is where it got a little choppy for me. I don't think it's a call to action to those who know better. When bell hooks wrote about love as resistance it it didn't feel like conceptual displacement or conflating because hooks’ emphasis on love as a revolutionary act was never about passivity; it was about creating a foundation of care and humanity that sustains the movement. Rest and joy can be seen as sustaining forces, but they must be understood within the context of the larger struggle. Rest becomes an act of resistance when you are deliberate about the reclaiming of time and energy that oppressive systems seek to exploit—especially for Black and Indigenous people. Tricia Hersey highlights this in her book 'Rest is Resistance' in which she talks about her personal struggle with the "grind culture" and advocated for community care. Here I am reclaiming "rest and love is resistance" for hooks and Hersey.
I guess I say all this to say: objectively, at the end of the day slogans are limited. Words are spells, but, ACTIONS AND FEELINGS are the stronger spells. I think it really depends on what the collective is feeling, believing, and doing as whole that creates our collective reality. You can say "I am happy" but if you don't believe it or feel it, you can say it til you're blue and that word spell won't work. Right now, the collective is not unified in our feelings or actions - if we're going to speak metaphysically - that's going to be stronger than the word spells we're hearing or saying on any given day. So do they really actually matter that much *other than a point of entry* in the context of where we are in our current struggle? The revolution will definitely not be on the internet, I know that for sure (hello hyper surveillance).
Personally I think energy is better placed at discussing practical skills or actions on how to get over the hurdle of actually unifying our local communities to be more deeply engaged politically in direct actions (together) and raising political consciousness/literacy/education -- which I see you doing here. Well written piece.
"You’re absolutely right that slogans like “rest is resistance” or “joy is resistance” can serve as entry points for people who are new to the ideas of liberation and resistance as we discussed before. However, as you elaborately pointed out: slogans are inherently limited. They are oversimplified and are co-opted or misinterpreted, especially when divorced from the deeper context of struggle. “Resist” is a more direct and unambiguous call to action, but it requires a collective understanding of what resistance entails. Whether that's through direct action, community building, or dismantling the system."
I think this maybe misreads what I am saying, as I'm looking at why slogans from a core structure perspective, and how the wear and tear sets in. Yes, they are limited. And that should be all the more reason to not treat them as if they are infallible laws that need no refurbishment. If something doesn't work about them, you can point that out, try something new, you can look for something else and that sort of adaptation is going to be crucial in everything we do. I'm laying out the reasons why I think this thing is not working. What anyone does from there, is up to them. But you asked, "So do they really actually matter that much *other than a point of entry* in the context of where we are in our current struggle?"
My answer is, if they don't, we might as well just change them? (which is my usual response when someone asks why does it matter?)
But you also answer your own question, right? You say, in the paragraph before, that you "don't think it's a call to action to those who know better". Which is a large part of my point. There are lots of people who don't know better, and they are being called to action by the idea of "joy as resistance"--and that's how its co-opted, not in some insidious yank away from radical practice but through bitesizing and watering down the radical origins. Actions and feelings are definitely stronger, but words give outer life and allow us the connectivity of a deeper understanding of how those actions and feelings turn up. So I simply wanna get closer to the words we need so we can be more unified in our feelings.
Everything I say I do so with an awareness of surveillance, which is why I wouldn't discuss practical skills or actions here however, the energy it takes to open up an opportunity to rethink, to reflect on the efficacy or failure of something, to see what how to mov forward with it, is not something I'd say is misspent. If people decide no action needs to be taken on a semantic level, I understand, nothing i say is ever a gun to people's head. but I will not be using these terms as they create a lack of clarity in the epicentre of how I think and I write as an invitation to be joined.
When we were protesting against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in the ‘90s, many slogans came and went. Two were the big ones, though, and they both sort of stuck in my soul.
The first was just one word - ‘OTPOR’ - ‘resistance’. It became the name of the student movement that was at the core of the revolution, as they somehow always are.
The second one was barely longer - ‘Gotov je’. ‘He’s done.’ It was so declarative and definitive. It was undeniable. Like in the movies when you’re telling the bad guy ‘alright, it’s over.’ They don’t get a say in whether it’s over or not, it just is.
i might paywall it after a week… i might have to start thinking about how i’m gonna navigate it in the future!! thank you for believing in my writing, my farling
this is brilliant as per. I feel in a sense that Times Up is in a way the most insidious of all the limp 2010-20s slogans, given the way it was almost entirely co-opted and run into the ground by a group of wealthy white cis women celebrities, and the way the very temporally bounded nature of it implies a moment, caesura with the past, which obviously never truly occurred beyond aesthetic posturing.
I think this is perhaps an example where the demarcation of slogan as an action and slogan as an advertisement has, undoubtedly, muddied into one another, which is a dimension i didn't even think about until just now even though it was staring me in front of my face. co-option is almost exclusively relies on marketability and so perhpas, slogans that are truly important politically resist the ability to be capitalistically marketed but speak to a deep need or want of the people. Time's Up feels more in the realm of catchphrase.
"We are transformed by words every single day"--Yes!! I wish I knew more people who really understand this about language: It speaks us as much as we speak it (figuratively speaking), so we'd best make good choices about both what we say and how we say it--which means we also have to know why we say what we say. Thank you for the ongoing thoughtful analysis.
I enjoy "stealing" back energy by co-opting the slogans that keep The Narcissistic Death Cult running its F.O.G machine (Fear, Obligation, Guilt). This is why, as a trauma Trickster, I am making healing from Intergenerational trauma fun again.
A thought (ie, a genuine question, not a rhetorical or rebukey one) about the value of joy and rest as matters of resistance, and about the difference between good slogans and potentially helpful correctives: These ideas have had power for me because I used to believe only the opposite, did not know to expect real joy (read: real community) anywhere, and found myself drowning in useless rage. Believing that I deserve wellbeing as much as the next person (not fancy bubblebaths, but eating enough and sleeping enough and doing what I have to build actual, lasting community), whatever I may have been told I deserve, has helped me find the energy to be less useless to the world. In a word, I think I share your skepticism about joy/rest/resistance as an example of bad sloganeering, but wonder if it might still be useful as a corrective against conditions of incapacitating despair and isolation (the kind you can't yell yourself out of, often as I've sometimes tried), bearing in mind that how one got into such a state often determines our best way out.
A bit like how the Bill Wilson generation of White male alcoholics needed to hear "Your life is unmanageable, you are tiny, guilty, and insignificant," as a corrective to the overweening learned arrogance that tanked so many of them in the first place, whereas most folks I know in recovery need to hear the opposite message, having already internalized enough guilt and diminution to last a lifetime--often the very thing that brought them to recovery in the first place. Hope this makes some sense!
i suppose my whole point is these things can be corrective without conflating them with resistance (hence the reclamation replacement offered) because resistance has a very specific function in the realm of political action and the reality is, not enough of that political action is being actioned. the integrity of meaningful resistance wanes every time we make these individualised actions synonymous with resistance and we should think about why we are saying these things and how we are truly standing up to power.
I always think the strongest slogans are the ones which become stronger when their opponents try to subvert them— to me, all the attempts to do that for Black Lives Matter just made its opponents look like shits.
I expect the people who “Make America Great Again” was for felt similar about me— either I might go “it wasn’t ever great” or “it’s very great now as you starve in poverty,” both of which are antagonistic in different ways.
I’ve been thinking about how some communications is designed to degrade over time, to become weaponised? Like often someone will say something horrible with a qualifier, and go “look at what I really said; I put a qualifier in!” But the qualifier is dropped in the version of the message that spreads, and that’s why it’s effective even if no one involved in the production of it realises. So I guess it’s about the decomposed slogan, for me? I keep thinking about how a cat’s piss is odourless when it’s released, but gets smellier and smellier as the chemicals in it degrades. “Communication is like a cat’s piss!” I shout, as people edge away from me frightened
My God that was good.
As mostly always. Yeah, what you said.
You’re absolutely right that slogans like “rest is resistance” or “joy is resistance” can serve as entry points for people who are new to the ideas of liberation and resistance as we discussed before. However, as you elaborately pointed out: slogans are inherently limited. They are oversimplified and are co-opted or misinterpreted, especially when divorced from the deeper context of struggle. “Resist” is a more direct and unambiguous call to action, but it requires a collective understanding of what resistance entails. Whether that's through direct action, community building, or dismantling the system.
The danger, as you noted, lies in conflating resistance with passive acts of self-care or joy. While rest and joy are vital for sustaining the movement, they are not, in themselves, acts of resistance unless they are consciously tied to the broader struggle against oppression. This is where accountability and collective action come into play.
You wrote: "A call-to-action that calls for inaction is no call at all. Equating resistance with virtues like joy/rest/love do all of the concepts involved a painful disservice to each other.
The metaphorical equation of joy is resistance is conceptual displacement. Muddying and conflating the necessary act of resistance with other actions has set a precedent where any act of happiness can be reasoned as resisting."
This is where it got a little choppy for me. I don't think it's a call to action to those who know better. When bell hooks wrote about love as resistance it it didn't feel like conceptual displacement or conflating because hooks’ emphasis on love as a revolutionary act was never about passivity; it was about creating a foundation of care and humanity that sustains the movement. Rest and joy can be seen as sustaining forces, but they must be understood within the context of the larger struggle. Rest becomes an act of resistance when you are deliberate about the reclaiming of time and energy that oppressive systems seek to exploit—especially for Black and Indigenous people. Tricia Hersey highlights this in her book 'Rest is Resistance' in which she talks about her personal struggle with the "grind culture" and advocated for community care. Here I am reclaiming "rest and love is resistance" for hooks and Hersey.
I guess I say all this to say: objectively, at the end of the day slogans are limited. Words are spells, but, ACTIONS AND FEELINGS are the stronger spells. I think it really depends on what the collective is feeling, believing, and doing as whole that creates our collective reality. You can say "I am happy" but if you don't believe it or feel it, you can say it til you're blue and that word spell won't work. Right now, the collective is not unified in our feelings or actions - if we're going to speak metaphysically - that's going to be stronger than the word spells we're hearing or saying on any given day. So do they really actually matter that much *other than a point of entry* in the context of where we are in our current struggle? The revolution will definitely not be on the internet, I know that for sure (hello hyper surveillance).
Personally I think energy is better placed at discussing practical skills or actions on how to get over the hurdle of actually unifying our local communities to be more deeply engaged politically in direct actions (together) and raising political consciousness/literacy/education -- which I see you doing here. Well written piece.
"You’re absolutely right that slogans like “rest is resistance” or “joy is resistance” can serve as entry points for people who are new to the ideas of liberation and resistance as we discussed before. However, as you elaborately pointed out: slogans are inherently limited. They are oversimplified and are co-opted or misinterpreted, especially when divorced from the deeper context of struggle. “Resist” is a more direct and unambiguous call to action, but it requires a collective understanding of what resistance entails. Whether that's through direct action, community building, or dismantling the system."
I think this maybe misreads what I am saying, as I'm looking at why slogans from a core structure perspective, and how the wear and tear sets in. Yes, they are limited. And that should be all the more reason to not treat them as if they are infallible laws that need no refurbishment. If something doesn't work about them, you can point that out, try something new, you can look for something else and that sort of adaptation is going to be crucial in everything we do. I'm laying out the reasons why I think this thing is not working. What anyone does from there, is up to them. But you asked, "So do they really actually matter that much *other than a point of entry* in the context of where we are in our current struggle?"
My answer is, if they don't, we might as well just change them? (which is my usual response when someone asks why does it matter?)
But you also answer your own question, right? You say, in the paragraph before, that you "don't think it's a call to action to those who know better". Which is a large part of my point. There are lots of people who don't know better, and they are being called to action by the idea of "joy as resistance"--and that's how its co-opted, not in some insidious yank away from radical practice but through bitesizing and watering down the radical origins. Actions and feelings are definitely stronger, but words give outer life and allow us the connectivity of a deeper understanding of how those actions and feelings turn up. So I simply wanna get closer to the words we need so we can be more unified in our feelings.
Everything I say I do so with an awareness of surveillance, which is why I wouldn't discuss practical skills or actions here however, the energy it takes to open up an opportunity to rethink, to reflect on the efficacy or failure of something, to see what how to mov forward with it, is not something I'd say is misspent. If people decide no action needs to be taken on a semantic level, I understand, nothing i say is ever a gun to people's head. but I will not be using these terms as they create a lack of clarity in the epicentre of how I think and I write as an invitation to be joined.
Slogans are definitely magic spells.
When we were protesting against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in the ‘90s, many slogans came and went. Two were the big ones, though, and they both sort of stuck in my soul.
The first was just one word - ‘OTPOR’ - ‘resistance’. It became the name of the student movement that was at the core of the revolution, as they somehow always are.
The second one was barely longer - ‘Gotov je’. ‘He’s done.’ It was so declarative and definitive. It was undeniable. Like in the movies when you’re telling the bad guy ‘alright, it’s over.’ They don’t get a say in whether it’s over or not, it just is.
👌🏾👌🏾
Compelling analysis.
Instilled with agency in every word. I wonder why you didn’t paywall this because we don’t deserve this for free? Insanely good, as always. Thank you
i might paywall it after a week… i might have to start thinking about how i’m gonna navigate it in the future!! thank you for believing in my writing, my farling
this is brilliant as per. I feel in a sense that Times Up is in a way the most insidious of all the limp 2010-20s slogans, given the way it was almost entirely co-opted and run into the ground by a group of wealthy white cis women celebrities, and the way the very temporally bounded nature of it implies a moment, caesura with the past, which obviously never truly occurred beyond aesthetic posturing.
I think this is perhaps an example where the demarcation of slogan as an action and slogan as an advertisement has, undoubtedly, muddied into one another, which is a dimension i didn't even think about until just now even though it was staring me in front of my face. co-option is almost exclusively relies on marketability and so perhpas, slogans that are truly important politically resist the ability to be capitalistically marketed but speak to a deep need or want of the people. Time's Up feels more in the realm of catchphrase.
"We are transformed by words every single day"--Yes!! I wish I knew more people who really understand this about language: It speaks us as much as we speak it (figuratively speaking), so we'd best make good choices about both what we say and how we say it--which means we also have to know why we say what we say. Thank you for the ongoing thoughtful analysis.
welcome, thanks for reading!
Thank you for this great post.
I enjoy "stealing" back energy by co-opting the slogans that keep The Narcissistic Death Cult running its F.O.G machine (Fear, Obligation, Guilt). This is why, as a trauma Trickster, I am making healing from Intergenerational trauma fun again.
Play to Slay!
brilliant as always - especially your point on joy as resistance. your note about it really made me think and i love how you expand on it here
ahh thank you darling, thats all i ever want! thinking fuel.
A thought (ie, a genuine question, not a rhetorical or rebukey one) about the value of joy and rest as matters of resistance, and about the difference between good slogans and potentially helpful correctives: These ideas have had power for me because I used to believe only the opposite, did not know to expect real joy (read: real community) anywhere, and found myself drowning in useless rage. Believing that I deserve wellbeing as much as the next person (not fancy bubblebaths, but eating enough and sleeping enough and doing what I have to build actual, lasting community), whatever I may have been told I deserve, has helped me find the energy to be less useless to the world. In a word, I think I share your skepticism about joy/rest/resistance as an example of bad sloganeering, but wonder if it might still be useful as a corrective against conditions of incapacitating despair and isolation (the kind you can't yell yourself out of, often as I've sometimes tried), bearing in mind that how one got into such a state often determines our best way out.
A bit like how the Bill Wilson generation of White male alcoholics needed to hear "Your life is unmanageable, you are tiny, guilty, and insignificant," as a corrective to the overweening learned arrogance that tanked so many of them in the first place, whereas most folks I know in recovery need to hear the opposite message, having already internalized enough guilt and diminution to last a lifetime--often the very thing that brought them to recovery in the first place. Hope this makes some sense!
i suppose my whole point is these things can be corrective without conflating them with resistance (hence the reclamation replacement offered) because resistance has a very specific function in the realm of political action and the reality is, not enough of that political action is being actioned. the integrity of meaningful resistance wanes every time we make these individualised actions synonymous with resistance and we should think about why we are saying these things and how we are truly standing up to power.