benjamin adam

“In this manner, The PJs insists that racism involves more than the mobilization of stereotypes, that in fact it extends far beyond matters of visual representation. While this is a relatively simple point, it nonetheless invites us to push beyond the prevailing methods in media studies, where a focus on analyzing stereotypes dominates the conversation about race to the extent that racism often becomes inadvertently reduced to bad representation, and antiracist politics are often depicted merely as a struggle over the content of specific images. Yet the struggles depicted on The PJs are rarely about imagery; indeed, in a culture where it is impossible to separate racism from class politics, the struggles remain lived and felt primarily in relations of power not visible at all.”
― Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings

“black studies illuminates the essential role that racializing assemblages play in the construction of modern selfhood, works toward the abolition of Man, and advocates the radical reconstruction and decolonization of what it means to be human. In doing so, black studies pursues a politics of global liberation beyond the genocidal shackles of Man.3”
― Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human

“Destruction, in other words, is an effort to differentiate. In childhood, if things go well, destruction results simply in survival;”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“While Darwin's tear is a defense, and Freud's tear is a symptomatic eruption, Sartre's tear is a refusal.”
― Eugenie Brinkema, The Forms of the Affects