book review: pleasure activism
23 Apr 2019Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown
What are the main ideas?
- liberation work must be driven by pleasure, not by avoidance of pain or harm.
- many of us doing justice work have forgotten the above. we are activated by making things less bad for people (including ourselves). however, if we don’t actually know what pleasure feels like, we could fight against bad things forever and never actually know (a) what liberation feels like and (b) if we’re actually getting closer.
- if it doesn’t feel good, it’s not sustainable. period.
- oppressive systems thrive by removing people’s ability to pleasure themselves. they create dependency on the system. it is liberatory to remember that we can please ourselves
If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?
- freedom and liberation must be measured by how much pleasure we are able to feel and create, not by how little bad we experience. i need to develop a more finely tuned pleasure barometer/sensor.
How would I describe the book to a friend?
this book is the upgrade to emergent strategy that we didn’t even know we needed. even if we just organized ourselves and did the hot and heavy homework, we’d all be free WAY faster than all the other “social justice” shit stuff we’re doing.
reminder: book review structure
words / writing / post-processing
201w / ?min / 10min