alienation is my nation

The result of trying to take an "arty" photograph of Karl Marx in my kitchen:

This is a birthday gift for my friend Ida, paid by her boyfriend & made by me. I thought about illustrating the post with this video, but changed my mind. Just can't get over the fact that it annoys the hell out of me that they're only mentioning the men of the working class in the song & by default excludes everyone else. Can't shake the feeling that the clip contains two of my least favorite things in this world:

1) Nice commie guys in "ironic" t-shirts, who took an A-level course in political science & decided that the class struggle will liberate everyone in some sort of automagical way, without for a second stopping to think about or problematize their own position as white males of the middle class.

2) Katy Perry.

219 friends on facebook, but no one that calls on a saturday night

Apparently that's what it takes to get me back on the x-stitch track again. I stitched most of this yesterday & finished it this morning. I've had an idea in my head for quite some time to make something out of this Audre Lorde quotation & when I found a picture of her on the internet that really screamed "make me into a pattern!" I just had to do it. It's not easy to see, but there is two different shades of grey (oh good band! look here) in the portrait.

Audre Lorde was a caribbean-american poet & feminist, contemporary to Adrienne RIch & Sylvia Plath. She is often quoted in today's postcolonial & afro-american feminist critique, because of her early focus on racism & sexism & above all - how the feminist movement never will be part of the lived lifes of black or colored women if it doesn't confront its own power hierarchies. Racism & sexism is often based on the same type of structures & these structures are often so imbedded in the way that we perceive the world, how we make sense of it & how we judge it (in scientific terms), that if we do not confront this & deconstruct these structures then whatever freedom we get from it will only be freedom for some, not all.

See also the portrait of bell hooks.

being oppressed means the absence of choices

I'm re-reading bell hooks' Feminist theory: from Margin to Center right now, hence this small portrait of her. I'm thinking about removing it from the frame & making it into a patch to put on a t-shirt instead (just have to find a suitable tee).

For those of you that don't know, bell hooks (or Gloria Jean Watkins, which is her real name) is an american writer, feminist & scholar that deals with the relationship between sexism, racism & class. I like they way she challenges the contemporary idea of feminism as a movement & an expression that could mean just anything, depending on who defines it. According to hooks, feminism must be "the struggle to end sexist oppression" & that means that the dominant liberal feminism of today, that doesn't deal with class issues, can never be real feminism. She is relentless in her assault on white, middle class feminists (hey, that's me!) & the movements unwillingness to acknowledge & analyze it's own racism & class issues.

But at the same time as she advocates a raging criticism against how white feminists have excluded & marginalized black women or other ethnic groups & made their own strive for equality with privileged white men the goal, she's very clear on what has to be done: a turn towards companionship, solidarity & bonding between women (a bond that does not have it's roots in an imagined shared role as "victim" or "oppressed", but in shared strength & resources). She's even written a book that is all about love. I really recommend reading bell hooks to anyone who's interested in the ways that sexist, racist & class oppression works together & has to be challenged together.

when in doubt, just ask yourself; what would buffy do?

The first in a series of the carachters from BtVS. I found the stencil for it at Outlines of a revolution, that has a lot of stencils that are pretty easy to make into cross stitch patterns (& even easier if you use the chart generator at Dark lilac). Now i'm just looking for suitable portraits for the rest of the scooby gang...

& once again, thanks to Radical Cross Stitch for the useful links.