I'm speechless. "[...] not knowing quite what it is that the world is not giving you [...]." Yes.

How telling! The retreat into the personal is not a product of one's questioning of whether s/he can speak on behalf of others (the difficulty of saying "we") but a product of the culture industry! U.S. individualism, consumerism... Not a preoccupation with the other.

And yet, they entailed some kind of collective learning, didn't they? Or at least instilled the sense that organization was possible, imperative, in the struggle for people's rights?

Art is not a mere expression of change or the means through which we voice our longing for change. Art is change itself! "[...] an expanding sense of what's humanly possible."

Interesting. A few months ago, I read a paper that argued that the type of gender egalitarianism which took hold in the U.S. was the one most compatible with American individualism and its cultural and institutional logics. It is imperative to look at the implications of this, since they determine whether any kind of collective articulation is not only possible, but wanted. And how it's voiced by the movement's leaders. It's quite complicated when white, educated, middle-class women (and their particular idea of progress) see that the world is changing for them and then assume the world is changing for all women.

It is interesting how we've been historically willing to face the (not so nice) consequences of using single categories (such as women) to underpin our struggles. Why did it take us so long to believe that we could both fight for our rights while also questioning the rigidness of, or even lack of clarity concerning, our categories?!

Intersectionality.

Beautiful! Silence as a condition of vision. This is brilliant!!!! It made me so happy when I found a way, a phrase that could express why I love the classes Prof. Annabel teaches. I wrote in a piece of paper in order not to forget: "Prof. Annabel makes me believe that the feeling I sometimes have --the feeling of having something to say-- is not false, is not illusory." But now, having read this passage, I may add more to it! I can explain it better. Your classes, the texts you choose for us to engage with, they allow for us to find a path, an always unique path, in which we can celebrate our silence. Not to suffocate with what is not said, but to "bathe [our] imagination" so that when we do break it, it is never to further harm our human relationships. That's so beautiful!

YES!!! And it is in this sense that we can envision the encounter between crisis and the arts. It is interesting that Rich mentions iconography because it seems to me that even our semiotic understanding of the world is challenged by the dominance of capital over all dimensions of life and meaning-making (or the lack of it). It is as if capital is the only real signifier of our times. It swallows and regurgitates everything to us. Capital and its logic, capital and its claim to history, capital and its supremacy.

Precisely. In our neoliberal times, not even the free flow of labor is accepted. It's only capital! Capital, capital, capital.

It is crazy to think that, among the hundreds and hundreds of papers published every day, it is so hard to find something truly groundbreaking; something that challenges paradigms, and does so not only in content but also form! If we read the most famous, well-established journals in political science, social science, or economics we will simply not find papers putting capitalism into check: every arrangement, if any, is to be done within it, as if there was no other choice, as if we had arrived to a point in history where the big questions had already been answered and the only way to move on (intellectually, academically) is by addressing more "specific" issues -- that, ironically, many tend to generalize when it comes to developing scientifically-informed policymaking. Needless to say the position occupied by the U.S. when it comes to the amount of knowledge produced and the money they have available to this end. That is, needless to say who dominates/controls the production (and commercialization) of knowledge globally and how absurd it is that we see it as a natural phenomenon.

Yes: "a cognitive and emotional dissonance!" National propaganda does not only exist at the level of discourse. Or, better saying, we should not underestimate discourse: its effects are not restricted to the realm of the said/heard. Our whole worlds (material and imaginative) are created, destroyed, and re-created through discourse. As a society, our collective hopes, what we deem to be achievable by us and those surrounding us is so, so influenced by national propaganda! And in the case of the U.S. (a place often seen as a synonym to democracy) there is a relation of trust between citizens and state institutions that further complicates people's digestion of the propaganda they produce and circulate. This dissonance may also lead citizens to blame themselves entirely for the conditions under which they live, for their "failure."