The Master’s Tools and the Master’s House–“Woke” Capitalist Style

I know I’m not supposed to play the proud parent too much, especially when my daughter (Lucia Hulsether) moves in some of the same intellectual circles where I made my own career. She needs to make her own way, and is succeeding at this very well, thank you very much.

I’ve also said that I won't to do much linking to other articles here, since there are better forums for that—also because in that way lies madness.

But sometimes I can’t help it. Lucia published another installment in her impressive run of articles, in the webspace Immanent Frame. So I’m linking to it.

Her essay makes an intervention into debates that I've been pondering for years. My first book quoted Audre Lorde’s famous line, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as well as the rejoinder by Hazel Carby: “the master appropriated those tools along with the labor of those he exploited and it is high time that they be reclaimed.”

I don’t think either of these ideas negates the other, nor does Lucia as far as I understand. It’s just that her analysis is recasting this discussion and moving it forward in a fresh and interesting way, in relation to emergent trends within neoliberalism.