tanteMar 18

Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.

That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.

Show threadtanteMar 18
By ignoring the "master" part in the quote it is reduced to something one can cutesily brush aside: But it's not about appropriating someone's screwdriver. It's about whether you think you can appropriate his torture device.
Show threadAllan HaverholmMar 18
@tante ...or exploitation device. I guess you also have the "leftist AI" proposals in the back of your mind talking about this?
Show threadtanteMar 18
@haverholm it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read but applies perfectly to those proposals, yes.
Show threadarvindMar 18

it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read …

Incidentally, the “Conclusion” chapter of the blog author’s famous book published in October 2025 repeats the point made in the blog post, about Audre Lorde being “manifestly wrong” in proclaiming that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”.

Show threadAllan HaverholmMar 18

@dialecticalmusings I'm afraid I have no idea what the blog post, its author, or their book is 🤷 I replied to @tante's toot, that's all.

At face value though, I'd say someone would have to deliberately misread Lorde to conclude she was "manifestly wrong". Maybe even doing so from a vested interest in keeping the Master's house intact.

But I may be wading blindly into an academic hornet's nest.

Show threadarvindMar 18

That's fine.

I will respect the OP's choice to not name in this public thread the author of the blog post under discussion. However, I can tell you that the blog author is an internet activist and a cult celebrity; he is not an academic, at least not in the conventional sense of the term.

Show threadAllan HaverholmMar 18
@dialecticalmusings Ah, I may know who you talk about after all. In that case my money is 100% on Lorde over him. @tante
Show threadtante
@haverholm @dialecticalmusings I was referring to Cory Doctorow's recent post which kinda read as a response to something I wrote criticizing him
Mar 18 at 6:49pmWeb
Show threadAllan HaverholmMar 18
@tante So I gather. My points still stand in terms of your isolated toots. Can't speak to any context to do with CD. @dialecticalmusings
Show threadarvindMar 18

@haverholm @tante

I was referring to Cory Doctorow's recent post which kinda read as a response to something I wrote criticizing him

Yes, I figured that out.

I think you were referring to Cory Doctorow’s March 17, 2026 blog post.

However, note that Doctorow publicly started inching towards his position on Audre Lorde in this April 8, 2024 blog post.

He then made the point more emphatically, in the context of Bluesky, in this January 20, 2025 blog post.

Then he repeated the same point in the “Conclusion” chapter of his book “Enshittification”, but this time in the context of the internet.

He may have repeated it elsewhere too, these are the ones I noticed.

My basic point is this: Cory Doctorow’s position on Audre Lorde is not a spur-of-the-moment utterance. He has been publicly stating and repeating it for at least two years. So he has had time to reflect over it. In my opinion, this highlights the shallowness of his thinking and his understanding.

Pluralistic: William Gibson vs Margaret Thatcher (17 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow