In The Gentrification of the Mind, lesbian novelist and activist, Sarah Schulman, examines the historical relation between gentrification and AIDS, stating that “gentrification made us forget who we were,” and has resulted in “a loss of vision” on all levels. Schulman draws parallels between socio-economic gentrification and mental (artistic) gentrification. In one passage, she writes: “Gentrification replaces most people’s experiences with the perceptions of the privileged and calls that reality. In this way gentrification is dependent on telling us that things are better than they are.”
You say something, you make a “fool of yourself” by trying to say something, something that has your life at stake—to a lover, to a friend, to a neighbor, to an employer, to a landlord, to a real-estate developer, to a politician—in person, in writing, on camera—and they don’t care. You make a fool of yourself, but no one gives a shit about what you say or how you feel: the energy you spend and expend, the tears you shed. The sense you’re trying to make to and of people who don’t understand anything or have any sense, and the dismissal of one’s life, values, communities, labors, energies, needs, and rights. The way no one hears anything, even when you scream.
Sarah Schulman once wrote that “marginal people know how they live and they know how the dominant culture lives. Dominant culture people only know how they live.” These words have never left me.
”excerpted from the post Love Dog: Gentrification of the mind (Like buildings, dreams are constructed and destroyed)
I feel like this sums up so much of what I try to find small ways to struggle against, in my work, in my life.
Notes
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(ABD) PhD candidate in Philosophy and Media Studies at The European Graduate School in Switzerland.
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