Power Relations Quotes

“There's only two types of people in the world: the ones that entertain, and the ones that observe.”
― Britney Spears

“Yet, we must remember that even White privilege is not distributed evenly among Whites. Many White people never get a piece of the pie. This fact, sadly, instead of making them unite with other marginalized and oppressed American employees, it makes them unload their rage and disappointment on the already suffering low-income, refugee, or poor ethnicities, accusing them of ‘stealing our jobs’, or ‘destroying our country and values’. In doing so, they miss the chance of working together with a significant number of allies for real change. Furthermore, they vote for and side with their oppressors thinking that voting for racist and supremacist candidates will change this ugly reality. What they fail to realize is that politics is literally a nasty business that is fed by the masses’ hatred and, once in power, that business never thrives by changing the way the business is done. If all these supposed problems are solved, where will future politicians get their fodder to feed hatred to masses who will bring them to power?”
― Louis Yako

“There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so — of blaming literary theory for being caught up with such questions, as opposed to some 'pure' literary theory which might be absolved from them. Such 'pure' literary theory is an academic myth: some of the theories we have examined in this book are nowhere more clearly ideological than in their attempts to ignore history and politics altogether. Literary theories are not to be upbraided for being political, but for being on the whole covertly or unconsciously so — for the blindness with which they offer as a supposedly 'technical', 'self-evident', 'scientific' or 'universal' truth doctrines which with a little reflection can be seen to relate to and reinforce the particular interests of particular groups of people at particular times.”
― Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

“Kırbaçlarını, para ve yolculuk hakkı için kürekçilik yapanların sırtına hiç indirmiyorlardı, ama kimisi kırbaçlanan, kimisi de kırbaçlanmayan bir mürettebat arasında pek arkadaşlık ortamı oluşturulamazdı.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“If you tour any workplace, you will see countless logos and banners paying lip service to freedom of speech, democracy, logos like ‘speak up, speak out’, creativity, innovation, and on and on goes the list of flashy words and adjectives that companies and corporations want their employees (and outsiders) to believe are part of their work ethics and culture. Yet, most employees learn at the earliest stages of their careers that these bogus adjectives will get them fired, if they are naïve enough to believe in – let alone act on – them.”
― Louis Yako

“I have always maintained that genuine intellectuals, by definition, refuse to play any institutional games at any stage of their career or intellectual life. They can’t pretend to unsee once they see. They can’t ‘wait’ until they have tenure or enough power to ‘get away’ with things or be brave in their thinking and writing. A sincere thinker can’t fake or delay what they want to question, how, and the way in which they want to put it on paper. They can’t divide things into what can be said or done before or after tenure. A sincere thinker will die of a heart attack if they don’t research, write, and say what they want to say at the very moment they are ready to do it.”
― Louis Yako

“In reality, in most American companies, only few handpicked—arguably appointed— individuals in powerful positions; positions like leadership, finance, treasury, advisory, and so on, have the last say in what matters. Their words, no matter how nonsensical, are treated as the ultimate wisdom. Their silences are emulated by everyone else working under them, regardless of any human, capital, or ethical costs resulting from such silences. These powerful individuals are often so emotionally and intellectually abusive that employees treat even their most absurd suggestions as roadmaps dictating the direction of any company or project at hand.”
― Louis Yako

“The hierarchy of most workplaces in America looks very much like climbing high mountains—the higher you get, the whiter the scenery becomes.”
― Louis Yako

“Having an institutional blessing to be called a ‘writer’, ‘journalist’ or an ‘academic’ does not really make one so. In fact, anyone with institutional support and titles is a suspect more than anything else.”
― Louis Yako

“Taxi Driver"
There is something strangely liberating
about being just a taxi driver…
The secret lies in the “just”!
Because you’re just a taxi driver,
nobody really sees you…
But you see, hear, and feel
the absurdities, the shallowness,
the beauty, the sorrow,
the joy, the heartbreak of every rider!
Most treat you with half or totally fake respect,
because you’re just a taxi driver…
But they leave you alone
They don’t find justifications
or create crises
to take over your seat…
In fact, they want you to be exactly in that seat!
After all, they only ride with you
because - at least for that time –
they don’t wish to occupy your seat…
Yet, like every sense of liberation,
Being a taxi driver, is a liberation
kneaded with a strange sadness and disappointment
when you realize that the motherfuckers
only leave you alone
when you run away from them
and occupy a seat that they don’t desire
during the their ride ….

[Original poem published in Arabic on June 21, 2923 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako