KPFA - Feral Visions

Tune in to our sequel episode “Grieving, Zombies, & Power” with Dr. Lewis Gordon. Dr. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; & Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies. He previously taught at Brown University, where he founded the Department of Africana Studies, and Temple University, where was the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy and founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. For more support in unlearning, remembering & imagining (including online classes), check out More at liberationspring.com. facebook: @liberationspring twitter: @libspring youtube: Liberation Spring instagram: @liberationspring The post Dr. Lewis Gordon on Grieving, Zombies, & Power (FV Ep. 40) appeared first on KPFA.

Dr. Lewis Gordon & I talk about Imhotep, suppressed Kemetic intellectual histories, the healthiness of suffering under oppression, white supremacist narcissism in nutrition & education, & so much more. Dr. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; & Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies. He previously taught at Brown University, where he founded the Department of Africana Studies, and Temple University, where was the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy and founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. For more support in unlearning, remembering & imagining (including online classes), check out More at liberationspring.com. facebook: @liberationspring twitter: @libspring youtube: Liberation Spring instagram: @liberationspring The post Dr. Lewis Gordon on Unlearning Epistemological Bullying (FV Ep. 39) appeared first on KPFA.

Let’s talk about Q Anon, the Democrats, & dis-info to watch out for. I’m a political scientist, philosopher, & professor 4 those who don’t know me. Buckle up cuz I’ve got some potentially uncomfortable gems! PS- please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. Your support is legit the only way I can keep up this insurgent education! If you found anything I shared useful, consider coming thru plz : ) PPS- please share widely to help our loved ones make meaning of this moment in a grounded way. I haven’t heard anyone assess the situation in the way that I do here. And since we’re swirling in sloppy hot takes & propaganda, I want you to be exposed to substance and rigor. More at liberationspring.com. The post Q, The Dems & Disinfo (FV Ep. 38) appeared first on KPFA.

Nonconformity can be life-giving AF. In a time when omnicide is normal, our very instinct to survive is nonconformist. Having ethics becomes renegade. Caring about your neighbor is countercultural. These are the times we find ourselves in. Let’s talk about it! So sorry that I got cut off at the end, by the way! So offensive Feel free to share if you know anyone who could benefit from this discourse! Thanks for having a listen : ) Feel free to share any questions, ideas, or feedback you have about the discourse afterwards, too. I encourage you to be in touch! PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Non-conformity: Seed #10 (FV Ep. 37) appeared first on KPFA.

What do zombification, trauma responses, professionalization, & representative politics have in common? They can all breed the kinda apathy that’s currently plaguing millions of our loved ones. Let’s talk about it. Feel free to share if you know anyone who could benefit from this discourse! Feel free to share any questions, ideas, or feedback you have about the discourses afterwards, too. I encourage you to be in touch! PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Apathy Weed #10 (FV Ep. 36) appeared first on KPFA.

Is your understanding of consent individualistic? Is it species-ist? If you value consent, let’s talk about robust, stronger understandings of this practice than the way it’s typically talked about within the colonial status quo. Plz share if you know anyone who could benefit from this discourse! PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Consent: Seed #9 (FV Ep. 35) appeared first on KPFA.

My Dad worked w/ the Taliban in the 90s when we lived in Sugarland then New Delhi. Let’s talk about how militarism turns our loved ones into native informants, obedient soldiers, cannon fodder … & liberation loving activists. If you hear people use the word ‘decolonization’ who aren’t actively de-militarizing & de-nuclearizing, come thru for a smart space to learn what’s up. From Fiji to Kaho‘olawe to a neighborhood near you… Feel free to share if you know anyone who could benefit from this discourse! PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com.   The post Militarism: Weed #9 (FV Ep. 34) appeared first on KPFA.

Direct action may be the seed of all seeds for us to plant. Let’s learn from Fred Hampton, Elaine Brown, Paulo Freire, Moraga, Marx, & more. Feel free to share if you know anyone who could benefit from this discourse! PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Direct Action: Seed #8 (FV Ep. 33) appeared first on KPFA.

Have you ever sensed that ‘Science’ fronts as objective at the expense of the very humility that legit knowing is contingent upon? Coming from your *most logical and wise self, not some anti-intellectual cop-out. If you’ve been sleeping on all the decolonial feminist scholarship on the philosophy of science that’s proliferated in the past quarter century, let’s get you caught up on some gems. If you’ve ever seen someone weaponize the language of logic, reason, objectivity, or science in a way that you sensed was sketchy but didn’t quite have the language to name, let’s go there. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Scientism: Weed #8 (FV Ep. 32) appeared first on KPFA.

We’re surrounded by trite clichés about following our hearts. And spaces where people allege to be into emotional intelligence that are then utterly intolerant of oppressed peoples expressing feelings. Feelings, by the way, that Eurocentrism judges as ‘negative’ in a fake binary that lots of people still adhere to. Or the same wannabe influencers who speak softly about the wisdom of our feelings then turn around and treat ethical indignation as a state to ‘process’ and ‘move past’ as quickly as possible. While unironically privileging a performance of social media-ready happiness as a superior emotional state. Contradictions much? What anti-intellectualism! Now, respecting physiological cues can be literally life-saving. Yet, feelings can also be Islamophobic. And classist. And transphobic. And otherwise oppressive. You see, our interpretations of our feelings are mediated by our minds. So when are our feelings trustworthy? When aren’t they trustworthy? How can we relate to our feelings in a way that doesn’t just smuggle our uninterrogated biases into some mystified realm that’s allegedly beyond reproach? Let’s talk about it. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post Feelings: Seed #7 (FV Ep. 31) appeared first on KPFA.

What if the least reliable people about spirituality are those who call themselves ‘spiritual?’ Let’s talk about the new (c)age psy-op and how to unlearn it. Let’s have some respect for the power of spirituality by disentangling it from insultingly commercialized distortions. Why let our ancestral wisdom continue to get tainted by marketing manipulation? In the settler colonial U.S., spirituality is widely associated with anti-intellectualism due to a tragic conflation with the new (c)age psy-op. What a massive con job. Sloppy generalizations, a lack of vetting sources, and the entitlement of rape culture have coalesced into a deadly market of half-truths that ensnare millions of our loved ones. Let’s unpack how these opportunistic scams get perpetuated & how to stop the bypassing so folks can reconnect with power & potential. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post New (c)Age Lies: Weed #7 (FV Ep. 30) appeared first on KPFA.

One of the greatest gifts that you could give your imagination is learning about the abolitionist movement (and getting involved). While oppressive injustice would have us in-fighting over toxic crumbs, abolitionism invites us to have standards, respect, and dignity. Previously impossible within this nightmarish empire. Let’s talk about it. While the capitalist mainstream would make excuses for perpetuating horrific atrocities, abolitionism draws on thousands of peer-reviewed studies to make an undeniably compelling case for life-affirming alternatives. Give thanks that we can move from weaponized & implanted ignorance to having humility. Let’s learn from some prolific scholar-activists who have been proving for decades that abolition is the only sensible way forward. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. Or you could make any offerings this week out to @CriticalResistance plz Thanks fam. The post Abolition: Seed #6 (FV Ep. 29) appeared first on KPFA.

When violent crime is discussed in mainstream echo chambers, is the term more likely to be associated with polluting lakes & damming rivers or a stabbing? I’ll bet you know the answer. Yet, which is overwhelmingly more catastrophic for people and the planet? What a deadly bias. Who & what benefits from that limited interpretation of crime? Who and what doesn’t? There we go again with that *disproportionate focus on individuals obscuring institutional wrongdoings. Not only have conventional notions of crime in the settler colonial US always been anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, classist, homophobic, and transphobic. They also open the floodgates for incarceration, banking off caged labor, increased surveillance, ripping apart families, siphoning off taxpayer dollars from vital social services, and pitting communities against one another. Ultimately, one of the most dangerous consequences of “normal” understandings of criminality is that they let annihilationist companies off the hook as they’re racing to push humanity off a cliff into unbridled climate chaos. In a settler colonial empire, who gets to define crime? And who pays the price? Let’s unlearn propaganda around criminality to clarity which corporate culprits really need to be held accountable. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. Or you could make any offerings this week out to @CriticalResistance plz Thanks fam. The post Criminality: Weed #6 (FV Ep. 28) appeared first on KPFA.

How does our knowing get impacted by subjectivity, values, & identity? Find out thru this talk on feminist & indigenous epistemologies & so much more. Plz lemme know in the comments what you found evocative- I’d love to hear. Also plz be forewarned that I nerd out on theory a lil’ in the intro, but then it gets less jargon-y : ) PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post Context: Seed #5 (FV Ep. 27) appeared first on KPFA.

What is co-optation? Let’s talk green-washing, diversity & inclusion campaigns, misunderstanding decolonization, land acknowledgements, & more. Just cuz someone’s talking about a thing doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about! For example, they might be a business trying to bank off of a social movement. As a matter of fact, did you know exactly that was actually one of the first major experiments in public relations (aka advertising) in U.S. history? Yep, Edward Bernays tried to sell women cigarettes by coupling their consumption with the suffrage movement in the US. He came up with the catchy slogan ‘torches of freedom’ & did some savvy product placement at an event and it caught fire. To the order of countless women subsequently getting hooked and dying of lung cancer & other cigarette-related diseases. So what is co-optation exactly? Merriam-Webster calls it “the act or an instance of co-opting something: a taking over or appropriation of something for a new or different purpose. // the co-optation of the raised fist as a patriotic symbol- Niela Orr” is given as an example. Co-optation is one of the perennial concerns of movements for collective liberation. Liberals, politicians, businesses, and celebrities consistently try to subsume the potency and resonance of revolutionary organizing to serve their own aims. They parrot style and lack substance. And distract a whole lotta our loved ones who could have otherwise gotten connected with legit groups and community spaces and purpose and power. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post Co-optation Weed #5 (FV Ep. 26) appeared first on KPFA.

Have you noticed that the term ‘conspiracy theory’ (& ‘conspiracy theorist’ too) gets weaponized in all kinds of directions? By myriad actors, agents, & entities. Then millions of people obediently look the other direction. How sad to move thru the world like that. Disrespecting your capacity to gauge what’s valid independently from what the matrix’s thought leaders + influencers sold you. Bullshit meters atrophying cuz you’d never wanna be judged as that ‘out there.’ Yet wisdom allows no such bypassing. Guess what? We don’t need to write ideas off by default when we’re discerning. Who’s afraid of a conspiracy theory? Let’s put our awareness to good use and talk about the limiting function the term conspiracy theory performs. I dare you to give no fucks about the smoke & mirrors show & to, instead, perceive with eyes open. When we get the corporate propaganda, PR, & academic fads outta our lives, where might decolonial feminist reads on ‘conspiracies’ take us? I’ll take you thru how I vet a few currently trending so-called ‘conspiracy theories.’ For folx who are intellectually & perceptually confident, a friendly philosophical experiment or two wouldn’t be too intimidating, no? And if the idea of joining me down this rabbit hole feels scary, well- it’s Halloween. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you. PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post Curiosities re: ‘Conspiracies’ Seed #4 (FV Ep. 25) appeared first on KPFA.

Unlearning the illusion of hyper-individuation is easier said than done for those of us in deeply capitalist contexts like the settler colonial US. Alas, atomization is as American as apple pie. Hyper-individualism is a result of having been divided and conquered. As a matter of fact, that mentality dovetails nicely with a common military strategy. It separates communities and individuals who could be coming together to end oppression and move the fuck on with this miracle that is life. This mentality encourages competition instead of cooperation. And here’s one part of the divide and conquer individuation scam that’s even more insidious. It divisively classifies how we understand oppression to begin with! Into silos. We’ve gotta be able to connect the dots, tho, to begin to deepen understanding. Unless we’re doomed to stay small and disparate, that is… What do LSD, perseverance porn, & the 1968 Beatles song ‘Revolution’ have in common? Have a listen to this discourse on hyper-individualism to find out : ) PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you- thx : ) PPS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. The post Hyper-individualism: Weed #4 (FV Ep. 24) appeared first on KPFA.

What is lunacy? How does the label lunatic gets weaponized and mis-used? Learning from postcolonial psychology & activist traditions, let’s talk about it. Lunacy is one of the most potent counters to the limitations of respectability politics that’s available to us. Respectability politics pressures us to ceaselessly pander to oppressive audiences. Oppression sets the terms of the debate. You show up & are pressured to conform to the language of oppression, dress the way the status quo told you to, leave your family’s religion and values at the door, & more generally aspire to be as basic as possible to fit in with the baseline of unjust mediocrity around you. Lunacy, on the other hand, offers a way out of that hamster wheel of death. We know that the most substantial critiques regularly get de-legitimated as allegedly ‘crazy.’ This political dimension is at the core of how sanism operates. And if millions of people continue hedging around the standards set by an omnicidal death cult…well, we’re done for. Give thanks that we can resist, though. Reconnecting with what we know that we may have suppressed in a violently ignorant culture. If you’ve ever censored yourself because you were concerned that you might be labeled crazy, this seed is for you. Or if you see people unyieldingly calling corrupt politicians ‘lunatics’ and sense that there’s a lot to unpack there, please listen! PS- Please help Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this work can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com. The post Lunacy: Seed #3 (FV Ep. 23) appeared first on KPFA.

By vampirism, you know I’m talking about that extractivism that’s destroying us & our precious planet. Mining our minds, as the Red Power legend John Trudell would call it. Enacting coups in Bolivia for lithium for electric car batteries and the like. That market fundamentalism that’ll take us all down if we don’t stop it first. (By the way, the video got cut off in the last few minutes.) PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you- thx : ) PPS- Plz donate to Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so this book can support our discernment in these deadly times. More at liberationspring.com.   The post Vampirism: Weed #3 (FV Ep. 22) appeared first on KPFA.

What is techno-skepticism? One of the most vital seeds that we could plant today! One of the clearest extensions of a colonial progress narrative throughout the planet today is the pathetic belief in Silicon Valley and its tech-bros. Indeed, perceiving arrogant criminals like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos as innovative leaders is one of the clearest signs of the profound misunderstanding that currently afflicts millions of our loved ones. If you’re concerned about extractivism, did you notice that it’s technology that’s enabled extractivism? This is important to observe. If you’ve ever heard someone talking about climate change who says ‘technology will save us!’ while failing to recognize that technology is a principle factor for what got us into this mess to begin with, this seed is for you. Let’s break it down. PS- Yes, this is a lil’ snippet of my book Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: on Decolonial Discernment. Make sure to cite my intellectual production if you’re inspired by these ideas & wanna share them out! Don’t steal from BIWOC – have ethics! Don’t plagiarize or my folx will come for you- thx : ) PPS- Plz donate to Liberation Spring on Patreon or Paypal so we can continue sharing this labor; thx! More at liberationspring.com. The post Techno-Skepticism: Seed #2 (FV Ep. 21) appeared first on KPFA.