One lol too many
Updating to add a new batch:
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865599993716948992
Ah well as long as it’s only cishetero white people she’s calling cockroaches that’s fine.
No it isn’t. The Hutus saw the Tutsis as oppressors too; the Nazis saw the Jews as all-powerful and oppressive; othering dehumanizing language is not always aimed downward.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865600185627426817
That’s a peculiarly dense question. Historically, “cockroach” has been a racist epithet, but the word isn’t inherently limited as such. It’s a fungible epithet; it works to dehumanize anyone.
______________________________________
Zoé Samudzi says it’s fine to call people cockroaches.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865569692097724416
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865570989366575104
It’s not “fake” and it’s not “offended.” She sounds like Rush Limbaugh. It’s a principled criticism of using othering language like that, with a note of the way it has been used by e.g. the Nazis, Hutus inciting genocide against Tutsis, Katie Hopkins inciting loathing of migrants.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865571628624650242
That’s just a deflection. It’s like shouting “But her emails!”
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865571838939742209
There’s no “pretending” about it. “Cockroaches” does in fact have a history of being a precursor to genocide.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865573070169194497
Not the point. The point is that it’s not ok to call people cockroaches.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865573307935973376
Well that’s embarrassing for the editors.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865574282327236615
Her “argument” is of no interest. What interests me about her is her way of bullying people on social media. The fact that she calls them “cockroaches” is the subject, while her “argument” is not.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865575216570785794
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/865575456539525120
Yes, indeed it is. It’s very racialized. Why, exactly, is that funny? Why the lol?
I may have to surrender myself to the labor camp political officer for re-education. Otherwise I will no doubt continue to be unable to understand how calling people with differing opinions ‘cockroaches’ is ok while suggesting similarities between race and gender identity issues is a form of violence.
And still referring to women as “oppressors”. I realize that white people have done a great deal of oppression, and that some of those have been women, but to brush all white women with the same brush, and then list us as “cockroaches” – wow.
And they way they say “think they can edit woc” – it is always possible that a woc can say something that is not only wrong, but egregiously so. People of color are no more homogenous in their thinking than any other group, and to assume she speaks for all women of color is to “use the master’s tools” as someone put it…
Pliny, I think the entire blog commentariat here, as well as the blogger herself, may be joining you in that re-education camp.
Off the point I know, but ‘logics’? plural? Has ‘scholarly’ language degraded so badly?
She has many logics, pluralistic logics, multilogics. People who have only one logic are cockroaches.
She’s the best at logics, her logics will make your head spin.
Power dynamics, “punching down”, the justification for the use of physical violence against others – it has all been building towards this hasn’t it?
Recently I took to trying Japanese light novels – a bit out of curiosity, a bit out of needing something mindless to read (My father died at the beginning of the month so my mind hasn’t been entirely conducive to heavy reading outside of work hours).
Anyway – one of the books was Arufureta. Not a book I would recommend, and I think anybody reading it critically would have a field day with the tropes employed, except for one thing it did that I found interesting – it had as one of its characters a guy who was charismatic, good hearted and incapable of seeing himself as anything but righteous…
Which is pretty much exactly what we can say about this crowd. They want to make things better, they want to fight the good fight and defend those who need defending, and they are absolutely incapable of understanding that this is kind of what makes them bad people.
They can do things that are awful, without ever once taking a moment to recognise that the thing they did was awful, thinking all the way that they are “punching up” – and they can define anybody they want to punch as “up”.
They are the ones who preach that “intent isn’t magic” – but in real terms they excuse their actions by their defined political side. In other words, anything goes so long as the “intent” is to punch up.
And they are incapable of seeing what they are doing, hearing what they are saying, they cannot for one second stop and think “I just used terminology that has led to genocide in the past to describe my enemies”.
“Yes I called a colleague “cockroach” -a term that has a long and well known history of having been used in dehumanizing, even genocidal contexts- BUT WHAT ABOUT MY ARGUMENTS???”
This is what I call perverting class analysis to obscure one’s own despicable behavior. Reminds me of the mentality underlying Eldridge Cleaver’s claim that his rape of white women was an “insurrectionary act.”
Responding to the update: Since Zoe has made point of claiming “it’s OK to call her a cockroach because she is cis hetero white” It’s also important to remember that Dr Tuvel is Jewish. It’s not OK to use dehumanizing language against a person even if they are “privileged cis hetero female” or whatever, period. But it’s doubly not OK to use such language against a member of an ethno-religious minority that was subjected to dehumanization and genocide in not too distant past.
^ Indeed.
Also, it’s such a cop-out to say “I can’t dehumanize because I’m black-trans grad student.” First, she’s aspiring to be an academic, which by definition involves speaking from a position of authority. Is this how she intends to use her academic authority, if she ever gains it? Second, she already spearheaded a bullying campaign that more than 800 academics signed on to -including influential ones like Judith Butler and Wendy Brown- and gained a following among certain circles of academia. So her words matter, people read them, follow them. She has influence and has chosen to use it in dehumanizing a colleague by calling her a cockroach. Finally, dehumanization is dehumanization, no matter who the perpetrator or the target is. For instance, I, a Palestinian, would never stand by another Palestinian scholar if they decided to dehumanize a Jewish colleague, regardless of the suffering of our people. I imagine most black and trans scholars wouldn’t stand by this atrocity either.
Oh, no question. This “I’m black therefore I get to call people cockroaches” shit is beneath contempt, intellectually as well as morally.
(I don’t think she’s trans. I think I recall she said she’s “cis” at some point. Her field is trans health.)
Considering she’s Zimbabwean – and the Matabele genocide perpetrated by Robert Mugabe, her defense is particularly shitty.
She had three editors? All of them trembling because she could call up a lynch mob against anyone who failed to kowtow to her.
This is where the reckless use of terms like ‘privilege’ leads. A moral/intellectual ‘get out of jail free’ card for any bully with tenure.