written yesterday - tradition

Where and when can we find the traditional? Just like we should banish from all use the term ‘natural’ we should banish ‘traditional.’ I mean this in the sense of liberation studies of all forms, not merely in the recourse to tradition in the production of hegemonic norms. Traditional roles never were and our understanding of how other people understand ideal status for women or people in general often remains mystified as a form of arbitrary production. Seeing ourselves being seen, transgressing as a political act is a tenuous one, linked more or less to our understanding of social repression. I don’t mean that we should abolish liberation through practice of transforming ourselves, but rather we should abolish the idea of line drawing implied by the notion of transgression, when often the label ‘subversive’ creates the space sub-verted itself. A different way to systemically think of liberation could be through reference to specific object of a subversive act, or the acts relationship to fulfillment of human experience that we may or may not determine to be good.

Duncan