Lola Olufemi Quotes

“But art can abstract us from the demands placed on our bodies at any given time. It can remind us that we do not only exist in relation to our gendered responsibilties: we are not only someone’s mother or sister, or carer — we are individuals brimming with sophisticated ideas. Creativity is at the heart of any new world we seek to build.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Feminist Authors

“When women and non-binary people make art with the intention of raising consciousness, they are not only contributing to the feminist fight, they are demonstrating that feeling is a way of knowing and a powerful starting point for building a political framework. Affect, the ability to be moved, should never be underestimated. It is what brings us to feminist politics and what sustains us.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“The divide between politics and art is not real. It is politics that dictates who creates art, how it is consumed and sold, the conditions in which it is created, the subjectivities that dominate it.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“[…] it’s not enough to argue that because the ‘wrong’ kind of people end up in prison we should rethink it. We must rethink the prison system and work to abolish it because feminism demands the abolition of systems and structures that make it impossible for us to live collectively. Prison obscures the causes of social ills; it sweeps violence under the rug and affirms the idea that it is inevitable. In a society that produces ‘criminals’, we all bear responsibility for transforming the structures that make this label possible.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Theory Feminist Author

“Everybody has a story about how they arrived and keep arriving at radical politics. Some of us are politicised by the trauma of our own experiences, by wars waged in our names, by our parents and lovers, by the internet. It’s useful to share the ways we become politicised if only because it helps politicise others.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Trauma Feminist Theory

“I read about how freedom requires upheaval and must be fought for, not romanticised. It was during this period that I realised that feminism was not simple. There were no pre-given solutions. The ‘answer’, if there was one, required us to place different feminisms in conversation and necessitated a radical flexibility in our organising. Feminism was complicated and messy in ways that made me reconsider my foundational political beliefs: equality versus liberation, reform versus abolition. Feminism meant hard work, the kind done without reward or recognition, the kind that requires an unshakeable belief in its importance, the kind that is long and tiresome, but that creates a sense of purpose. It proposed a new way of being that transformed the way I looked at the world.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Authors Feminist Theory Femini

“We all begin somewhere. A feminist understanding is not inherent; it is something that must be crafted. Theory does not only mean reading dense academic texts. Theory can be lived, held, shared. It is a breathing, changeable thing that can be infused in many political and artistic forms. Learning requires the patience and empathy of those around you and an investment in the importance of radical education.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Perhaps a hopeful pessimism is our best chance — we organise across difference not because it solves our problems, but because the visions we seek to enact must be able to account for everyone. We are too involved in one another’s lives, for better or worse. Chandra Mohanty argued ‘the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together.’ She cites Jodi Dean, who argies that ‘reflectice solidarity’ is crafted by an interaction involving three persons: ‘I ask you to stand by me over me and against a third.’ Solidarity is a belief in one another that should be extended and rescinded accordingly. At the very least, it helps sharpen our focus on that third, who threatens our attempts to build a feminist future.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Solidarity has always been at the heart of feminist practice.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Feminism can no longer remain a rhetorical tool; it must have teeth. It must fight back by providing us with a way of analysing global violence and laying the foundations to combat it.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Feminist Authors

“A feminism that seeks power instead of questioning it does not care about justice. The decision to reject this way of thinking is also a decision to reject easy solutions. We all have to ask ourselves at some point, who will I be and what will I do? What can my politics help me articulate? What violence will it expose?”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Refusing neo-liberalism will open you up to a world where ‘feminist’ means much more than ‘woman’ or ‘equality’. Making these connections is crucial to any revolutionary work because it means that nobody is left behind, nobody’s exploitation goes unseen. It asks us to practice radical compassion, to refuse to ignore the pain of others. It demands that we see how tackling seemingly unrelated phenomena like prison expansion, the rise of fascism, neocolonialism and climate crisis must also become our priorities.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“Feminist work is justice work’ proposes that feminism has a purpose beyond just highlighting the ways women are ‘discriminated’ against. It taught me that feminism’s task is to remedy the consequences of gendered oppression through organising and by proposing new ways to think about our ptential as human beings.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Theory

“Visual art, painting, scultpure, photography and literature provide a space for us to test our limits. They are mediums for meditation and reflection. Art moves us because it provokes feelings and calls for a response. Whether that response is repulsion, fear, joy, appreciation, or boredom — art calls for a witness.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

“We do a disservice to the power of art and artistic creation when we assume it less important than political intervention, likewise, we do ourselves a disservice when we assume that art alone can liberate us.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Feminist Authors

“By making the revolution irresistable, the artist breathes life into movements and provides an added dimension that political discourses can sometimes fail to capture. An alliance between art and politics enables us to not only expand the scope of creativity: it gives more women the license to understand the artistic as well as political circumstances of their lives.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Feminist Feminist Theory Feminist Author

“If we view feminism as an approach, a way to think about the world, it shifts the focus away from words, towards action. Feminist principles are not something that can be ‘achieved’. They are cultivated through a reflective process that has no end. They grow, change and take shape as we do.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism

“if at the most basic level, consent is the freedom to make decisions, then we must craft a world where those decisions are not governed by oppressive structures. Our focus should be on the structures that push the majority of women into sex work, not individual women who are merely finding ways to survive.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism

“To be nourished means to be brimful, satisfied and to treat our bodies with loving-kindness. Nourishment is the opposite of policing and gatekeeping. Nourishment rejects any attempt to blame us for our bodies, to shame us for what we look like or the food we eat. Nourishment rejects dieting. Nourishment is a feminist project because for too long, women’s bodies and what they consume have been monitored.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism

“Feminism is a political project about what could be. It's always looking forward, invested in futures we can't quite grasp yet. It's a way of wishing, hoping, aiming, at everything that has been deemed impossible.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism

“If feminism means freedom, it means the right to self-determination and the right to be multi-dimensional, disorganised and even incoherent.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Racism Radical Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism

“The decision to practice a radical feminism was crucial because I became aware of how it separated those wanting to create a new vision for the world from those merely wanting to climb the rungs of power.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism

“Feminist work is justice work”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism

“Legality does not equal access.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Racism Radical Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism

“I saw in it [feminism], conflicting theorists and activists, all giving their ideas about the way the world should be. Perhaps most memorably, it released me from the desire to comply with the world as it is. This meant many things for me as an individual; feminism allowed me to be wayward, the wrong kind of woman, deviant. It took me longer to realise that true liberation meant extending this newfound freedom beyond myself. Just because I felt freer in some respects, did not mean I was free.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Activism Liberation Patriarchy Feminist Theory

“A commitment to disrupting the state's violence when and where we see it takes feminism outside of the realm of words and theories and makes it a living, breathing set of principles. It reminds us that where we can make interventions, we should and that only work that seeks to shake and unsettle the very foundations of the sexist state is feminist work.”

Source: Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power

Feminism Racism Activism Radical Feminism Intersectionalism Materialist Feminism