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Lola Olufemi Books

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“When we say ‘housing for all’ and the government responds with ‘the homeless are being temporarily housed in hotels to avoid the spread of the virus’, they are building a linguistic structure that defines the realm of the possible, that implicitly tells us to want less, to expect that total reconfiguration is out of the question. Like a poorly designed building, linguistic structures affect how we think, breathe, move and act. The mould sticks to our skin. We are familiar with a particular kind of linguistic structure: the preservation of a system of organisation that places capital before all else. This system ties our hands and feet together.”

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Book:Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
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“Imagine this: A world where the quality of your life is not determined by how much money you have. You do not have to sell your labour to survive. Labour is not tied to capitalism, profit or wage. Borders do not exist; we are free to move without consequence. The nuclear family does not exist; children are raised collectively; reproduction takes on new meanings. In this world, the way we carry out dull domestic labour is transformed and nobody is forced to rely on their partner economically to survive. The principles of transformative justice are used to rectify harm. Critical and comprehensive sex education exists for all from an early age. We are liberated from the gender binary’s strangling grip and the demands it places on our bodies. Sex work does not exist because work does not exist. Education and transport are free, from cradle to grave. We are forced to reckon with and rectify histories of imperialism, colonial exploitation, and warfare collectively. We have freedom to, not just freedom from. Specialist mental health services and community care are integral to our societies. There is no “state” as we know it; nobody dies in “suspicious circumstances” at its hands; no person has to navigate sexism, racism, ableism or homophobia to survive. Detention centres do not exist. Prisons do not exist, nor do the police. The military and their weapons are disbanded across nations. Resources are reorganised to adequately address climate catastrophe. No person is without a home or loving community. We love one another, without possession or exploitation or extraction. We all have enough to eat well due to redistribution of wealth and resource. We all have the means and the environment to make art, if we so wish. All cultural gatekeepers are destroyed. Now imagine this vision not as utopian, but as something well within our reach.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“[…] 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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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“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.”

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Book:Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
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