POWERPLAY RESEARCH PAGE
Hannah Sterke

Violence in language

Cutthroat

Throwing away your shot

Strijder

Cut it out

You killed it

Trainwreck

Ocean Vuong Pocast

How can we alter language and turn negative words into positive? Offer fire escapes? The future is in our mouths.

There is a need to amplify and create contrast. Hence these negative tenses are used for example. Maybe an alternative would be body language or substitute words (fudge > fuck)

Negative words as fire escape. Some kind of coping mechanism. Normalizing it to soften the experience.

Concept of newspeak: certain words don't exist, so there is no way to describe a certain feeling and therefor doesn't exist.

In the Hopi language the word for time doesn't exist so the concept can't be grasped

13th by Ava DuVernay

This was a very powerful documentary about the mass incarceration of black bodies in America. I had heard of this documentary before but I didn't realise how deeply rooted racism was in the United States. Not just within people and police but also in the system. There was never truly an abolishment of slavery and Nixon's campaign 'war on drugs' was really a front to get more black people in prison. Unimaginable how going to trial lengthens your jail sentence. The cruelty even pertains behind bars in the form of free labor and literal profit for companies that work together with big brands like Verizon.

Combined with the fact that 1 in 3 black men end up in jail, that just can't be a coincidence anymore. That is downright racism incorporated into the American system. Home of the free is the biggest joke to ever exist.

When they see us

I remember clear as day when I watched the first episode. I was so shocked, and angry and felt so empathic for these children that I couldn't continue watching. I was on a train coming back from my internship and was just speechless for the rest of the night. To imagine this was a true story with such young kids was just incomprehensible for me.

Redlining: the act of dividing up a city into desirable and undesirable areas for investment

Systemic racism

Intersectionality

"You can't stand for them
if you don't know them"

The first thing that came to mind when I started watching and reading Baldwin and Lorde was 'why wasn't I taught this in school?' These people should be included in the curriculum of American history. Interesting how Baldwin makes a similar point in the Dick Gavett interview, about how in school he was never taught thoroughly about slavery, even though the United States was build on that principle.

Furthermore the Gavett interview is quite timeless. Because the topic is still more than relevant today. Paul Weiss couldn't conceptualise it then and still many can't fathom it now. What HAS changed is that more people have started listening, especially with the rise of movements and surprisingly enough: social media. The social network is a place where the voiceless can finally speak up.

Although this is sometimes a step too far where justice is taken into own hands. But who can blame you when you reside in a corrupt system.