Highlights from Imani Perry’s response in a forum entitled “The Logic of Misogyny.” Perry is currently the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her comments were originally posted on the Boston Review website on July 11, 2016:
…dismantling patriarchy seems a virtually impossible task. Its current form is rooted in the Age of Exploration and the Enlightenment and supported the conquests, geopolitics, and philosophies of those eras. It was formative to the Western legal concepts of both personhood and property, as well as to the rise of the sovereign European state, the Atlantic slave trade, the practice of settler-colonialism, the mass murder of black and brown peoples, and the exploitation of those denied legal and political recognition. The patriarch—the conceptual ideal man and citizen—was and is defined and protected by his power over intimate associations, and that power remains supported by politics, law, capital, militarism, and police power… Continue reading “All of Us is Still Tired”