A quote, just because:
“If I were building a Utopia . . . I would leave principles out . . . even feminism; in place of principles I would give us all a magnificent and flaming audacity.”
via.
Audacity.
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I like that quote. It sounds like a manifesto for bloggers!
Wow. I looked up the original, and it’s even more interesting. Here:
“Thus I have at a comparatively early age lost all my motivating faiths, faith in the righteous cause of women, faith in the recreating powers of science, faith in the ennobling possibilities of education. This is indeed a very sad state. Worse, I have become that futile creature, a writer. I had rather make small black marks on paper than go through any experience I can name. The sensory pleasures have pretty largely ceased to be; I can sit here in my quiet study and desire to desire something, something to touch or taste or see or hear, but the desire does not come. If I were building a Utopia, I would take away our memories, so we would start fresh every day, and then I would endow each of us with strong, lusty desires, and I would give us strong, eager feet with which to run swiftly and determinedly after our desires. I would leave principles out of my Utopia, even feminism; in place of principles I would give us all a magnificent and flaming audacity.”
–Lorine Livingston Pruette, circa 1926.
I agree with Pruette.
My dream for the world (when utopia is reached), is that people will hear about feminism and its definitions (“the radical notion that women are people,” for example) and react with bafflement. Wait, you mean that there was a time that women weren’t considered people? wtf?
When feminism as an ideology, as a set of principles is obsolete, when racism and sexism and ableism and all the other isms are null and void and consigned to the dustbin of history, that will be utopia.
I doubt I’ll ever see it.
In fact, if such a society existed I doubt I could live there – I’ve internalized the bigotry of our current era.
I’ll never see that time, but I can dream of it.
If the alternative is giving misogynists in utopia a magnificent and flaming audacity, let me suggest that feminist principles are better left in.
I think I would rather die than live in a society of audacious and unprincipled people.
You can accept that a Utopia is being created without principles or feminism, but you believe there will be misogynists in it? I think it goes without saying that there wouldn’t be any misogynists in a Utopia.
Sounds downright childish to me.
Little kids are audacious when they throw temper tantrums, for instance.
Values and visions are important too.
But without audacity, we can’t implement those values and visions.
Pruette was writing in the mid-1920s. Imagining a world in which women all had “a magnificent and flaming audacity” was a radical act at the time.
Some would argue it still is.
@T B Actually, children are rarely being audacious when they throw temper tantrums. Younger children are expressing their wishes, desires, and/or needs with the tools they have available to them. This is why as they grow older and learn more socially acceptable ways of expressing these things the fits usually cease.
Children who have trouble learning these methods or who are dealing with sensory overload or other issues that make it difficult for them to apply these methods are often labeled audacious for throwing fits because of a general perception that they should have already mastered the socially acceptable methods. It is assumed that they must be intentionally going against the norms.
[...] March 16, 2009 in Quotes Via Jill at Feministe: [...]
Hm, I’d rather have humility in my utopia. Perhaps because I spend too much time with white middle class anarchists, I see about as much audacity as I need.
Or actually, the only kind of utopia I can really imagine is one where people are thoughtful enough to figure out when audacity is best, when humility, etc. There’s no one-sentence utopia, I think–no one formula, even a very lyrical one, that explains what we need to make a good world.
But the original quoted above does seem very twenties in its distrust of thought and priviledging of the “natural”–sort of Eliot crossed with DH Lawrence.
EKSwitaj -
It’s certainly true that little children haven’t internalized the status quo; so their acts of will (regardless of whether or not we call those acts “audacity”) are different from boldness of adults who challenge a societal status quo that they’re more immersed in (e.g. because the adults have internalized the values more). I agree with you there.
That said -
Adult audacity can involve the pursuit of personal “wishes, desires, and/or needs” (including authoritarian or sadistic desires).
Adult audicity is somewhat of a return to childhood, given how the supposed ‘maturity’ — of the status quo — must be cast off. Hence, some people look at activists and dismissively sugget that those activists need to ‘grow up.’
I also think that the word “audacity” is applicable to a child’s temper tantrum — but not in a very clear cut, obvious way. And in this particular quotation “audacity” was set against “principles” which little children obviously lack. But these points about individual words are pedantic and petty.
> “There’s no one-sentence utopia”
Well put, “Frowner.”
I also tend to agree with what you said after that about “no one formula”
— though I think that phrase could be interpreted in nihilistic, ultra-relativistic ways that I personally would object to.
Comrade PhysioProf:
It is a quotation not a quote. Quote is something you do.
Audacity is useful when you either have something to overcome, or when you are trying to find a new way to enjoy yourself. I guess a utopia would use only the latter.