Glossary for re/imagining social change: values and accountability.

Our scholar activist perspective is that language does ‘things’, and the language of transformative and social justice does extraordinary things.  Terminology, descriptors, labels, slang, codes, and calls to action, provide a moment in time when an idea, concept, dream or deep injustice, is captured and deployed to aid and protect communities. Audre Lorde teaches us the importance of transforming silence to language and action, she writes:

“Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation” (1984: 43[1])

Audre’s words highlight that language — the act of speaking out — is a tool for confronting our own fears, and through that act we are able to unify, mobilise, and liberate.

However, language is also slippery, it changes and shifts over time. language grows and ages, and as such it can get hijacked and appropriated by the very groups it intends to hold accountable. Sara Ahmed underlines that: “the language we think of as critical can easily ‘lend itself’ to the very techniques of governance we critique” (2007: 236[2]). As such we need to remain alive to, and take responsibility for, the use of language, and recognise that just as much as we might want to protect terms, there will also be points that we must let them go. This is a process of safety and survival, and one that must be done together.

This glossary then, has been created as, and will remain a process of, work in progress. It is not fixed, it is liable to change, and open for critique. Our goal is to work towards makerspaces that are socially just, created with and for young people. Sites that are centred around community care, mutual aid, and the co-development of sustainable technologies. Our glossary is a reflection of these values, and just as social movements shift and flow, so will this page. 

[1] Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Freedom.

[2] Ahmed, S. (2007). The language of diversity. Ethnic and racial studies, 30(2), 235-256.