We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Angela DavisRead
Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the prison system, suggesting it dehumanizes individuals and fosters conflict.
Angela Davis's quote highlights the inherent flaws in the prison system, arguing that it is constructed not merely to punish but to fundamentally break down and dehumanize individuals. By comparing incarcerated people to zoo specimens, she conveys a sense of loss of autonomy and agency, suggesting that the system creates obedient individuals who are pitted against each other rather than rehabilitated or given the opportunity to thrive within society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech addressing prison reform initiatives.
We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.
It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems
Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'
We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.
It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct.
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.
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