“The fact that so much of this language did take shape in arguments about debt has left the concept strangely incoherent. After all, to argue with the king, one has to use the king’s language, whether or not the initial premises make sense.”
David Graeber, from his book Debt. This sort of situation frames basically all forms of dissent, and shows why it’s so hard in words to properly harangue or even critique a system of oppression (or just “system”, in general), and as a corollary, well elucidates why it’s usually necessary to institute a counter-system of thought or logic. And why all the time some people will tell you there’s only one system of thought or logic, when it’s perfectly clear to anyone who’s read history — or what have you— that there has always been an endlessly contingent engine guiding thought.
This Graeber book is such a history, and I couldn’t recommend it enough to anyone interested in anything (like having a pulse) — but especially the Occupy, I guess, Movement.
