out of the box?

Photo: This is me and my dog, Tron. As you can see, Motion is renovating this house.










I'm angry at who ever created the horrible cliche "think outside the box" because for a while I used it and thought it was a great idea- that it was calling for radical thought and action. But really there is no such thing as "outside" the box. This place or space does not exist.

There is no way of stepping outside the sets of relations, the processes and structures, in our world; we can't untangle ourselves from this mess. Yes we can come up with critical analysis, resistances and change social, economic and political relations in subtle and signifcant ways, but no matter what I do I still live in a racialized, gendered, heteronormative world constructed along lines of first vs third, or educated vs ignorant or right vs wrong and am often responsible for (re)performing/(re)producing these unequal ways of knowing and being.

I'm not discouraged by this acceptance of 'things beyond my control' but happy to recognize the many things I do get to do and am able to think critically about (the 'free will' side) as part of these "regulatory fictions" (see Butler, 1990) or frameworks.

In the end, we have the ability to recognize the ways in which the world is produced both for and by us all.