{"id":927,"date":"2022-10-25T13:59:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=927"},"modified":"2022-10-25T13:59:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:59:39","slug":"eli-clare-and-the-imperfect-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/10\/25\/eli-clare-and-the-imperfect-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"Eli Clare and the Imperfect Activist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am the activist who has never poured sugar into a cat’s gas tank but knows how. The activist who has never spent a night in the top of a Douglas fir slated for felling the next morning but would…I am the socialist with anarchist leanings who believes the big private timber corporations…are corrupt, and the government agencies…are complicit…I am the writer who wants to make sense (Clare, 21-22).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above quote from Eli Clare, for me, was one of the most relatable excerpts from his book “Exile and Pride”. It does so much to highlight the nature of people who believe in activism, but are held back in one way or another. His continuous usage of “I am” emphasizes his own personal identities as an activist, a socialist, an adult, and a writer despite not “living up to” the societal and personal expectations of what it means to identify with those groups. It also highlights the impossibility of perfection and the importance of “imperfection”. No one is or can be a perfect activist. No one can be a perfect adult and that is precisely what makes these identities possible. This is one of the overarching themes of “Exile and Pride”, how if everyone tried to live up to the “perfect” expectations, no one would feel truly authentic.<\/p>\n

This quote extends far beyond activism into queerness. It made me recall Eve Sedgwick’s definition of queer – “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning (Sedgwick, 8)” – and discussions of Christmas Effects and metro-normativity. Clare knows he isn’t perfect because identity doesn’t require perfection. It only requires someone to identify as a member of that group.<\/p>\n

I think Clare’s organization of this quote also emphasizes the individual aspect of identity. He starts with big concepts and identities – activism and direct action – and moves to much smaller and more personal groups – an adult living in corn country, a writer trying to make sense. Through this organization, he draws the reader in and confronts them implicitly with questions of their own identity – how do you identify? how do you not fit into those tiny little boxes? He rejects any attempts to be monolithized and encourages the reader to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am the activist who has never poured sugar into a cat’s gas tank but knows how. The activist who has never spent a night in the top of a Douglas fir slated for felling the next morning but would…I am the socialist with anarchist leanings who believes the big private timber corporations…are corrupt, and … Continue reading Eli Clare and the Imperfect Activist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4976"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}