Caleb Ward
LightNews LightNews
banner
calebw.bsky.social
Caleb Ward
@calebw.bsky.social
3.5K followers 1.2K following 3K posts
Social and political philosophy, feminism and social change, almost done with a book on the philosophy of Audre Lorde

Postdoc at Uni Hamburg
Photo by Frank Ward, 1999
https://www.calebward.xyz/
Posts Replies Media Videos
calebw.bsky.social
This is funny, and I'll add that Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality proves horseshoe theory, but for continental and analytic philosophy
there are three distinct nexus of occasions to be considered : ( i ) The nexus of M's contemporaries, defined by the characteristic that M and any one of its co· L"mporaries happen in causal i ndependence of each other. (ii ) Durations including M; t any such duration is defined by the characteristic that any two of its members are contemporaries . (
November 25, 2025 at 10:00 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Not everyone has a lawyer, but even those who don't can be like Audre Lorde on this one (this from her FBI file)
-However, as it turned out, LORDE's mai objection to assisting the FBI was that she would not report on her friends. No further interview with LORDE is contemplated, as it is felt that she would give no information regarding HEIT or anyone else she knew.
November 25, 2025 at 7:33 PM
calebw.bsky.social
This made me laugh. HBD!
November 22, 2025 at 8:06 AM
calebw.bsky.social
I mean, rule of law blah blah blah, but this is obviously outrageous given how publicly obvious corruption has been over the past year. But also:
He attempted to get a retrial after claiming that his former lawyer David Kenner, best known for representing Suge Knight in his 2015 murder case, used artificial intelligence to come up with closing arguments. In early 2024, Kenner pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal contempt and was sentenced to one year of probation over his handling of discovery materials in Michel’s case.
November 21, 2025 at 8:08 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Just spent a couple hours talking about Audre Lorde's erotic with an awesome student-led research group at FU Berlin on love/friendship and political action.

We read some of her erotic poetry too, and listened to her read it. I had a little epiphany about the first four lines of this poem 🧄
On a night of the full moon I Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. The curve of your body fits my waiting hand your flesh warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes.
November 20, 2025 at 12:54 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Oh look, some good news for holding accountable transnational corporations. Nice when a week starts with humanity beating out profit.

From the weekly global newsletter by @shamjaff.bsky.social, which you should probably just subscribe to
The Americas A U.K. judge ruled that an Australian company is responsible for the 2015 Brazil dam collapse that killed 19 people What happened An Australian multinational mining company is in deep sh*t. BHP has been found liable by a U.K. judge for a 2015 dam collapse in Mariana, Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. The incident killed 19 people and spilled about 40 million cubic meters (1.4 billion cubic feet) of toxic mine residue onto downstream towns and waterways for 675 kilometers (419 miles). Why this matters: This dam collapse is considered to be Brazil's worst environmental disaster. A recent study found that there were still a lot of arsenic, manganese, cadmium and other metals in the wildlife there.
November 17, 2025 at 8:43 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Already got feedback on "Hot for Revolution", and the chapter is almost ready to go out as a preprint. I'm presenting it in the Emotion & Society Lab work-in-progress series in a couple weeks if you want to read it and talk about it with me 🤗

Info below and at emotionandsociety.substack.com
Emotion & Society Lab Work-in-Progress series poster, Fall and Spring 2025-26 "Join us for a casual virtual workshop of papers on emotions" WHEN: 1st Tuesdays: 2PM (ET) / 11AM (PT) / 7PM (UK) WHERE: Zoom (with in-person vibes) Register at emotionandsociety.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:00 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Here's some material on Lorde's theory of power (this material is consecutive and i've marked the order in alt-text)
1 Alexis Pauline Gumbs describes Audre Lorde as a “theorist of energy,” interested in questions of where each person’s energy, or power, comes from, how each person can mobilize and direct it, and how it can be amplified into larger movements for systemic change. From her earliest essays, Lorde articulates her work in terms of how people can learn to recognize the power they have and use it to fight for survival and change. This is the motivation driving her essay “Uses of the Erotic,” which begins with the assertion: “There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise” (SO 53). She clarifies this in an interview almost a decade later, stating that, “I don’t only mean power in the abstract. Personal power is comprised of social power, political power, economic power, as well as spiritual and psychic power. …I need to recognize what powers I have” (CWAL 165–66). In these discussions and elsewhere, she explores how personal power is activated in labor and creativity in the widest sense—how we draw on our resources to mobilize our actions and abilities toward our aims, making possible all our projects. Whether directed by one’s own commitments or according to the strictures of a job or a narrow social role, some form of power is at work when people use their intellectual capacities or material resources, when they put their bodies in motion, when they raise their voices, when they assess and judge, when they care for others, when they use their skills—whether “painting a back fence [or] writing a poem” (“Uses of the Erotic,” SO 58). Power in this sense is what we mobilize when we come together for political actions, but it is also what employers purchase with wages and what populist leaders seek to channel toward their own advancement. 2 In relation to action, personal power on Lorde’s view is both potential (i.e., a capacity, fuel) and kinetic (i.e., the force of labor in motion). In her discussion of the erotic, she describes power as both the capacity to feel and the electrifying spark of feeling itself that arises from creative undertakings. Later, she describes personal power to an interviewer as “a continuum… not merely personal power that concentrates itself in, but personal power which moves us. Electrical power runs trains and lights houses. Personal power moves us through the world, whatever we decide that we need to use that power for” (CWAL 164–65, emphasis original). So, unlike a theory of power as pure potentiality, such as labor-power for Marx, where power is expended and diminished when put to use as labor, power for Lorde persists through its use, though it is not infinite (cf. Marx 1996 [1867], 177–81). Under the right circumstances, however, it can through use be amplified and grow. 3 The energy a person has available to them can be limited by living in an oppressive society, particularly one built around converting human labor into profit and human beings into laborers and consumers. Lorde describes how human productivity canalized into repetitive and predictable behaviors captures a person’s power and alienates them from its use. For example, when asked by an interviewer in 1975 about whether it is a marker of success for Black people to be more represented on television and in popular media, Lorde expresses this view: “It is not successful to have a hundred million black machines because, although black is beautiful, a black machine is a black machine. I am not interested in seeing my children grow up to become American consumers. I am interested to see them grow up to be human beings who are black”. Lorde is most interested in how power can be claimed, nurtured, and self-directed—in short, how people can become empowered. Empowerment expands a person’s energy and frees it to be applied toward the work that they feel integrates their many commitments and generates possibilities for survival in Lorde’s rich sense. This might be gaining skills or expertise, becoming enmeshed in a community of mutual care, or seizing the means of intellectual production by starting a publishing house. Lorde describes how, when directed by the feeling of integration across the different sides of her self, “work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered." Here we can see how, for Lorde, the energy we have and the things we do are in a fluid relation with one another, and when a person’s actions reach out toward alignment across their many aspects of self, or when they feel deeply in their work, they gain the ability to do more. This expansive character of power—its responsiveness to a process of empowerment—is Lorde’s meaning when she says, “we become strong by doing whatever we need be strong for”. 4 A form of empowerment can be achieved by taking on particular social roles: teaching in a university, joining a mass movement, taking the podium as a public speaker, serving as a librarian or archivist. For example, in the poem “Power,” a Black woman taking up her position on a jury gains access to “the first real power she ever had,” to use her vision and voice to pass judgment on a racist police officer who shot a child to death. It is risky, however, to rely on one’s social role as the fount of one’s power, because that power is always vulnerable to being expropriated or undercut by the institutions that confer it—institutions that often operate with hostility toward the disenfranchised. The denouement of the poem sees the jurywoman’s voice channeled into alignment with a white supremacist social structure, with her vote ultimately sealing the unanimous acquittal of the killer. Whereas empowerment is growing one’s power and using it toward what one believes, we see in “Power” the inverse: abdicating and denying one’s power, allowing it to be used by someone else. Lorde tells an interviewer in 1988 that “disempowerment does not mean merely passivity. It means one’s personal power, no matter how relative, being used by the other side, at least by a side not of one’s choice”. Here, Lorde avers a power principle that applies to all who struggle for survival under oppression: each person must take up their power in whatever form it exists, or risk it being used to further the structures aligned against them. In a conversation on Swiss radio in 1988, she declares, “To be silent not only means to be powerless…it also means to be of use to your enemies!” She reiterates this view across her speeches in 1989. At UCLA in California, she warns: Power that is not used is dangerous, because power is never quiescent, it’s never neutral. If I do not use my power, however relative it is, if I do not find out what it is and learn to use it, someone else is using it.
November 12, 2025 at 10:52 AM
calebw.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 9:55 AM
calebw.bsky.social
"People aren't just hot for revolution because they eroticize change. People are hot for revolution because change is the condition of possibility for regaining agency over their sexual & erotic lives, which have been exploited & usurped by a hostile society."

I'm gonna finish this chapter today!
Hot for Revolution using Mamdani sign generator
November 10, 2025 at 12:28 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Here’s some important news I learned from @shamjaff.bsky.social’s global newsletter today: Australia secretively shipping people for indefinite detention in Nauru

This world sucks sometimes, but this newsletter is great, and you should sign up for it.
Australia is potentially deporting hundreds of people to an island five hours away What happened Australia has started deporting people it calls “non-citizens” to Nauru, a tiny Pacific island nation. These are mostly long-term residents who lost their Australian visas after criminal convictions but couldn’t be sent back to their home countries because it wasn’t safe. The move follows a new US$1.62 billion deal between Australia and Nauru, lasting 30 years, that allows Australia to “relocate” hundreds of people there. At least three men have already been flown out, and several others are being held for removal. What's the reaction been? There's been a lot of criticism. What's the difference? Ian Rintoul (Refugee Action Coalition) called it “replacing indefinite detention in Australia with indefinite detention on Nauru.” Who's accountable for this? Ogy Simic (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre) said the deportations are happening “under a veil of secrecy,” with no transparency or accountability. Are they OK? Will they be OK? Sarah Dale (Refugee Advice and Casework Service) said people are being sent away “without knowing if they had legal advice, health checks, or even due process.” Not much public information on the deal The biggest criticism is that the process is secretive and opaque.
November 10, 2025 at 9:57 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Just want to note that closed captioning on zoom writes “herbivore” for “de Beauvoir”
Herbivores work more thoroughly incorporated and reflected the historical experiences of minority women and men. Its impact could have been more profound for these groups.
November 7, 2025 at 7:44 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Thoughts on "rigorous" philosophy:

I'm back at the 6th Roundtable for Black Feminist & Womanist Theory, listening to Bailey Thomas introduce the event as "a space grounded not in hierarchy, but in care, collaboration, & rigor."

Time's ripe to reclaim "rigor" as a demand we make of philosophy 1/
Screen grab from the 2026 Roundtable for Black Feminist and Womanist Theory with Bailey Thomas introducing the event
November 6, 2025 at 3:31 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Looks like Marie Kondo is a good place to start
AI Overview in response to "how do i become a hermit": To become a hermit, you must create a lifestyle of solitude, which involves physically distancing yourself from society, minimizing your reliance on others, and adapting to a self-sufficient existence. This can be a gradual process, involving simplifying your life by decluttering and reducing your wants, or a more drastic change of moving to a remote location
November 6, 2025 at 10:38 AM
calebw.bsky.social
This is gonna be fun. APA symposium on my master‘s tools paper!
EB To: Derek, Caleb & 3 more... › Symposium: Audre Lorde on Social Change Dear Panelists, Thanks for your participation in the upcoming symposium for the pacific APA! The schedule for the man program is currently being finalized.
November 6, 2025 at 10:30 AM
calebw.bsky.social
This snippet from a French news story perfectly highlights the automatism of the criminal justice system:

Damaging your cell door is prosecuted as a crime, but police can legally smash down your door & shoot your dog while executing a warrant, even if they find nothing.
The suspect had been initially scheduled to stand trial on Wednesday on minor charges of breaking a mirror and damaging the door of the prison cell where he was detained in 2019 as part of a separate theft investigation, which later cleared him, Associated Press reported.
November 6, 2025 at 8:45 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Have any feminists out there read Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish anarchist freedom fighter? I knew Rojava in Syria was supposedly a feminist state, but actually reading Öcalan is wild... he's straight up a radical feminist.

"Masculinity must be killed"😮 👇
As can be seen even from this short argumentation, man is a system. The male has become a state and turned this into the dominant culture. Class and sexual oppression develop together; masculinity has generated ruling gender, ruling class, and ruling state. When man is analysed in this context, it is clear that masculinity must be killed. Indeed, to kill the dominant man is the fundamental principle of socialism. This is what killing power means: to kill the one-sided domination, the inequality and intolerance. Moreover, it is to kill fascism, dictatorship and despotism. \Ve should broaden this concept to include all these aspects. Liberating life is impossible without a radical woman's revolution which would change man's mentality and life. If we are unable to make peace between man and life and life and woman, happiness is but a vain hope.
November 5, 2025 at 3:09 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Lorde concludes: "That's true of the city. I think that's true about anything that is both onerous & vital. I see the city as those two polarities. Very much, very much."

I want us to watch NYC spark those polarities again, show the places of both our power & strain! Very much. Very much. 🌩️
Audre Lorde photo portrait by Lynda Koolish 1978
November 4, 2025 at 10:21 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Lorde's 1974 book New York Head Shop & Museum has some of the most powerful NYC poems I've read, including amazing jeremiads like "Cables to Rage"👇
From "Cables to Rage or I've Been Talking on the Street Corner a Hell of a Long Time" by Audre Lorde I have been given other doses of truth— that particular form of annihilation— shot through by the cold eye of the way things are baby and left for dead on a hundred streets of this city but oh that captain marvel glance brushing up against my skull like a steel bar in passing and my heart withered sheets in the gutter passing passing booted feet and bus drivers and old yentes in Brighton Beach kitchens SHIT! said the king and the whole court strained passing me out as an ill-tempered wind lashing around the corner of 125th Street and Lenox.
November 4, 2025 at 10:21 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Hi NYC👋 I think about you so much, imagining Audre Lorde in Harlem & Staten while my grandparents & then my mom carved out life in the Bronx in the 30s–60s.

Here's to New York City and what Lorde calls its "doses of truth—that particular form of annihilation" that is NYC's regional delicacy. 🍎
...
The New York Head Shop and Museum (1974) was Audre Lorde's fourth book of poems and is full of fire
November 4, 2025 at 10:21 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Basically I'm trying to win the trust of the reader that I won't waste your time with "This makes me think of this other text that you probably haven't read, but I have." We'll see if it works.

I give a lot of long Lorde quotes in the notes from hard to find sources, and also analysis like these 👇
79. Note that Lorde’s account of survival here appears somewhat in tension with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s much-cited definition of racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death” (Gilmore 2007, 28). Looking beyond physical life or death as the bottom line, Lorde writes that Black people in America “were never meant to survive,” with the key proviso: “not as human beings” (SO 42). 35. SO 39. Lorde’s repeated statement, “There are no new ideas,” echoes William Carlos Williams’s famous repeated line 50 years before, “No ideas but in things,” which became a mantra for 20th-century poetry (2023 [1927], 6, 9). Williams’s statement in turn echoes Edmund Husserl’s 1901 rallying cry for phenomenology: “We must go back to the ‘things themselves’” (2001 [1901], 168). Lorde’s commitment to a poetry of the particular rather than abstractions aligns her squarely with Williams (and to a lesser extent Husserl), although it is not clear whether she saw Williams’s work in general as an influence on her own. However, whether or not she read Williams seriously, she almost certainly read a brief 1972 essay by feminist anti-war poet Denise Levertov, “The Poet in the World,” which invoked Williams’s words in support of a “fruitful reciprocity between poetry and [political] action” (Levertov 1972, 18).
November 3, 2025 at 1:55 PM
calebw.bsky.social
Gonna use this formatting, even if it means OUP bans me for life
screen grab from page 2 of Derrida's "Glas" (published by University of Nebraska Press)
November 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
calebw.bsky.social
This is literally the SS page in the 1940 NSDAP party handbook. If I may hammer home my point: the book includes hundreds of pages of costume guidelines for all levels of society, and then 10 pages at the end with blood quantum rules, including laws for intermarriage among "Mischlinge"
screenshot of Bovino appearing on Fox News in his get-up SS "traditional uniform" in NSDAP Organisationsbuch 1940, flipped horizontally for visual effect
October 31, 2025 at 1:23 PM
calebw.bsky.social
A fantastic show last night, had me tipping my head back in meditation & reconsidering many of my life priorities.

I realized I saw these two in Philly in 2005 too… here’s the 2025 version
October 31, 2025 at 11:28 AM
calebw.bsky.social
Remember folks, there’s no difference between cosplaying as a fascist and being a fascist. Cosplaying is essential to fascism
Gregory Bovino appearing in Fox News in late October 2025 Heinrich Himmler
October 31, 2025 at 10:46 AM