Complacency is not an option. While polite conversation can be encouraged, the message must be heard and action must be taken. Instilling fear into the common woman and man to not take up their right to exercise their voice and challenge the workings of those who construct the messages of our times is a gross injustice. Silence is for remembrance; we must not hide our voices. Now is the time to use it. The words of this message are taken from Andrea Dworkin. To borrow another passage, "there is a tyranny that determines who cannot say anything, a tyranny in which people are kept from being able to say the most important things about what life is like for them." This is the silence which THE MINISTRY OF VOICE wishes to combat. We must bring it to the forefront, discuss it, debate it, and dismantle it. Our voices must be heard. The compliance, fear, and ignorance which are being referred represent the expected attitudes towards the social and political systems in which we operate. Taking particular issue with existing political structures, Dworkin suggests that there are a limited number of peoples who are given a legitimate voice inside the system. Those who are ignored are overwhelmingly women from across race and class. This poses the question of whose experiences, lives, and realities can be validated within the system and be fully represented. Is this normal? Does this represent the egalitarian social organization which we were promised?
We must challenge the discourses of normalcy: appearance, sexuality, behavior, and politics. These are the things which can define our spirit and personhood. It is our responsibility to not be phased by the call for passive silence and take up our voice. We are members of this system, and have a right to have our perspective be heard.
We have been conditioned to be compliant to the expectations of social organizations and institutions. Those who comply are rewarded, and the persons who do not are punished. It has been suggested that we are conditioned to take on social expectations as our own decisions and live in fear of punishment, should we break the silence. It is this surveillance which brings forth expectation of compliance and fear which sponsors our ignorance through the internalization of these expectations. We cannot lay emotionless to this attack on our voice. We can resist.
Our attention must must focus on understanding the social expectations of this reality and not be distracted by the non-events of popular culture. Our reality deserves public oversight, and nobody is going to hand it to us. We must take it. We must think things through for ourselves and not rely upon anonymous politics to grant it to us.
To muse about articulating that independent voice can be a useful exercise, though the act and accomplishment of this thought is much greater. It can be done. That is what THE MINISTRY OF VOICE seeks to communicate here. We must act and resist with our voice.
THE MINISTRY OF VOICE
For more on our inspiration, check out these great sources:
Dworkin, Andrea. Life and Death. New York: The Free Press, 1997.
Hedges, Chris. Death of the Liberal Class. New York: Nation Books, 2010.
