creative approaches
to the binaries of empire
Yes/no. Good/bad. Right/wrong. Pressure/ease. Fast/slow. On time/too late.We live in a world defined by binaries, in which so many of us find ourselves struggling to fit in, get it right, live up to the expectations placed on us. Sometimes it feels like binaries leave so little space for us to be, well, us.And while we struggle with binaries on an individual and relational level, binaries — as tools of domination and empire — shape our larger context, too. As empires become even more desperate in the increasing instability of collapse, finding adaptive, nonbinary ways to resist their narratives and logic — within and around us — becomes more and more necessary.In Resistance is Nonbinary we’ll spend six weeks diving into how we recognize the binaries that underpin empire: their structure, their logic, and their assumptions. We'll learn to notice and practice nonbinary approaches to working around, under, between, and over these binaries that shape our thinking, our approaches to ourselves and our relationships, and our understanding of the world around us.
week 1: Binary thinking
Many of us are used to thinking of binaries in terms of gender, but binary thinking shows up in more places than you might expect. In this first session we'll look at binary structure, approaches, and assumptions and how they shape our world + our relationships to each other and ourselves.
Week Two: The Good/Bad binary
In this session we'll look at the ways the sorting of the world into good or bad underpins and justifies the violence of colonialism, both past and present — and the subtle ways the good/bad binary shows up in our thinking around borders, security, and genocide.
week three: The purpose of normal
Along with extraction, earth-killing industrialization, and endless unchecked growth, capitalism brought us the concepts of average, exceptional, and disposable. In week three we'll delve into the creation of "normal," the productive/unproductive binary, and how they work on us as individuals and as a culture.
Week 4: From Spectrums to hierarchies
We live in a world with increasingly sophisticated ways of understanding and identifying ourselves, but under neoliberalism, these become adapted into highly specific categories of power, domination, and punishment.
In session 4 we'll consider the nuances of the right/wrong binary and how it shapes our thinking.
week 5: Order vs Chaos
As systemic collapse creates more and more chaos, empire's response is usually to double down on order. This week, we'll look at the anxieties underlying the binary of order/chaos, often used in subtle and obvious ways by authoritarian and fascist governments, and the creative muscles we need to build in order to resist nihilism and the crushing weight of despair.
Week 6: nonbinary resistance
In our final week, we’ll consider the multiplicity of secret, sideways approaches that keep us connected to the nonbinary reality of life within and around us, building agile and mutable practices of resistance to empire's binary logic.
Join the six week course
Resistance is Nonbinary begins March 27th.
This class is Pay What You Can (PWYC), no one turned away for lack of funds.
about kali
I'm a writer, coach, and student of nonbinary approaches. I'm white, nonbinary, genderqueer and descended from people who lived by the water, loved trees, and traded solidarity for security by allying themselves with systems of domination.For the past several years, I've worked with people 1:1 and in small groups to delve into the tension and deliciousness of internal and external nonbinary experiences in a binary world. I find so much delight and ease in holding space for people to practice recognizing and appreciating the nonbinary ways each of us moves through the world, no matter our gender.