We would like to express our deepest gratitude to those who helped us in various ways with We Will Open a New Front – lecture by Lee H. Jones. This work would never have been possible without the ongoing, broad feminist dialogue among various feminist positions and ideological stances.
In the choice of making a large number of voices heard – sometimes in affinity, often in constructive conflict – through the fictional character Lee H. Jones, we were expressing our desire to dissolve the monopoly of the individual author. We dreamed of a utopian voice, a mob, a blob, a collectivity that, through their words, would shatter the prevailing patriarchal, racist and capitalist power hierarchy. To us, it was about creating space for an alternative desire to take hold and be exercised. With this text, we hoped to reconquer, reformulate and incorporate the varied experiences of identity politics. We are aware that there are occasions when it is essential to name our sources and refer to specific feminist thinkers and doers, but this was not the strategy we chose in our work with We Will Open a New Front – lecture by Lee H. Jones. Instead, we actively borrowed, appropriated, stole, were given permission to use, quoted, paraphrased and misquoted. Or did we? If nobody owns language, can words actually be borrowed, given away or stolen? We can only continue to repeat what has already been said: it is our duty to insist, and to say it again and again and again.
We wanted to create a fictional character, an organic intellectual who would embody all our political desires. We wanted to step out of our bodies and into the language where Lee H. Jones is impossible to classify and appears in various guises on various occasions. Lee is all of us, Lee is one, but Lee is never just anyone. Nobody owns Lee. Lee is both fiction and right there in reality.
In We Will Open a New Front – lecture by Lee H. Jones, we refuse to allow language to be objectified and possessed like a commodity, like an artefact. We refuse to acknowledge language as belonging to, or rooted in specific, nameable individuals. We refuse to create a hierarchy between individuals and voices. Instead, we use fiction to prepare us for the future. It is a way for us to create experiences in ourselves and in others, to enable a common struggle, beyond an essentialist perception of identity. To YES! Association / Föreningen JA! identity politics begins right here, just as it begins through political solidarity. Are we ready for it? Are you ready?
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