Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

[raepatterson@mastodon.social]

@sakhavi @tante

Every tool can be used as a weapon, but not every weapon can also be used as a tool, especially not as a tool for good, and most especially not for net good.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@sakhavi @tante

Ani Difranco had a concert at a former plantation and still has neither apologised nor made reparations.

[sakhavi@aoir.social]

@xenophora @tante See https://explaininghistory.org/2025/09/30/ibm-and-the-holocaust-technology-as-a-force-multiplier-for-genocide/ for a description of genocidal early database use. Lorde's assertion is also about destructive (house-dismantling) tool use. It's harder across the board to use tools constructively than destructively, but that's an eventuality of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, not any given political stance. Again, subversion will most often be unanticipated, not prescribe-able.

[xenophora@mastodon.art]

@sakhavi @tante

Ah, right. I knew of this but I don't think I was aware that it was the first to be considered computerized.

[condret@fedi.absturztau.be]

@haverholm @tante can copying be exploitation?

[dialecticalmusings@app.wafrn.net]

it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read …

Incidentally, the “Conclusion” chapter of the blog author’s famous book published in October 2025 repeats the point made in the blog post, about Audre Lorde being “manifestly wrong” in proclaiming that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”.

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@condret Of course. That's the basis of intellectual property. Which publishers like the music industry sort of twist to serve their corporate purposes. @tante

[kitkat_blue@mastodon.social]

@tante

I see this is about ai and as llm/gen-ai has no positive cost/benefit outcome, *however it is used*, i agree ofc.

But Ai aside, what is more "master's tools" than guns and bombs? Yet if you want to oppose that, what do you need? Guns and bombs. Such "Tools of oppression" can be used to support evil or oppose evil. Such tools have no innate ideology. They only enable power. And power has no inherent ideology either.

/1

[kitkat_blue@mastodon.social]

@tante

Ai, however, is a special case. It is more like nuclear weapons. These are the kind of "master's tools" that should never be used. Once brought into reality, the only course is containment.

Gen-ai and LLM-ai, tho, are more closely akin to another technology which should never be used and that is human cloning. Done digitally instead of physically. But in every essential way they are *the same* and so should be opposed on that basis and contained/banned on that same basis as well.

/2

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@dialecticalmusings I'm afraid I have no idea what the blog post, its author, or their book is 🤷 I replied to @tante's toot, that's all.

At face value though, I'd say someone would have to deliberately misread Lorde to conclude she was "manifestly wrong". Maybe even doing so from a vested interest in keeping the Master's house intact.

But I may be wading blindly into an academic hornet's nest.

[dialecticalmusings@app.wafrn.net]

That's fine.

I will respect the OP's choice to not name in this public thread the author of the blog post under discussion. However, I can tell you that the blog author is an internet activist and a cult celebrity; he is not an academic, at least not in the conventional sense of the term.

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@dialecticalmusings Ah, I may know who you talk about after all. In that case my money is 100% on Lorde over him. @tante

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

@haverholm @dialecticalmusings I was referring to Cory Doctorow's recent post which kinda read as a response to something I wrote criticizing him

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@tante So I gather. My points still stand in terms of your isolated toots. Can't speak to any context to do with CD. @dialecticalmusings

[dialecticalmusings@app.wafrn.net]

I was referring to Cory Doctorow's recent post which kinda read as a response to something I wrote criticizing him

Yes, I figured that out.

I think you were referring to Cory Doctorow’s March 17, 2026 blog post.

However, note that Doctorow publicly started inching towards his position on Audre Lorde in this April 8, 2024 blog post.

He then made the point more emphatically, in the context of Bluesky, in this January 20, 2025 blog post.

Then he repeated the same point in the “Conclusion” chapter of his book “Enshittification”, but this time in the context of the internet.

He may have repeated it elsewhere too, these are the ones I noticed.

My basic point is this: Cory Doctorow’s position on Audre Lorde is not a spur-of-the-moment utterance. He has been publicly stating and repeating it for at least two years. So he has had time to reflect over it. In my opinion, this highlights the shallowness of his thinking and his understanding.

[attoparsec@clacks.link]

@light @tante @flancian Yeah, I've definitely seen it applied to just, like, tools. At which point it becomes its own method of oppression, discouraging people from being efficient in their resistance.

[fraggle@social.coop]

@diffrentcolours @tante the other that sprang to my mind was cryptocurrency. I've seen various misguided projects over the years from people trying to create "socialist cryptocurrencies" and the like. But fundamentally it's a system that by design tries to elevate property rights above democratic accountability. You can't start from that and try to paint some attempt at socialism on top of it

[aka_quant_noir@hcommons.social]

@sakhavi @tante If the only tool you value is one that does harm by its use, then you have valued Unwisely.

A gun is not a hammer, and hitting a nail with it won't make it constructive.

A.I. is designed to deprive humans of jobs, livelihoods and workplace power. It's a gun.