"When a theory is transformed into an ideology, it begins to destroy the self and self-knowledge. Originally born of feeling, it pretends to float above and around feeling. Above sensation. It organizes experience according to itself, without touching experience. By virtue of being itself, it is supposed to know. To invoke the name of this ideology is to confer truthfulness. No one can tell it anything new. Experience ceases to surprise it, inform it, transform it. It is annoyed by any detail which does not fit into its world view. Begun as a cry against the denial of truth, now it denies any truth which does not fit into its scheme. Begun as a way to restore one's sense of reality, now it attempts to discipline real people, to remake natural beings after its own image. All that it fails to explain it records as its enemy. Begun as a theory of liberation, it is threatened by new theories of liberation; it builds a prison for the mind."
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Anti-racism activistsPhilosophers from the United StatesWomen activists from the United StatesEcologistsPoets from Los Angeles
Original Language: English
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The Way of All Ideology, Vol. 7, No. 3, Feminist Theory (Spring, 1982), pp. 641-660. Published by: The .
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Griffin
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Susan Griffin
(January 26, 1943 – September 30, 2025) was a radical feminist philosopher, essayist and playwright.
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