Oppressed groups reclaim power by rearticulating their own stigmatized signifiers.

Evidence

As Clarke puts it, through the perpetuation and provision of meaning, ideology ‘creates a form of order, who we are, or perhaps more precisely who we are not, by the stigmatisation, marginalisation and intolerance associated with this’. Symbolic forms and the meaning made known through them create and sustain the relationships of power and interaction between the ingroup and outgroup: the self and the Other. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The double oppression, social and sexual, of the woman cracks and is finally shattered; and its essential nature as the social oppression of the family as a whole is revealed. It is simply that its weakest parts—the children, the elderly, the women—must bear the most exaggerated forms of oppression. But in the revolutionary struggle, the relative weakness, the apparent defenselessness of these groups disappear. What was formerly a disadvantage becomes an advantage for the revolution. The old man or woman who walks with halting steps past the military patrol, the timid woman hiding behind a veil, the innocent-faced child do not seem to the enemy to be dangers or threats. So they can pass arms, information, medicine. They can prepare surprise attacks, serve as guides and sentries. They can even take up arms themselves. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 14 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reclaimed slurs retain traces of the struggle that resignified them; The poor must reclaim power while the privileged win applause by renouncing it; Ideology defines the self by stigmatising the Other — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833 (+4 more)

Related

• The oppressed group’s apparent weakness becomes a revolutionary advantage against the enemy (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The poor must reclaim power while the privileged win applause by renouncing it #expands (0.72)
• Ideology defines the self by stigmatising the Other #complicates (0.72) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833
• The oppressed group’s apparent weakness becomes a revolutionary advantage against the enemy #expands (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 14