Donald Zarate

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

@ang3l2real @Memberzonly999 Are you though?

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do.”
— Graeber & Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, p.133

#Anthropology #HumanNature #Freedom #History #Politics

[ASA Sociology @ASAnews]

Remember to nominate a colleague who has made an outstanding contribution to sociology for an ASA 2026 Annual Award before Jan. 1! Read about all the award categories, including the new “Early Career Award for Community-Engaged Scholarship Award” here: https://t.co/Mg5UlEJ7yb.

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“I used to think [at least they don’t suffer]. But then, I was suffering. And I’d rather be me than them. It’s like, there’s dignity in suffering. If you can’t suffer, you’re just a different type of monster”
— Logic, Ultra 85, 174 #Philosophy #HumanExperience #Suffering #Ultra85

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“…these robots don’t obey us, they reflect us. We build them, they build us right back.”
— Logic, Ultra 85, p.143

#AI #Technology #PhilosophyOfTech #ContemporaryThought #SocietyAndTech #Culture #Reflections #CriticalThinking

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“You walk, to go sit. You get up from sitting to walk to sit somewhere else. Walking is just something we do between seats…”
— Logic, Ultra 85, p.78

#EverydayLife #PhilosophyOfLife #Movement #ModernLife
#Reflection #ContemporaryThought #Culture #Quotes

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“So novelty is imperious: it demands the remaking of the world according to its own standards.”
— Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, p.366 #Change #Innovation #FutureOfSociety #CultureAndSociety
#ClimateConversation #TechAndSociety #HumanValues

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“Late nineteenth-century literary utopianism was torn between appeals to simplicity and the ‘natural life’ and an increasingly dazzling vision of a new world of scientific and technological innovation.” — Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, 317 #UtopianStudies #CriticalTheory

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“Being a modern meant pretending to be someone else, to make a stage of all the world.”
— Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, p.270

#Modernity #UtopianStudies #CulturalTheory #PoliticalTheory #CriticalTheory #IntellectualHistory

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“…our greatest challenge in the climate crisis today is our spirituality… our unwillingness to accept that we are moral and vulnerable creatures.”
—Roslyn Fraser, “Utopia on Earth,” p.234

#Utopianism #ClimateCrisis #EcoTheory #PoliticalTheory #Spirituality #SustainableFuture

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“The most important modern secular [intentional] communities have emerged from socialism, the chief utopian response to industrialisation and capitalism.” — Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, p.158 #UtopianStudies #IntentionalCommunities #PoliticalTheory #Socialism #History

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“Rousseau presents an implicit utopian fantasy of what would be the case if a mythical lawmaker had created the perfect society…all follow the general will without any need for coercion.” — Andres Beck Holm, Utopianism in the Social Contract #Utopian #PoliticalTheory #Philosophy

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“It’s impossible to know what the future will bring…What matters is that here and now, inequality is real, grotesque, and a cancer on society...” — Tom Malleson, conversation with Bryant Sculos, New Political Science 43.3 (2024) #Inequality #PoliticalTheory #NewPoliticalScience

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“The relation of festivals to utopia thus rests not on celebration of excess…but on their pointed and often irreverent, anarchic egalitarianism.”
— Claeys, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, p.135

#UtopianStudies #PoliticalTheory #Festivals #Literature #utopianism #CriticalTheory

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

This is quite…idk the word. Despicable?

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

US Institute of Peace renamed after Trump https://t.co/aDVa1leeQ2

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

Honored to give the Lindon Barrett Award in Black Studies talk.

📅 Dec 4, 3–4:30 PM
📍 HMNSS 1500, UCR

I’ll share work from “Here and Now,” on how everyday Black life makes utopia a lived practice of imagining + living otherwise. —hope to see you there #BlackUtopias #otherwise

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“…truth [is] a collage of competing perspectives.”
— Robertson, The Black Utopians, p. 257

#BlackStudies #BlackUtopians #HistoryTwitter #Epistemology #CriticalTheory

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

“At the age of seven, my parents told me that I was Black, and I told them I was not. I argued then that Black was a color, and I was clearly a human being.”

— Robertson, The Black Utopians, p. 210, quoting a letter from his father

#BlackHistory #BlackStudies #Identity #Utopia

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

CW: sexual violence
On the story of Rose Percita Brookes:
“One captain, a surgeon at Walter Reed Hospital, charmed Rose. He would not let the usual rites of courtship stand in his way, however, and so he tied her up and ‘took it.’”
— Robertson, Black Utopians, p.120
#BlackHistory

[Donald Zarate @DonaldZarateJr]

Insightful knowledge drop 🤔“Runaways fled hell. [Glanton] was racing toward paradise” (Robertson, The Black Utopians, 66) #Utopians