On Overculture
As the conversation about systematic oppression has increasingly moved to the mainstream in America, we need clearly defined language to understand and articulate the paths of the rising movements. Many new words and terms have been created to this end.
New words are new ideas and new ideas are seeds. If you place a seed in the crack of an old structure – it will be there that new life grows. This essay will explore two terms, “Overculture” and “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.” I will discuss how Clarissa Pinkola Estés and bell hooks use these terms to chisel cracks in the old constructs and plant new life there.
In my writing and teaching, I often use a relatively newly-minted term, “Overculture,” coined by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. This term has specific advantages I wish to elucidate further.
In response to a readers’ inquiry, Estés explained the process by which she came to this term.
I coined the word Overculture many years ago to speak about the grid that the overculture slams down or sometimes subversively dreams down over the spirits and souls of human beings... in order to diminish them, set them into matchboxes, exhort them to behave, or else.
I'd been taught the words 'culture' and sub'culture in school long ago, but/ and did not find them to be descriptive enough, and in fact re' subculture,' when used by some -seems to carry a slur about smaller non-dominant groups of any kind, racial, religious, various proclivities groups, talents etc, that are 'sub,' which means below, or under, rather than radiant in one's own right.
In psychoanalytic training I was taught the word 'collective' meaning what people altogether think, believe, feel, in some kind of projected consensual reality.
I found that word wanting also. For it, to me, is like calling humans who go to war 'troops,' -' today a 'troop was killed.' No, boys and girls, mothers and fathers are sent to war, a young person who has a beloved dog and a kid sister who cries at night now, and a mother with red hair who thought she would die to hear the tragic news of her boy shot down, is not 'a troop dying.' It is a fully formed person, a soul, a mind, a spirit, a heart, a wild and beautiful body, and thousands of stories inherent.
So, I found the word 'collective' as taught to us too much of an idea that we all agree with one another on everything, and there is only ONE' collective' to which we belong. No, I don’t find it so. In fact I find it reductionistic and therefore again, an erasing of the many different and valuable hearts and minds in our world.
So my made-up word, Overculture, is meant to define one aspect of the dominant and often power-mad culture we try to navigate without being crushed or over-assimilated into, thereby losing all our unusual talents, our never before seen wonders we are bringing to life, whether children or works ... and more.
To my thinking, the Overculture has some good things to recommend it, but also it is far too often a force and intent to shape, trim and mal-form and diminish and enslave.
Consciousness about the ways and means of the Overculture, will allow us to be more free by questioning the Overculture's motives that we all be nice little well behaved automatons in order to serve those in power. No.
More no!
More than NO! (Estés, 2015).
Perhaps you notice the way that this writing differs in tone from the typical tone of academic or formal writing (the format, perhaps, of the Overculture). Estés never says anything in a way that is dry or devoid of feeling. Her speaking and writing are always poetic, infused with image and emotions- saturated with a healthy dose of that yellow dye in the margarine that Audre Lorde speaks of in “Use of the erotic: the erotic as power.[i]” Although Estés’ writing has sometimes been seen as “less serious” as a result, I argue that this is a kind of protest against the intellectual, linear, desiccated language that is often expected and elevated by the Overculture.
Some points that feel important about her definition are:
Overculture describes a collection of social and political forces that impact individuals in any culture in ways that are mostly oppressive (but not always and entirely – it does have “some things to recommend it.”)
Overculture is a word designed to specifically recognize a particular cultural force while also empowering and making room to celebrate smaller groups with less cultural power, rather than to denigrate and push them to the side.
Overculture has implications that are non-homogenous and intended to recognize that everyone has a different experience of internal and projected realities.
Overculture intends to honor the holistic experience of individual humans all of whom have multiple identities, roles, and perspectives.
These nuances are important. They are the treasure map that guides us to the crack in the institution of language. I like to think of them as coordinates for the exact place where Estés places her chisel and starts to tap.
The first lines of her response describe the closest thing to a definition of Overculture. She calls it “the grid that…slams down or sometimes subversively dreams down over the spirits and souls of human beings... in order to diminish them, set them into matchboxes, exhort them to behave, or else.” One might say then that Overculture is a force that contains, reduces, threatens, (in other words, oppresses), either overtly or covertly.
She pictures it as a grid – which feels apt. I picture bars – like that of a prison cell but with crossbeams also – being held someplace above our heads. This image evokes a term coined by another important thinker of our time, Dr. bell hooks[ii].
Dr. hooks, also finding existing language lacking, began using the phrase “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Her intent, she explains, was “to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality”(hooks, 1997). Her use of the word “interlocking” harkens to the image of a chain or grid, and her use of the word “domination” evokes the feeling of something pressing down. In this way, the new words of these two great thinkers have shaped my own image of systems of oppression. I also find it helpful that hooks specifically identifies several types of oppressive force. It is as though she names the pieces of metal that compose the grid.
However, one of the ways that the word Overculture adds to hooks’ phrase is to recognize the limitation of the words “patriarchy” and “white supremacist”[iii]. That is, these words point to members of a specific group and constrain them to one layer of identity.
Patriarchies, the word implies, are composed of dominant “paters” (fathers) and white supremacy is composed of “white supremacists.” Each of these, at least in language, highlights and evokes one identity – and draws for the impression of the extreme. The patriarch implies the dominant authoritarian patriarch either in the family, the workplace or the nation. The white supremacist evokes a clan member in a white hood. The evoking of extremes, while powerful in some specific uses, has the downside of, obscuring an important truth – and that is of the very common and seemingly innocuous ways that these forces are experienced. Although egregious examples do exist and I do not wish to minimize them, one of the gifts of the term Overculture is that it highlights the omnipresence of the force. And recognizes the truth that the experience of the micro-aggression is far more common than the egregious examples of racism, sexism, homophobia. Far more frequently, we are left with the sensation of gripping in the belly and wondering to ourselves “did that really happen?” The term Overculture makes room for the tiny, nuanced, daily experiences of oppression as well as the obvious ones.
Additionally, although there is value in recognizing that power constellates around certain groups, it is also important to recognize that these groups are made of individuals with multiple identities and experiences. And to erase that truth is to perpetuate the insidious work of Overculture by putting “people in matchboxes.” This makes our identity one thing and does not let us be whole. Some fathers, while being men, and holding one identity that is privileged under the influence of patriarchy, are also disabled, poor, of an ethnic, sexual, or religious minority, to name a few.
There is also a practical limitation to naming the oppression after the dominating identity. That is, it alienates and creates fear of alienating. I have too often heard folks use the term patriarchy with an implicit apology in their voice or their words – as if to say “sorry men, not you personally – please don’t stop reading.” This highlights the risk of using a term that points at one facet of identity and names the group in power. This pointing kind of naming has the appeal of “turning the tables,” empowering the voice of the minority and putting the one with the privileged identity in the hot seat, which has a certain satisfaction for sure. But the most important function of this new language - naming cultural forces for the purpose of changing them – gets lost.
I am not saying that individuals who have privileged facets of identity do not need to be made aware. This is necessary – particularly because we are all more blind to our areas of privilege than to the ways we are oppressed. (This is the nature of being an organism – privilege doesn’t sting). But I believe that using terms that name the privilege has the effect of overcompensating and recapitulating – it turns the spotlight up too brightly, and its edges are too sharp and the effect is that it creates defensiveness and shame where what is needed is awareness and empathy.
The term Overculture has the benefit of individualizing the experience and acknowledging that everyone is impacted. Along each “bar” of the grid, every one of us is either benefitting from the oppression of someone else, being oppressed, or witnessing the oppression of another (Watkins & Shulman, 2008). No one escapes unscathed. And not one of these experiences is without suffering. This is not to say that all experiences of harm or suffering are equal - just that everyone is impacted. Once one is aware of one’s own location in any given situation, empathy for those in the other seats becomes more available. Empathy allows us to join together to act against a common force with less resistance.
Overculture in its most simple interpretation refers to a force outside the self. But, in the same way that hooks refers to internalized racism as a part of the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” Overculture also lives inside of us. I believe that this is what Estés refers to when she says that the Overculture “sometimes subversively dreams down over” us. I believe that the task of our time is to join together in dismantling the external Overculture in solidarity. In order to do so, we have to be steadfast in observing and disempowering the internalized Overculture within each of us. Neither of these tasks is more important than the other but they both are necessary as we seek individual and community freedom.
[i] In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde uses the following metaphor to describe her experience of the erotic: “During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine, Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth over and over until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it. I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.
[ii] I have abstained from highlighting Estés and hooks’ identities, wanting to make room for their ideas first and foremost. In the way that hooks uses lower case letters to highlight her work over her name, and that I do not wish that their work be relegated to a particular shelf because of one dimension of their identity. I also want to allow them to describe their identities in their own words. This is of course problematic as their writings and biographies are vast enough that I still must select parts and so any explanation is in this way less authentically theirs.
Disclaimers aside, in her book “The Gift of Story,” Dr. Estés’ biographical description calls her an “award-winning poet, Jungian-trained psychoanalyst, cantadora in the Latina tradition…”. She describes her heritage as “Mexican-Spanish by birth and immigrant Hungarian by adoption”(1993). Dr hooks often describes herself as a “black feminist scholar” and also coined the term “queer pas gay” to describe her sexual identity.
[iii] This commentary is directed entirely at the use of the words/phrases coined by these two thinkers. In meaning, I believe these two actually shared very similar beliefs about oppression. Hooks explained the meaning of the term “white supremacist” as including all forms of racism including internalized racism and the structural forces that perpetuate racism. One powerful quote by her very clearly describes a construct very much like the spirit of Estés’ Overculture as I have explored it. Hooks says, “dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community (hooks, 2013).
References
Estés, C.P. (2015). Dear brave souls. On the word I've coined called-The Overculture. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/29996683634/photos/dear-brave-souls-on-the-word-ive-coined-called-the-overculture-q-a-soul-asks-i-a/10152805542223635/
Estés, C.P. (1993) The gift of story: a wise tale about what is enough. Rider.
hooks, b. (1997). Bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation, Transcript. Northhampton, MA:Media Education Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Bell-Hooks-Transcript.pdf
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward Psychologies of Liberation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 51.