The Power of Words - Episode 64 - The Oxford Comment by Oxford Academic (OUP) published on 2021-08-25T17:35:52Z We’re all familiar with the phrase “words have power”—but in a political and cultural climate where we become more aware of the power that money, influence, and privilege have every day—how do people wield the power of words? On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we spoke with philosopher Myisha Cherry and poet Carmen Bugan to talk about how they see their disciplines addressing the questions of language, oppression, and resistance, and exactly what tools the arts and humanities provide to address injustice. Learn more about "The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle" by Myisha Cherry here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-case-for-rage-9780197557341 Learn more about "Poetry and the Language of Oppression: Essays on Politics and Poetics" by Carmen Bugan here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/poetry-and-the-language-of-oppression-9780198868323 Please check out Episode 64 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors: - Apple Podcasts: oxford.ly/2RuYMPa - Google Podcasts: oxford.ly/38UpF5h - Spotify: oxford.ly/2JLNTTO - Stitcher: oxford.ly/2R0fVNZ - Youtube: oxford.ly/2YY4iMT The Oxford Comment Crew: Executive Producer: Steven Filippi Associate Producer: Sarah Butcher Host: Tom Woollard Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ © Oxford University Press Genre Learning Comment by Iftekhar Sayeed "Walls have ears": Carmen Bugan seems to have lived in Bangladesh today. The power of intimidation through surveillance (spyware from Israel) and disappearnces (described by Orwell) are all too familiar to us here. In addition, the seduction of ideology and us-and-them-ing society even down to children in high school - and nobody thinking all this isn't terribly good - comes across as eerily current in Bangladesh in 2021. However, our prdicament is made worse by the active encouragement of western powers for a party that labels itself "secular" in a Muslim society. At least, Ms. Bugan has a sympathetic ear in her western audience. 2021-11-26T12:34:18Z Comment by Iftekhar Sayeed "Words have power". True enough, but power to promote evil as well. In Bangladesh, we had a demagogue who used words to set one group against anothr, with consqunces to this present day. In addition, he was able to generate anger at imaginary grievances just to get votes. Once in office, he became a tyrant. Rationality is not valued very highly in my country: irrational, misdirected emotions, positive and negative, have rendered our society a dysfunctional hell. 2021-11-26T11:58:17Z