The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

by Sarah Schulman

Under gentrification, what is possible for young artists, hence how they see themselves, is dramatically different. They cannot afford to live or work. They are faced with conformity of aesthetics and values in their neighborhoods. Conventional bourgeois behavior becomes a requirement for surviving socially, developing professionally, and earning a living. By necessity, their goals are altered. Reimagining the world becomes far more difficult, and reflecting back what power brokers and institutional administrators think about themselves feels essential to survival.

Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money.

Feminism is still subversive. It's still scary. Feminism means humanity moving forward and addressing inequalities. And that women lead. Independent women who do not need men for their emotional, physical, and economic well being are scary still. Even those of us who love men.

Gentrified happiness is often available to us in return for collusion with injustice. We go along with it, usually, because of the privilege of dominance, which is the privilege not to notice how our way of living affects less powerful people.

Sometimes we do know that certain happiness exists at the expense of other human beings, but because we're not as smart as we think we are, we decide that this is the only way we can survive. Stupidity or cruelty become the choice, but it doesn't always have to be that way. After all, people and institutions act on and transform each other. So, it's not happiness at the expense of the weaker versus nothing, right? And yet we are led to feel this way.