Denisa Kera wrote:
the early feminist texts are so much more interesting than anything recent (the postmodern/posthumanist stuff suffocating with actionless metaphysics)... this particular text is relevant for all DIY/hackerspace movements, even for the blockchain debates about governance: structure is not about rules, but due process, transparency of decision making & rules of engagement:
"Thus, structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few, and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.
For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities, the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn’t. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and make available some means of attacking it if the people involved are not at least responsible to the needs of the group at large. “Structurelessness” is organizationally impossible. "
The Tyranny of StructurelessnessJo Freeman’s “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” brilliantly details how movement organizations founded on “structurelessness” and “leaderlessness” can give rise to authoritarianism and invisible hierarchies. We reprint her classic essay here in full.