Jan 13, 2025
"Make Pie, Not War" transcends the simplicity of its words to reflect a radical proposition for non-violence, resonating deeply with the insights of Judith Butler in The Force of Nonviolence (2020). This statement embodies an ethic of disruption—a challenge to entrenched hierarchies that sustain oppression and marginalisation. By engaging in an act as humble yet communal as making pies, rather than waging war, we unsettle the violent logics of domination that devalue lives and perpetuate cycles of grief and destruction.
War, as Butler suggests, does not liberate—it consumes. It transforms individuals like Stella into mere cogs in the relentless machinery of systemic violence, reinforcing the very power structures that deny her and others their humanity. War reduces the marginalised to "less grievable" lives, ensuring they remain invisible within narratives of power. It fails to imagine a world where value and dignity are extended to all.
Pie-making, in contrast, becomes a radical act of defiance. It resists the glorification of destruction and instead cultivates community, creativity, and care. To make pie is to reject participation in the institutions of war that perpetuate dominance; it is a quiet yet transformative gesture that destabilises power without perpetuating its mechanisms. It affirms the value of life over the machinery of death, insisting that change arises not through violence but through the subversion of its logic.
This deceptively simple call—“Make Pie, Not War”—is therefore not just a statement, but an invitation to reimagine how we resist. It is an act of profound political and ethical imagination. 10/10 Masterpiece.
