use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house

present singular third person uses the master's tools to dismantle the master's house · participle present using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house · participle past used the master's tools to dismantle the master's house · past used the master's tools to dismantle the master's house

1. To use the tools and framework of an oppressive system to end that oppression.

   You'll never be able to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

   5 more examples

   We are, in fact, trying to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house by appealing to the same binary logic that undergirds SB 1250. As Butler points out, however, this is a strategy that is destined for trouble: the[…]

   2009 December 30, Wendy Lynne Lee, Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues, Broadview Press, →ISBN, page 29

   […], and I'm not sure mother grizzly bears would agree that love implies pacifism, nor mother moose, nor many other mothers I've known. You can't use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

   2011 January 4, Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance, Seven Stories Press, →ISBN

   Can we, indeed, use the “master's tools” to dismantle the “master's house?” Says Audre Lorde (1984: 112), in Sister Outsider: ... the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to [win].

   2012 December 6, Mark P. Leone, Parker B. Potter Jr., Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN

   Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew, all of whom used the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, are cited as compelling examples of the empowerment gained through European education.

   2014 August 26, Kate Cregan, Denise Cuthbert, Global Childhoods: Issues and Debates, SAGE, →ISBN

   Initially, though, Tahneh and Diut appear to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. In order to prevent Diut's capture, Tahneh uses her influence to persuade her Rohkohn community and Diut, as well as his two Tehkohn[…]

   2017, Kristen Lillvis, Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 95