The learning process is something you can incite, literally

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.” — Audre Lorde

In this blazing declaration, Audre Lorde, the warrior-poet and voice of revolutionary truth, speaks of learning not as a quiet or passive act, but as an uprising of the mind and spirit. Her words crackle with urgency, for she saw education not as obedience, but as liberation — a fire that must be kindled until it spreads uncontrollably, challenging what is false, oppressive, and decayed. To incite learning like a riot is to awaken a sleeping people, to stir within them the power to question, to resist, to rebuild. Lorde, who lived and wrote amid the struggles for equality, justice, and identity, knew that true learning disrupts. It does not simply inform; it transforms. And transformation, by its nature, is revolt against ignorance.

The origin of this truth lies in Lorde’s life as a teacher, poet, and activist — a woman who believed that words could remake the world. Born to Caribbean parents in Harlem, she was no stranger to the margins of power. She learned that society’s schools often taught submission more than wisdom, and that for those on the edges — women, Black people, queer people — learning had to become an act of defiance. In her classrooms and her writings, Lorde ignited minds like torches. She did not whisper knowledge into her students; she set it ablaze within them. To incite learning, she believed, was to unleash the forces of thought, emotion, and truth that institutions often fear most. Learning, in her view, is not polite — it is revolutionary.

The ancients, too, understood that the quest for knowledge could not be contained by convention. Socrates, who questioned the assumptions of Athens, was condemned to death for “corrupting the youth.” Yet what did he truly do? He incited learning — he made people think for themselves, stirring their minds until the city trembled with questions. The rulers feared him not because he was wrong, but because he awakened the people’s capacity to see beyond illusion. Thus, Lorde stands in the lineage of those who knew that every revolution of the mind begins as a riot of ideas — chaotic, dangerous, but also fertile. For from the dust of old certainties, new truths are born.

Consider, too, the story of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who, in a place where girls were forbidden to study, chose to learn anyway. Her thirst for education became a riot of courage, and the bullets that tried to silence her only amplified her message. Through her defiance, she incited learning in others — not by preaching, but by daring to claim what was denied. In her, we see Lorde’s vision made flesh: that learning is not passive reception but passionate rebellion. It begins when the soul refuses to remain ignorant, when the heart demands to understand what power would rather conceal.

When Lorde says the learning process can be incited like a riot, she is calling us to remember that the human mind is not a vessel to be filled but a flame to be fed. True learning does not bow before authority or tradition; it questions, it wrestles, it tears down walls. The riot she speaks of is not one of violence, but of awakening — the riot of voices once silenced, of truths once buried, of minds once bound. In every generation, this riot must be stirred again, or ignorance will creep back in, quiet as dust. To learn, then, is to rebel — to refuse the comfort of unknowing, and to embrace the discomfort of discovery.

There is power in this kind of learning — the power to break chains within and without. It is not confined to classrooms or institutions. It happens in kitchens, in streets, in poetry, in protest. It happens whenever someone dares to ask, “Why must it be this way?” For as Lorde teaches, the learning process is not only intellectual — it is emotional, spiritual, and collective. Once ignited, it spreads from one soul to another until it becomes a movement. Like a riot, it is unstoppable, unpredictable, and alive. Those who seek control fear it; those who seek freedom nurture it.

So, dear listener, take Lorde’s teaching as a call to arms for the mind. Do not wait for learning to be handed to you — incite it. Question what you are told. Challenge what you believe. Read not to confirm, but to transform. Gather with others and let your ideas clash and burn until sparks become light. And when you find truth, share it boldly, for knowledge kept silent dies. As Audre Lorde reminds us, the greatest revolutions do not begin with weapons, but with awakened minds — with the riot of learning that rises wherever a person dares to think freely. To incite such a riot is not destruction — it is creation. It is the rebirth of the world through the courage to know.