Context. It always comes down to context. 9:38 am / 12 May 2008 by Aragorn!
I have intended to post more frequently with thoughts on the interesting things we have been discussing in the @SG, a whisper towards upcoming drama, and the next issue of AJODA but 40 hours a week is killing me. Killing any project outside of the gate of 40 hours a week and making me resent how over-committed I have become. Writing has fallen victim, along with several other things of importance to me.
I guess I’ll try to post on a couple of things including the rise of new-apoc, an amusing cnp from the new issue of GA, and the dramedy in Montreal of the sits vs the ap.
Here is a chunk of a posting I made over at anti-pol about a recent blog entry at Ilvox.org the new voice of APOC (http://anti-politics.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4611)
The voice of new APOC
Even if you disagree whole-heartedly with the theoretical foundation of the letter I think it’s important focus our attention to each others needs–this is key component to producing a circulation of affects in our narrative, whether that is ‘pro-revs’ or the hope attributed to ‘proles,’ and so on.
I don’t know how deep into this I am going to go because, on some level, I see the new-APOC tendency (much like the old) to be unsalvagably political. So I don’t read this rant, or the rest of the Ilvox site as a discussion about needs, others needs, or even narratives as much as about what you so quaintly put as “a circulation of affects”.
I see expressions of political power without regard to much else. The content of that power may be related to former, or perceived, powerlessness, but whether it is the decree to destroy an inappropriate zine or the infinite cry of racism in this rant, it is about power, business as usual. I’ll leave my strategic analysis of their chances for success for later (but they aren’t favorable).
One reading of the new ilvox site is that it is obviously being fueled by a (couple) of younger people who have a lot of energy, are filled to the brim with an ideology that works, and are putting out a lot of material for having been around for such a short time. In that case, fair enough, we will see where they are at in a year.
But… a little bit of techie hunting has pointed me in an amusing direction.
1) illvox.org is owned by j karon who has been around the Bay Area scene (mostly Internet) for a couple of years
2) anarchistnews.com points to illvox.org (this is called domain squatting)
3) Ernesto Aquilar – the founder of the apoc mailing list and illegalvoices.org owns anarchistnews.com
Aside from the conspiracy sidebar my point stands that I am not convinced that this rant, or the new-apoc, is about “real needs” at all but instead a very small group of political actors and their agenda.
Instead white folks can act not with urgency and morality but strategically and intentionally with the use of theory and experiment to gesture towards and become disciplined to the diffuse and thin portals of social conflict where the interests of anti-whitesupremacy and the interests of anti-capitalism are aligned.
I guess I disagree with this. It is a little too vague to actually mean anything so your read of what you wrote is probably not that disagreeable but I wouldn’t go here in this way.
1) I continue to have a problem with the self-identification that causes people to say things like “as a white person” or “as a half-breed native” as the origin of your political activity. I particularly dispise this in the name of “anti-whitesupremecy”. It just assumes too much.
2) In particular the idea of white supremecy begs the question of not only a conscious white agent that has supremecy but of other agents that are being oppressed. POC don’t agree nearly as much as the politicians of the Left would like them to. In particular, outside of academia and activistastan, very few people find a lot of merit in the idea of white-supremecy as an organizing principle of society.
3) That said, what would “anti-ws” look like when ws is a slippery creature at best. When I see post-structuralist parlance used like this I feel like I am watching a political discourse (as in the way that politicians talk and frame the discussion) take shape.
How can we talk about race with an intimate knowledge of its multiple stories and multiple hypothesis about its relation to destroying this world? Can we disagree about racial theory without it being racialized?
These are great questions. I’d love to see you assert them more positively than just spinning them into anti-ws talk. How can -you- talk about your multiple experiences, ideas, and conclusions without it being racialized? Since my answer is that, in a racialized society, you cannot then where does that leave you? Paralyzed? In fear of apoc and their implicit ownership of this discussion within aa circles?
I look forward to you placing yourself more strongly in this discussion without the jargon, supplication, and anti-ws hogwash.
I’ll let a quote from new issue of GA, referring to the trials of being a “decivilizing papa” speak for itself.
Actually, the more disappointing reaction to having a baby came from anarchists, specifically those I would call the “Anarcho-Careerists”. These are basically people who would have been corporate yuppies working 60+ hours a week to “get the job done” had they not been turned on to Chomsky or Bakunin in college (I was one until I decided to “drop out” once again). These folks could never imagine doing anything that did not revole entirely around the “anarchist scene” (substitute the “company”). With websites, discussion boards, power point presentations, publications, conferences, travel expenses, etc. they are in a self-referential existence that is almost entirely comprised of soloists and collectives rather than tribes and families.
Spending my time at work is making me a lot less postively inclined towards the “abstract” nature of anarchist assertions. My break with the left was largely about this issue with the rhetoric around Revolution, Class, and Work at great odds with the back-breaking and not-personally-rewarding life of a worker owned collective member where I really saw the left at its best and worst. As much as I am inclined towards such slogans as “all power to the imagination” this is more because I continue to rely on imagination to keep my spirits high and keep me in the trenches. I imagine a world where desire is liberated, not judged, not evaluated or measured, but free to express itself through its own autonomy and associations. Individuals can individuate. The rest of us will not.
Anyway, while I am sympathetic, perhaps even inclined, towards an “anti-civilization” perspective I no longer will say simply that I am Anti-Civilization. It just seems so abstract. What does it even fucking mean to be against something that large, amorphous, holistic, and universal? Taken a step further, having a desire for another world, even going so far as to actively write about this desire, just doesn’t feel like enough for me right now. It just seems a bit ridiculous to stand on such abstract ground.
All that said… if I were to describe something that I despise worse than a reliance on the abstract-as-identity it would be reliance on status-quo thinking-as-identity. As you can see at this link from Anarchist News the pro-situ types from Montreal are actually putting together an ad-hoc group called the Coalition for Progress to stop John Zerzan from speaking at the bookfair and to “organise a broad contestation of individualist, primitivist and post-leftist ideas”. What the fuck! If it weren’t so fucking bizzare I’d actually consider it (along with the apoc nonsense with KT) a worrying trend for the future.
