Genealogy vs. Context

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This is more a note for future reference than a thought-out argument, so bear with me (or skip, if you prefer).

When we think about things, they have two aspects which we need to grasp. i'll call these genealogy and context.

Genealogy is where things get their identity from. I.e. the genealogy of an organization would trace it back to its origins, including name changes and changes in policy and form. Then if at its origin it had been a split from a previous organization, genealogy would trace that organization back to its origins, or if it had come out of a particular movement or campaign, then genealogy would trace that, further and further back, as far as you can or are inclined to go.

Genealogy is fun, in a geeky stamp-collector kind of way, but for the overenthusiastic it can also be very misleading. It is easy to exaggerate the importance of the scandalous, i.e. that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith used to be the Holy Inquisition, or that Levesque's PQ came out of Bourgault's RIN which at its origins included many young nationalists from Barbeau's fascist Alliance Laurentienne. Scandalous, but not incredible enlightening as to what's going on here and now, because a break can often see more left behind than carried on.

It is difficult to appreciate the relationship of a thing to its own history, which can at times be direct and important, and at other times can be nonexistent, at least for practical purposes. Those are the limits of genealogy.

The second way that things exist is context. Not just the mundane fact that everything has a context, but that things often fit into patterns that are only visible when viewing other things at the same time - often things that have no direct relationship to one another, and so which are arbitrarily selected after the fact simply based on the pattern they constitute. Things retain their identity, inherited through their genealogy, but they are also a part of a broader reality which determines much of their nature. For instance, when looking at the waves of history - for instance the postwar wave of decolonization, or the related 67-68 wave of student and youth rebellion, or the late 80s-early 90s wave of neocolonial peacemaking - clearly the players had their own genealogies and identities, but around the world something else was going on which pushed matters, and pushed the players, in particular directions. (This begs for a resuscitation of the old problem of universals...)

To give two examples: that the FLQ came into existence in the early sixties has something to do with the history of Quebec nationalism (genealogy), but very little compared to "the times", the overarching wave of anticolonial struggles (context). Similarly, that the Maoist movement in Quebec came into existence in the early 70s and fell apart in the early 80s certainly has something to do with the genealogy of communism and the left in Quebec, but a richer understanding may be reached if one also considers the rise and fall of first world Maoism in myriad countries at almost the exact same points in time.

These are obvious examples, but not all cases are so clearcut. Is the antideutsche movement the result of genealogy (a reaction against the weakness around antisemitism of the West German 70s/80s far left) or the result of context (the rise of reactionary ideology around the world in general - and racism in Germany in particular - in the 1990s?) - i'd guess the former, but it's just a guess. (& when considering specific organizations it becomes even more difficult to measure.)

Or let's take a famous case, the rise of Nazism in Germany, which has been studied at length in terms of the history of Germany, the history of antisemitism, the history of authoritarian right-wing schools of thought, and other competing geneaologies - it can also be (and has also been) studied in terms of its context, similar "shirt movements" and other fellow travelers emerging around the world at the same time, sexist and racist consciousness mutating through the traumas of World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression, anti-Marxist "socialisms" that emphasized the primacy of the nation and cross-class-unity flourishing even on the left.

The relationship reminds me that Mao had something to say about the relationship between internal factors and external factors. He took the counterintuitive view that internal relations are normally more important than external relations, that "what's out there" is of less importance than "what's inside", because it's through the strengths and weaknesses of the internal that the extrernal will be mediated. There's a lot to be revealed if you think this way, though like most things if you take it too far it can get pretty silly, i.e. if someone drowns in a lake it's not because of the water (external!) but because they're not a good swimmer (internal!) or maybe simply because they have lungs not gills (really internal!).

But i think Mao's ideas are a truly red herring in this case, as genealogy is more like history than internal reality - and what i mean by history here is that which is subjectively experienced as "internal" but in actual fact remains external to us, mediated by a bunch of factors ranging from what has been suppressed/preserved to how that is interpreted to how much is "remembered" (though in the case of social formations that is the wrong word, as the individuals within such formations do not necessarily have personal memories of much of the "history", as they were likely not even there or perhaps had not even been members or active or alive when events in question occurred).

Maybe the metaphor from physics of light being both a particle and a wave makes more sense. (At least, not having any training in physics, my ignorance allows it to seem apt.)

In any case, all i really want to say, is that when thinking about things - big things small things, important things trivial things, common things esoteric things - it's worth keeping in mind both genealogy and context.

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Jim Campbell, Remembered

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A debonaire looking Jim, 1981

It is two years today since Jim Campbell died of a heart attack, bicycling in rural Ontario with his partner Julie. He was 57, and had been looking forward to retiring in a few years, to finally being able to move out of the city.

When i used to visit toronto in the 1980s, Jim was always a great guy to look up and to hang out with. i was a teenager at the time, and he seemed to make the idea of being on the left for the long haul (after all, he must have been in his thirties!) without becoming a lunatic seem accessible and possible.

Plus he was funny as hell, with a sense of humour that could manage the improbable, combining cynicism with hope. i remember on more than once occasion he'd ask - rhetorically, and with a grin - who would be in charge of garbage removal "after the revolution." The question would be answered quickly enough: "I guess people like me will, just like now." A joke born of experience, as you can see below in his reflections on the "lazy faire" middle-class anarchist scene he was a part of for most of his life.

Still on the topic of "the revolution," i remember him joking that when it broke out and things were at their heaviest, he would make the grand sacrifice and volunteer for the dangerous job of going on the European Solidarity Tour. It wasn't self-deprecation, more like a cunning and sweet deflating of the romantic silliness people get into their heads about what the rev will entail.

i knew Jim, and saw him most often, in the 1980s and early 90s. For many of these years his main political activity was putting out Bulldozer/Prison New Service, a news-bulletin (and later newspaper) of writings and artwork by prisoners. It included amongst its authors some of the sharpest revolutionary minds locked down in Amerika at the time. i first read the words of Shaka Shakur, Kuwasi Balagoon, Standing Deer and others in those pages. Eventually with over 2,000 subscribing prisoners, and financed almost wholely out of Jim's wages as a city maintenance worker, PNS/Bulldozer was one of the most important radical publications of its day.

One of my last "political" memories of Jim was when some of us went to table at the Anti-Racist Action conference in Toronto in 1996. Jim had never been a part of ARA, but was certainly a part of "the scene" (i still remember him bumming a cigarette to help calm me down after police on horseback attacked ARA's '93 anti-HF demo), plus he was still one of most respected revs in Toronto, even though he had not been exempt from the internecine fighting which would shortly rip that scene apart. i was tabling with a crew of former ARA members, who were on pretty bad terms with their erstwhile comrades - but with Jim carrying in our pamphlets and magazines (which he got in shit for), we were able to table the entire weekend with no hassles.

Nevertheless, when political conflicts came to a head in Toronto, ripping through the ARA milieu (which was the most dynamic political force on the far left at the time), Jim like many others was left feeling emotionally burnt, and burnt out. i have been told that it was largely this experience which led to his withdrawing from political organizing at that time ... i have also been told that shortly before his death there was some reconciliation, and some tentative attempt to get back in the loop ... But about all this i don't really know, as for me those were busy years - personally and politically - and so with much regret i feel like i hardly saw him during his last decade.

From what i understand, Jim wrote a lot - but mainly in the form of letters to comrades in prison whom he corresponded with. While much of the editorial comment in PNS was undoubtedly by his hand, it wasn't all, and it generally wasn't signed, and so it's difficult to know. Probably his most well-known text is his essay about the Vancouver Five, initially a talk he gave to the Anarchist Lecture Series in Toronto in 1999, then published in the Spring 2000 issue of Kick It Over magazine, and which a group of us subsequently reprinted as a pamphlet (The Vancouver Five: Armed Struggle in Canada - looking online i see it has also been translated into Spanish).

But IMO an even better text is "Fifteen years of Bulldozer and more: The personal, the political, and a few of the connections", a reminiscence by Jim that appeared in PNS #49 in January/February 1995. The article can be viewed and printed as a PDF, but i am also reposting it here. Eitehr way, it is well worth reading in its entirety, not only as movement history, but also as one man's explanation of how he came across his politics:

Fifteen years of Bulldozer and more:
The personal, the political, and a few of the connections*

Fifteen years ago, in February 1980, the Bulldozer collective was formed when 4 or 5 activists from various places in southern Ontario met up in Toronto and decided that we should start working together on prison-related issues since we had individually begun to do so. We were so inspired by the letters we were receiving from prisoners that we decided that should share them more widely, that summer we put out the first issue of a newsletter called Bulldozer - the only vehicle for prison reform.

Much has changed since that time - and generally for the worst. Prison populations have increased in Canada by over 50 per cent, and by much more than that in the U.S. Conditions have deteriorated due to overcrowding and program-slashing. Control Units have proliferated and sentences have gotten longer. More than ever, prisons seem to be an inevitable part of the lives of the poor and marginal. Their role in disrupting and containing the colonized peoples - Native, New Afrikan, and Latino - is as effective and disguised as ever.

With only a few exceptions - i.e. the closing of the Lexington Control Unit for women - the struggle against prisons, inside or out, has been weak and ineffective. Only a few states like New Jersey have any connection with the earlier prison struggles. The prison struggle in Canada which was strong in the late '70s and early '80s met with a combination of reform and repression that killed whatever energy was left. Resistance in the Washington state system which represented one of the final thrusts of the prisoners' movement that reached back to the days of George Jackson was eventually disrupted by forced transfers and overt brutality. Since then conscious and active prisoners have generally found themselves isolated, either deliberately so in Control Units, or simply because the majority of prisoners prefer to remain asleep. Sadly enough, there are many prisoners who have been on our mailing list since the '80s.

On the outside, a small number of very dedicated individuals and groups have kept going, but there has been no movement to speak of until very recently. Prisoner-support work has not been that popular with the left, nor with social activists in general, and as in most movements out here, a year or so seems to satisfy most people's interest in doing the work. In spite of the hard work on campaigns to free particular POWs, such as Leonard Peltier, most of them remain in prison, a constant reminder of our weakness.

But Bulldozer has not survived fifteen years by dwelling on the negative, and I don't intend to. Recently, there have been positive developments on both sides of the border which suggest that we are able to take some political initiative in the crime and punishment debate. The meeting in Philadelphia in December, 1994, in which anti-prison activists from across the U.S. (and Toronto) came together to set up the Control Unit Monitoring Project (CUMP) is certainly a significant step.

CUMP is a major political initiative and will be a test as to whether or not a movement can be built on the outside, working with prisoners, to close down Control Units. The development of this campaign requires a political strategy. As one of the longest standing collectives involved in anti-prison work, Bulldozer has a certain responsibility to assist in this development. Yet we are hampered because we are based in Toronto, and after more than fifteen years involvement with the American left, there is still much that is totally mystifying about radical politics in the U.S.; the enormous division between the various races is particularly perplexing. One of the ways in which we've maintained credibility over the years is because we don't talk about what we don't know. We hesitate to make suggestions as to what outside activists in the U.S. should be doing to advance the struggle, beyond very general principles, because the political realities in the two countries are very different.

With this in mind, I would like to use this article as the beginning of an irregular series that would articulate some of the politics we've developed over the years. It is not intended as a "What is to be Done" but more where we've come from and what we've seen work. PNS does reflect our politics, but they have been more implicit than explicit. We've never written long essays telling prisoners what they should think. Rather, we've tried to provide a forum in which prisoners, individually and collectively, could articulate and develop their politics. We were always more interested in what we could learn, rather than what we could teach. If individual prisoners could learn from us, so much the better, but that would come from ongoing dialogue and communication. The political direction of the paper would be determined by prisoners, even if the decision as to what would or would not be printed was always ours.

Counter cultural politics

Bulldozer's politics are rooted in the counter-culture, going back to a student house begun in the fall of 1971 in Kitchener, Ont. which developed into one of the first anarchist collectives in Canada, with a heavy emphasis on radical psychology and existential philosophy (and sex and drugs and rock and roll.) All through the '70s, the collective tried to maintain a political orientation to counter cultural politics, even as the individualism that was glorified in these movements allowed for the reassertion of race, class and gender privilege, and a reintegration into business-as-usual for many former radicals and activists. In 1979, we moved to the country, and set up a communal dirt-farm with the expectation that it would be a viable rural community from which we could maintain a political practice.

The first issue of Open Road, a kick-ass, and very well produced, anarchist news-journal came out of Vancouver in August of 1976, transforming radical politics in Canada. Many of the articles in that first issue - Leonard Peltier's impending extradition to the U.S., George Jackson Brigade actions, an interview with Martin Soastre, a Puerto Rican anarchist and former POW, coverage of Native and prisoners' struggles - would not look out of place in the PNS today. My own sense of political possibilities and necessities were opened up by the year (1977) which I spent working with Open Road in Vancouver. But there was little opportunity to put them into practice when I returned to Ontario. I became increasingly dissatisfied with the self-indulgence of the counter culture and the anarchist-purism that celebrated it. I missed the more activist-oriented politics of the Vancouver scene but moved to the country anyway to follow the politics of collectivity through to the end.

The farm floundered right from the beginning due to a lazy-faire attitude and middle class arrogance. With self-expression and "do-your-own-thing" as the highest values, most communal members were unable to respond to the realities of a situation determined by an unrelenting hostile climate, and the cycle of the seasons. Having grown up poor and living-in-the-country, it didn't seem to be such a big deal to be back, poor, and living-in-the-country. I left totally disillusioned at the end of 1981, moved to Toronto permanently, cut my hair, and got a full-time job shortly after. I had started to write to prisoners and the first issue of Bulldozer came out while I was still living there. I was keen to continue with the work.

Open Road motivated the creation of a more action-orientated, militant politic in Vancouver such as the Anarchist Party of Canada (Groucho-Marxist) which carried out a series of "pieings" - literally throwing a pie in the face of a politician or celebrity, with Eldridge Cleaver being the most famous "hit" - in order to make a political point. As simple as this may sound, it brought about political and personal transformations from planning and carrying out the actions to dealing with the consequences - confrontations with reactionaries and authorities. The more serious people in the scene started to do support work for the prisoners in the old B.C. Pen whose struggles eventually resulted in its closure. From then on, prisons have been an essential part of the work taken on by our circles.

Out of this came Direct Action, an armed group which in 1982 blew-up an electrical substation on Vancouver Island ($5 million in damages) and a Litton Industries factory north of Toronto that built components for the Cruise Missile ($10 million in damages and several injuries). Some of the same people were also involved in the Wimmin's Fire Brigade firebombing of three video stories specializing in violent porn. They were arrested in January, 1983, immediately putting us into doing support work. In June of 1983 Bulldozer was raided and threatened with a charge of Seditious Libel (calling for the armed overthrow of the state) for the distribution of support-leaflets we were putting out. A mid-wife, living with us at the time, was arrested and charged with "performing an abortion" in an attempt to get information from her about our links to Direct Action. After several thousand dollars in legal fees, and a year of high-stress, all the serious charges were dropped in connection to the raid. After losing several legal challenges over the legality of evidence, the Vancouver Five, as they had come to be called, pled guilty to several charges related to the actions.

Bulldozer was being published irregularly during this time. The 8th and final issue came out in 1985. I was personally and politically exhausted, and Bulldozer as a political project disappeared for two years. Fortunately, a very active group of young high school students in Ottawa had been influenced by the politics put out around the trials of the Vancouver Five. Even as our own political motivation had disappeared in despair, they took the ideas and started working with them, leading to the appearance of Reality Now! an anarchist zine that was very influential. Eventually, their enthusiasm helped to regenerate my own politics. After two years of inactivity the tedium of a comfortable working class life was becoming all too apparent. When Bill Dunne needed an outsider to help him with The Marionette, a prisoners' newsletter he was doing from Marion, I rejoined the struggle. PNS then developed out of The Marionette.

Social history

This provides a brief history of Bulldozer, though it is more of a social than a political history. I want to be clear that Bulldozer developed out of the alternative or cultural politics - i.e. the punks, and hippies, purist anarchism, women, lesbians and gays, etc. - which has been the primary means by which white youth have radicalized over the past few decades. It is all too easy, and certainly necessary, to critique these cultural movements. Their general failure to deal adequately with issues of race and class does make them little more than "white rights" groups as Lorenzo Kom'boa Erwin puts it. The social alienation that originally motivates many white youth into becoming part of these cultural or marginal movements get channeled into an accommodation with race and class privilege. Intense self-absorption, often combined with heavy drug and/or alcohol use, leads them to think that their subjective rebellion has some meaning. But modern capitalism cares little what anyone actually thinks, so long as one produces, or if unemployed, accepts being economically marginal.

The women's movement is, or at least was, different in that it did pose a real threat to the existing patriarchical structures of this society. This can be measured by the severity of the ideological counter-attack waged against it, even if it was discovered that the position of women in society could be changed without endangering the interests of those who get the goods. Awareness of their own misery had lead many women individually and collectively to develop a radical analysis of their social position. This self-awareness became a vulnerability as self-help, New Age therapies - often looted from Native societies in a continuation of the kolonial kleptomania that has characterized white society - were used to help women (and men) to fit into the existing system. Political consciousness was increasingly seen as being part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. The necessary struggle to feel good about oneself - self-esteem - allowed for an acceptance of class and racial privilege.

For all that, though, we haven't turned our backs on the alternative movements. The fundamental oppression and super-exploitation of, and violence towards, women remains. And mainstream culture is a death culture, not much wonder that so many young people, working class and middle class, try to find some life outside of it in one movement or another. Going way back into the early '70s where we were more political than the rest of the hippies, and more hippy-like than the other politicos, we've tried to develop what could be termed the political wing of the alternative movements. Through time, our politics chnaged thanks to people such as Kuwasi Balagoon and the local Leonard Peltier Defense Group - with whom we went through some real hard times from '83 to '85 - as we struggled to come to terms with the colonialism, genocide and slavery upon which North Amerikan society is based. I will take up this topic in some other article, but I wish to return to the politics of the alternative movements.

The original insight that the "personal is political" was truly radical in that it went to the root (radical means going to the roots) of social existence, our own individual lives. So great was the contradiction between the myth of social happiness, and the misery found in most people's lives once they looked, that it energized the various social movements from the '60s on. The slogan originally meant that there is a social context to our personal lives, and that a serious examination of who we are would lead us to understand the political context within which we lived. But its subversive impact has been smothered by reducing the political to the personal, as though nothing mattered politically except for one's personal life and a few close friends.

Yet it remains that coming to understand who we are is a necessary first step towards participating in an authentic liberatory process. Part of the impact of PNS itself is because it speaks directly to prisoners' lived-experience, rather than simply offering an intellectual explanation of political reality. The paper helps those who are struggling to know themselves in spite of living in a cage feel strong - and that's a victory. Coming from what could be called a "secular spirituality", we share with traditional Natives, New Afrikans and Muslims amongst others, the sense that an individual's life is a "struggle" in and off itself; that it is our task as humans to unravel the mysteries of our own existence, to determine the truth within it, and to find the proper direction. Politics come back into it since any honest examination should lead to a clear understanding that this society is based on a complex blend of race, class and sex. Many whites, and others as well, unfortunately back off from these political implications.

The critical importance of understanding the connections between politics and one's personal experience became much more vivid for me when I "remembered" five years ago that I had been subjected to severe and frequent sexual abuse as a child. Suddenly my own life made a lot more sense to me. I had discovered the key to my private mythology. The rage which I had learned to channel into my political work became understandable. It made sense to me why I was drawn by the plight of the prisoner. I had spent much of my younger days isolated, brutalized, surrounded by those much more powerful than I who were out to do me harm, used by bigger and stronger boys. An image that had haunted me for years of a prisoner, beaten down, forlorn and forgotten, huddled in a corner of a cell, had come straight from my own life, figuratively if not literally. I had been driven by a vow - as unconscious as it must have been - to not stand by while others were being abused.

There is much that we've learned over the past few years about abuse and healing that have political implications, particularly for prisoners since surely prison is nothing if not a system of institutionalized abuse. I will take this theme up more fully another day. But for now, I will say that as we became more aware of issues around abuse, it made sense to discover that at least half of the activists we knew were sexually and/or physical abused as children. We had lived the lies and hypocrisy of the family, religion and society. Our opposition to all three was not merely some intellectual construct, nor mere political fashion but was born of bitter experience. I did not need the suffering of others - women, Native people, Afrikans, prisoners or whoever - to motivate me politically. I had resisted long before I even knew there was a struggle. Like many of my prisoner-friends surviving long years of isolation and brutality, something within me refused to be broken.

I was in total mental and emotional anguish until well into my twenties, but for whatever unknown reasons, I was able to focus my rage on the corporate-state, and its bullies and bosses. Political activity became a means of eventual resolution. Slowly, but surely, I connected with other misfits, malcontents and losers. The counter culture gave us a certain space to be ourselves. We might still be totally alienated from society, barely able to function day-to-day, heavy drug use helping to keep the pain at bay, yet we were no longer alone. And we would fight back.

In a psychologized society such as ours, political activity will often be shaped by unresolved personal problems. We are driven by our demons. But working through these problems need not mean the end of the political activism that was energized by the inner conflicts. It should, in fact, mean that we target the enemy ever more precisely. The abuse must stop! We can stop being abusive. We can resist the abuse we're suffering. But abuse is not simply due to personal failure or the lack of appropriate therapy or bad genes but totally integral to a homophobic society that uses class, race and sex to determine who gets what. This is where political will comes in. As long as abuse continues, then we must fight against it even if, or especially if, our own pain and suffering has been eased. *

Jim Campbell


Postscript

I have used Bulldozer as a personal identification in the past, and the article above reflects my personal history and opinions, and have played the main editorial role since the beginning. But Bulldozer can't simply be reduced to me personally. There are several people who currently help shape Prison News Service and their efforts are much appreciated. I do want to acknowledge some of the others who have made significant contributions to Bulldozer in the past.

Sunday Harrison has been around Bulldozer more or less since the beginning, especially including the raid and its aftermath. Her technical skills and creativity have helped give PNS a much more professional look than it would otherwise have had. We have very much developed our ideas together - even if on any particular detail we are as apt to disagree as agree.

Bill Dunne, the editor and main writer for the now defunct The Marionette also was a major influence on my thinking. Our years of exchanging letters certainly tightened up many of my arguments. Without him, it is unlikely that PNS would exist.

After the raid in 1983, our support came from our Native comrades and from women working at a Lesbian print shop. Though I barely knew most of these women, they immediately came through with crucial assistance. It is many years later, but I don't forget those who were there when help was needed. The lesbian community has also done the basic work on understanding sexual abuse and how it affects those who survive it. I would not have been able to write the above if it were not for the personal support and political stimulation and information that came from lesbian friends. We are interested in connecting with anyone else who is working to integrate surivor issues with a radical political analysis.

Jim C.

Jim more recently

Like i said, there's not much written in Jim's name, certainly not enough to get a sense of how important his contribution was. This is much in keeping with his general demeanour, which was always humble, though not in any contrite over-the-top way, but more as would befit "a hippy amongst the politicos."

Here are the very few texts by Jim that have found their way into cyberspace:

• Who will Feed the Chickens?
• Report on an Anarchist Black Cross Conference (from PNS #47, Sept/Oct 1994)
• From 1988 Gathering to AR!1998
  
• The Vancouver Five: Armed Struggle in Canada

There are also two articles by Dominic Ali about PNS:

• The Tense World of Jail Journalism (American Journalism Review, Dec. 1996)
• Hard Labour: Jim Campbell's Solitary Crusade to Create a Free Press Behind Bars (Ryerson Review of Journalism Spring 1996)

And of course reminiscences both personal and political following his passing:

• Lives Lived - Jim Campbell (the Globe and Mail March 19 2008, by Jim's friend Richard Swift and his partner Julie Thiers)
• Remembering Jim Campbell (the Fifth Estate Spring 2008, Vol. 43 #1 #37, by David Watson)
• Stark Raven Radio interview with Bob Sarti & Ann Hansen, who share stories memories of Jim and his work (available on Radio4All and mirrored here)
  

A plaque at Dragonfly farm, to Jim's memory
click to see larger detail

hopefully we'll see you in the next world Jim; until then, you are missed...

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Future Histories

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i've been thinking about what we call "historical knowledge" quite a bit these days, all the while chewing my way through my annual summer treat, the two "years best" annual science fiction anthologies (Gardner Dozois' and Hartwell & Cramer's respectively).

Historical knowledge is taken as something of a given, and for that reason not really questioned too much by most of us. We take it for granted, kind of like snow in winter or boring speeches as a demonstration winds up. Unexamined.

Philip K. Dick, one of the most wonderful science fiction writers of the 20th century (despite the fact that he was a snitch and a woman-beating misogynist), occasionally posited the idea that we were living mere decades after the time of Christ. Our past twenty centuries of "history" being an illusion laid over the real world, meant to occlude our minds, to prevent us from seeing what was at stake. In books like Valis and Radio Free Albemuth he suggested that Richard Nixon was really head of the Roman Empire and hippies like himself were the persecuted disciples of Christ.

What Dick was playing on - or what was playing on him - was the fact that historical thought, in the way we think about it, is neither universal, nor is it a natural given. Indeed, as the Pocket Essential Philip K. Dick expounds:

In one of the novels there's a Zippo lighter which was in Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated (not that Roosevelt was assassinated). To prove the authenticity of this artefact (look at the scratch where the bullet scraped past) there's a framed certificate. Is the certificate genuine? Well, you could go to the trouble of getting that verified too, but sooner or later you have to take reality on trust. And hold tight when the trust turns out to be misplaced.

Not only in PKD tales, but in the real world too, pondering the nature of the past you quickly bump into questions with no certain answers, only shades of the probable. How do we know two millenia have passed since the days of the gospels? Why do we trust some sources and not others to build this narrative? What's more, the entire exercise only holds together thanks to the gentleman's agreement to only pick at one scab at a time, to only direct inquiry at one aspect at a time, leaving the rest black-boxed, assumed to be ok, axiomatic for the time being.

And yet for all that, it works.

In fact it works so well that our different versions of history - of the past - are often more important to us than our different versions of the present. More emotionally evocative, even though it only takes a little thought to see that it would make more sense the other way round. Talking about what has happened becomes the preferred way of exploring how things do happen, what might and what will and what can happen in the future. The past becomes a sandbox in which to build and test our ideas about just about everything, meaningful precisely because differing versions will be judged by how well they fit, not only with the rest of the historical record (remember what i said about only picking one scab at a time) but also with our ideas about human nature (or the lack thereof) and even metaphysical questions about the nature and origins of the reality itself (just ask those folks who believe god hid the dinosaur bones as an elaborate practical joke on paleontologists).

According to historian Hayden White different historical narratives in fact say more about the historians and their public than they do about actual past events. The narrative, for this early post-modernist, really is everything. (You see, i have been chuffed to recently discover that there is an entire genre of philosophical inquiry - "the philosophy of history" - devoted to precisely these questions.)

But i digress - let's get back to the SF.

A story can offer insight, amusement, drama, and more, but if you're attracted to a particular genre you end up wondering why that is. & i think part of the appeal of SF is precisely that as a genre it draws a lot of its oomph from its relationship to the aforementioned questions, to the philosophy of history.

In SF - which the higbrows have tellingly switched from meaning "science fiction" to "speculative fiction" - we get a new sandbox in which to play with and test our ideas, but the test is the inverse of what it is in actual historical writing. Precisely because these stories are supposed to by imaginary, what they need to fit with is not our knowledge of actual reality, but our assumptions of how reality-might-come-to-be. If history provides a canvas on which to paint our ideas about life the universe and everything, and about what the future may bring, then SF certainly does the former while also providing a back channel to develop our ideas about history.

On that note, here's my thoughts about these two lovely books: David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Camer's Year's Best SF 14 and Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection

My Favorites

Evil Robot Monkey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Five Thrillers, Robert Reed
Crystal Nights, Greg Egan
Days Of Wonder, Geoff Ryman
Old Friends, Garth Nix
Lester Young And The Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues, Gord Sellar


Story-By-Story Reactions
"Turing’s Apples" by Stephen Baxter. A message from across the galaxy provides a rorschach test for humanity, though all it really takes is one well-placed dude to press the "on" button.

"From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled" by Michael Swanwick. Having the space suit tell the story is something i don't remember seeing before, and while it works better here than in Alastair Reynold's Fury (see below), this tale of a human diplomat observing an insect-alien war was not very gripping.

"The Gambler" by Paolo Bacigalupi. The author likes to use sci-fi to comment on the present, favouring near-future settings and eco-themes. Here the tale of a refugee from Laos trying to get by as a journalist is used to skew what you get in a lowest-common-denominator rules, titillation-at-all-costs, media world. Elsewhere Bacigalupi explains that "'The Gambler' was partly inspired by my work as an online editor at High Country News, where one of my jobs was to plan for a digital future. The promises and perils of the technologies I was working with turned out to be fertile ground for a story."

"Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. i do so like the theme of sentient space ships - this is a good one. Not great, though, but good enough.

"The Six Directions Of Space" by Alastair Reynolds. Now you see this could have been a great story - parallel universes all intersecting, Reynolds' tale is based in one where the Mongol Empire dominated the earth and then beyond. Wonderful spy-thriller beginning, great concept - especially enjoyed the universe where lemurs evolve space flight - but a pablum ending with a Rodney-Kingish plea of "can't we all get along": "If the Infrastructure is truly breaking down, allowing all these timelines to bleed into one another, than (sic!) we are all going to have to get along with each other sooner or later. No matter what we all did to each other in our various histories. We're all going to have to put the past behind us." Presentist anxieties, anyone?

"N-Words" by Ted Kosmatka. i think Neanderthals deserve their own post, but until i get around to that i'll just say that our swarthy friends are sexier than ever theseadays, doubtless due to the exciting discoveries being made using genetic research. In N-Words a scientist resuscitates the species from old DNA à la Jurassic Park (not an impossibility it seems), leading to a new racial divide which really is racial, as the not so subtle title indicates. Note that on a cultural level, Neanderthals are coming to represent the suppressed european - we are being told they look conveniently like big vikings ("spent ten times longer in light-starved Europe than a typical Swede's ancestors") and racist "people of sun"/"people of ice" lingo is rolled out and turned on its head. On his website Kosmatka pedantically describes N-words as "my story against racism", which i think sells it short. Very reminiscent of Terry Bisson's Scout's Honor from 2006. And like Bisson's short story, Kosmatka's N-Words was one of the few that made it into both the Dozois and Hartwell/Cramer anthologies. [available as audio story here]

"An Eligible Boy" by Ian Mcdonald. i'm about ready to say that i don't like McDonald's stories, but for now i'll just say that his stories set in a near-future AI-dominated Indian subcontinent are getting old.

"Shining Armour" by Dominic Green. A town of farmers needs protecting from greedy prospectors. Done well enough that that this traditional western-genre story transposed itself seamlessly onto a far-future post-imperial colony world. The ending lacked the emotional impact i need to made a story stellar, that's why this one isn't on my faves list.

"The Hero" by Karl Schroeder. Have not checked out Schroeder's work before now, but after reading this (and his Mitigation - see below) i certainly will. A protected humanity living in a dyson sphere needs to grow up, and it falls on one young man to put this in motion. Provisionally on my faves list - am curious if he can sustain this in the other writings set in his Virga universe.

"Evil Robot Monkey" by Mary Robinette Kowal. It is very difficult to use the very-short-story (or "flash fiction") to pack emotional punch, but with a boosted chimp as protagonist this quickie delivers the goods. Perhaps the best in this collection, it's short so why don't you read it on the authors site!

"Five Thrillers" by Robert Reed. This is a tale by one of my favorite authors, and while the politics and historical philiosophy are both about as openly reactionary as you can get - it takes a sociopath to raise a village kinda thing - it was one of the most enjoyable this year. According to this interview, one inspiration for the novella was television's 24 - don't be fooled though, Reed's work is much better.

"The Sky That Wraps The World Round, Past The Blue And Into The Black" by Jay Lake. Our protaginist is hiding from his past (i like that we are only ever given glimpses of this) painting space memorabilia with radioactive goop so it will be the color people think it "really should be." A nice take on what a let-down authenticity can be (worthy of P.K. Dick, actually), but this is just garnish on the side, and unfortunately i found the main storyline kinda empty.

"Incomers" by Paul Mcauley. Kids acting bad make a nice friend with a sad past. Next...

"Crystal Nights" by Greg Egan. This is probly the most explicit example of what i was blathering on about above, SF providing a chance to explore how history might work. In this case we have a virtual reality universe - been there done that i know i know - that its creator hopes will become autonomous. This has been done so many times (the Matrix anyone?), and in fact if you are bored you can spend a lot of time worrying that we probably are stuck in such VR plane (which begs the question of what the "V" actually indicates). The point is that Egan does what most fail to do, he makes an extremely engaging story out of this idea - one of my faves. [also available as audio podcast]

"The Egg Man" by Mary Rosenblum. Set in a realistic dystopian near-future, where pharmaceutical crops and eggs provide the SF engines, and an abandoned corner of post-America provides the setting. Good, but not excellent.

"His Master’s Voice" by Hannu Rajaniemi. The author's stuff is just too weird for me to really get into, try as i might.

"The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay. Great story set after his space opera The Political Officer, this offering is not surprisingly inspired by our world's Holocaust though a lunch break spent on google could certainly find a dozen other worthy precursors. Woulda been one of the best this year if not for the wimpy ending - both in terms of an emotionally vacuous resolution and a morally vacuous bromide. Too bad.

"Balancing Accounts" by James L. Cambias. Not only do i really like this guy's writing - i loved his funny Ocean of the Blind a couple of years back - but this story provides some real clever sideways glances at the place of the "non-quantifiable" in economic decision-making. Useful. Definitely one of this year's best.

"Special Economics" by Maureen Mchugh. There's potential in this theme - slavery in communist China - but it is all wasted in this reactionary little tale. Actually, too tepid even to be reactionary... (for another take on this and other tales of future Chinas, see this on Torque Control)

"Days Of Wonder" by Geoff Ryman. Fantastic story of post-humanity; a "hero's journey" structure where our hero is a genetically melded horse-human. Great ending.

"City Of The Dead" by Paul Mcauley. A sherif has to ward off bad guys looking for a lost alien artefact. Not much here, though the hive rats are cool, and i do like organic computers... somehow it wasn't better than ok.

"The Voyage Out" by Gwyneth Jones. Prisoners beamed through space to colonize far off worlds, but on the way all kinds of spooky things happen. Nice concept (the space spookiness thing can work great, viz. Solaris and such) but it really failed to hold together. Seeing as this story is part of a series (The Buonarotti Quarter), maybe i would have enjoyed it more if i'd read some of Jones' accompanying work, but on its own it failed to impress. Too bad.

"The Illustrated Biography Of Lord Grimm" by Daryl Gregory. Interesting that i liked this one so much considering how much i hated Gregory's Glass (see below). Also, i'm a bit confused as to this atory also appearing in Hartwell and Cramer's Years' Best Fantasy this year - the story is clearly SF. Though some might be put off by the Axis-of-Evil aura around it, this story will be remembered for its vivid depictions of near-future warfare with the focus where it should be - on the civilians. Plus no sappy ending, thankgawd.

"G-Men" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Now this is certainly SF, and superficially it falls directly in the purview of the whole "looking at history thing" - but the thing is, it's just straight up alternate history and the only real appeal is of the trainspotting sort. Which is alternate history at its most shallow. Nevertheless, very well written, so as a detective short story it's fine. (Indeed, so fine is it that G-Men also appears in both Sideways in Crime and in The Best American Mystery Stories 2009)

"The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress. Ah yes, emergence - increasingly sexy concept thesedays. It would be interesting to compare it to ideas of the quantitaive-becoming-qualitative, which it definitely isn't... indeed in some ways it's almost the opposite. But i'm getting off track. This is a very well written story, kept me interested and was satisfying despite the less-than-stellar ending. Still, one of the best "emergent property" stories i've seen.

"Old Friends" by Garth Nix. Great little story, wonderful ending which i won't spoil. Soldiers off AWOL, you know.

"The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner. Very nice story, very nice ending. Felt somewhat like a Stephen King novel. i think it's the boy-as-protagonist thing, but it does work well.

"Lester Young And The Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues" by Gord Sellar. Space aliens just want to be entertained. One of those rare stories focussing on music to get where it's going, and it really pays off. i admit to being curious about this white African author whose story draws so heavily on 1940s Harlem. The take on authenticity comes at it from the opposite direction as Jay Lake's story (see above).

"Butterfly, Falling At Dawn" by Aliete De Bodard. Alternate history when done well is like this - no name dropping, no slack-jaw staring at phenomenon under the historical microscope, just proceed with your story as if nothing was wrong. And that's what De Bobard does here in her Xuya world, where North America was colonized by China a century before Columbus made his trip. Reading this interview by Marshall Payne, the woman has obviously put a lot of work into Xuya. But for all that, the story itself - while a clear take on cultural appropriation and such - left me cold.

"The Tear" by Ian Mcdonald. Wonderful wonderful far-future story about a multiple-personality branch of post-humanity ("the Clade") meeting up with some even stranger cousins.

*********************

My Favorites
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang
"The Scarecrow's Boy" by Michael Swanwick


Story-By-Story Reactions
"Arkfall" by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Waterworld setting inspired by recent discoveries about Saturn's moons, unfortunately while the terrain was fresh and new, the characters were stereotyped knock-offs. Will people in the far future with Japanese names really be obsessively passive, and guys named "Jack" really act like they just escaped from a spaghetti western? i guess so...

"Orange" by Neil Gaiman. An ok story delivered as a set of answers to an investigator's questionnaire - great concept, but in the end i didn't feel the naive/homourous tone was done right. you can see a youtube video of Gaiman reading Orange here.

"Memory Dog" by Kathleen Ann Goonan. A dystopia that can be overthrown by high-tech communication devices (hey, maybe we should invent the internet) - mind you, the main aspect of the story, the transmigration of a man's soul into a dog, was as brilliant as his grief was painful. So that makes it worth reading.

"Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi. This is memorable but i'm not sure it should be. Bacigalupi is a good writer, but too many of his stories seem like cheap vehicles to quickly sketch a vision, and the thing about sketches it that to make an impact they need more power than he normally manages to summon up.

"Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. Made it into both collections, so see above.

"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang. The best story in either collection this year. Holy shit this was good. Set amongst steam-driven robots in another reality, where one scientist's discovery about how the mind works has ramifications for the whole universe.

"Traitor" by M. Rickert. Was there anything to this piece of shit story? Methinks not. Terrorists brainwash children to blow themselves up, and this a tale makes. Barf.

"The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away" by Cory Doctorow. An examination, in a not heavy-handed way, of personal responsibility in a panopticon dystopia.

"Oblivion: A Journey" by Vandana Singh. Drawing on the Ramayana, the Hindu epic, Singh gives us a protagonist willing to sacrifice anything to exact revenge on a war criminal. The ending did not work for me.

"The House Left Empty" by Robert Reed. While Reed is one of my favourite authors, this story left me cold. Near future post-amerika isn't so bad after all, if the worst thing about it is the end of the space programme.

"The Scarecrow's Boy" by Michael Swanwick. Beautiful yarn about sentient machines bound to serve the local despot. At one point the scarecrow asks the car if she believes in free will, to which she replies that she has often wondered but must obey her programming. "I don't mean for us. I mean for them. The humans," Scarecrow answers - priceless! One of my favorites this year.

"N-Words" by Ted Kosmatka. Very good story, it made it into both collections - see review above.

"Fury" by Alastair Reynolds. Told by a space suit that evolved into something sentient. Reynolds tried this same idea in Dozois' 2006 anthology to much better effect, in his masterful Zima Blue. But in Fury the trick falls flat; my guess is because its ancillary to the main story-line, and as such is reduced to being a cheap trick. Whereas in Zima Blue we had real reflection about identity and personal development, in Fury we get a sorry little morality tale. Too bad.

"Cheats" by Gwyneth Jones (writing as Ann Halam). Described as for young adults, but apart from the fact that the protagonists are children (not rare in this genre) i don't see why. Which is a good thing. This is a simple story of how a virtual reality game gets crossed over with something much more serious, and where the search for easter eggs leads down the rabbit's hole. Nice, but not gripping.

"The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain" by Jason Sanford. Very weird story, which i liked a lot until the ending, where it just got a bit too weird. Different world, different universe (it seems), and spaceships rain torrents of water crushing the poor people who live below.

"The Egg Man" by Mary Rosenblum. Appeared in both anthologies, so see above.

"Glass" by Daryl Gregory. Great clockwork-orangeish premise, crap story. Partly the caricature prisoners bothered me, partly the silly ending which distracts from any real reflection on violence and morality. Gregory is normally very skilled at creating an ominous mood, but it's a difficult task in just a few pages.

"Fixing Hanover" by Jeff VanderMeer. Wonderful steampunk offering about an engineer who - horrified at the warlike uses to which his skill has been applied - flees empire to live amongst the barbarians. This could have been a sentimental disappointment, but VanderMeer's hard ending saved it.

"Message Found in a Gravity Wave" by Rudy Rucker. Flash fiction SF from Nature magazine's Futures section, which i normally find disappoint. In this case the tone was cute, but i think i've seen this kind of message-in-a-bottle-coz-the-end-is-nigh stuff done enough.

"Mitigation" by Tobias Buckell & Karl Schroeder. A near future heist thriller set on a backfrop of an economy increasingly dominated by carbon trading. The cool thing about this story is how it effortlessly implies that global warming will continue unhindered, and the sideways focus on the new economic gruntwork and displacement caused by capitalist band-aid solutions. As has been noted here there and everywhere, if you've been focussing on the green part of "green capitalism", you've been focussing on the wrong thing.

"Spiders" by Sue Burke. A cute story about people on a strange new world, with pretty hackneyed parental gender dynamics.




and that's it for 2009. Writing down these notes has been nearly as much fun as reading the stories, but there's real work to do now...

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Queen of the Bolsheviks: The Hidden History of Dr. Marie Equi, by Nancy Krieger

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Queen of the Bolsheviks: The Hidden History of Dr. Marie Equi by Nancy Krieger $2.00 from left-wing books dot net Saddle-stitched pamphlet 30 pages Published by Kersplebedeb in 2009 ISBN 1-894946-30-8

Now forgotten, Dr. Marie Equi was a physician for working-class women and children, a lesbian, and a dynamic and flamboyant political activist, active first in the women's suffrage movement and the Progressive Party, and later alongside the IWW.

Spanning the period from the consolidation of northern industrial capitalism to the emergence of the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power, Equi's life serves as a chronicle of her times and illuminates how one person was affected by and sought to change world events.

A little while back a friend sent me a link to the wikipedia page about Equi and from there i learned about this essay by Nancy Krieger, which appeared in the September-October 1983 issue opf Radical America. Luckily, the Center for Digital Initiatives at Brown University has scanned in all issues of Radical America (including this one), and so with the kind permission of Dr Krieger i have turned her groundbreaking text into a pamphlet.

Thrilled by the militancy of the IWW, its commitment to organizing the unorganized, and its recognition—as stated in its preamble—of the “historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism,” Equi underwent a profound change. She began to perceive the present as history, to see history and politics as the expression of class conflict, and to realize that with this understanding one can change history. Accordingly, Equi entered a period where her life became inextricably bound with the history and politics of her times.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Nancy Krieger for sharing this important chapter of herstory with us.

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LAMENTATIONS OF Job Capitalist, A Bankrupt.

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CAPITAL, my God and my Master, why hast Thou turned Thy countenance from me? What sin have I committed that Thou shouldst cast me from the heights of prosperity and plague me with the burden of poverty?

2. Have I not lived according to Thy laws? Were my actions not agreeable to the Law and the Statute?

3. Canst Thou charge me with ever having worked? Have I not tasted all pleasures, which my millions and my senses allowed? Have I not harnessed men, women and children into my service, and driven them even beyond the point of endurance? Have I ever returned to them more than starvation wages? Have I ever allowed myself to be touched by the want or the despair of my workingmen?

4. CAPITAL, my God, I have adulterated the goods, which I sold, without concerning myself about whether or not I thereby poisoned the consumer. I have skinned to the bone the gudgeons, who were caught by the bait of my prospectuses.

5. I lived only to enjoy and to increase my wealth; and Thou hast blessed my irreproachable conduct, my meritorious life, by bestowing upon me for my private enjoyment, women and young boys, dogs and servants, the pleasures of the flesh and the gratification of vanity.

6. And now have I lost everything, and I am cast off.

7. My competitors rejoice over my ruin, and my friends turn away from me; they do not even trouble themselves to blame me, and to give me useless advice; they know me no more. My former mistresses bespatter me on the street with the mud of the equipages, which I bought for them with my money.

8. Misery lays its heavy hand upon me; like unto prison walls it bars me from the rest of mankind. I stand alone; everything within me and around me is gloomy.

9. My wife, who now has no money to spend in cosmetics wherewith to paint her face and disguise herself, now appears before me in all her physical ugliness. My son, brought up to idleness, does not even understand the extent of my misfortune — idiot that he is! The eyes of my daughters run like two fountains at the recollection of the matches that they missed.

10. But what are the sufferings of mine when compared with my misfortunes? There where I once gave orders as a master, I now receive a kick if I offer myself as a humble suitor!

11. Everything has turned into dung and stench to me in my present hell. My body, stiffened and full of aches from the hardness of my conchy sore and bitten by bedbugs and other insects, finds now no rest; my soul no longer tastes the sleep that brings on oblivion.

12. O how happy are the wretches, who never were acquainted with aught but poverty and dirt! They know not the pleasures of soft cushions, and sweet tastes; their thick skins have no feeling, their dulled senses are not subject to nausea.

13. Why was I made to taste of joy, and then to be left with nothing but the remembrance of better days, more galling than a gambling debt?

14. Better had it been, oh Lord, to have cast my birth in misery, than my closing days, after thou didst bring me up in wealth.

15. What can I do to earn my dry crust of bread?

16. My hands, accustomed only to carrying gold rings, and to fingering bank-notes, cannot handle the tools of labor. My brain, accustomed only to busy itself with the question how to escape work, how to rest from the exertion of owning wealth, how to get rid of the weariness of idleness, how to overcome the effects of gluttony, is unfit for the mental activity that is requisite even to write letters, and foot up bills.

17. Is it then possible, oh Lord, that Thou canst smite so pitilessly a being, who never disobeyed any of Thy commandments?

18. Oh, it is wrong, it is unjust, it is immoral that I should lose the wealth, that the labor of others has heaped up so painfully for me!

19. When the Capitalists, my former comrades, behold my misfortune, they will learn that Thy grace is but a whim, that Thou bestowest it without predilection, and withdrawest it without reason.

20. Who will henceforth believe in Thee?

21. What Capitalist will be sufficiently daring and senseless to accept Thy Law; to enervate himself in idleness and with riotous living and revelry, if the future is so uncertain and so threatening? If the slightest breeze, that blows on the Stock Exchange, may sweep away the best grounded fortunes? If nothing is lasting? If the rich man of to-day may be the beggar of the morrow?

22. Man will curse Thee, God CAPITAL, when they behold my degradation; they will deny Thy power, when they measure the depth of my fall; they will reject Thy favors.

23. For the sake of Thine own glory, restore me to my former position. Raise me from my lowliness, because my heart is filling with gall, and curses are thronging to my lips!

24. Wild God, blind God, stupid God! Beware lest the scales finally drop from the eyes of the rich, and they perceive that they are moving carelessly on the verge of an abyss; Tremble, lest they throw Thee into the abyss, to fill it up, and join hands with the Socialists to dethrone Thee.

25. Yet, what profanity, what blasphemy am I now guilty of!

26. Powerful God, pardon me these insane and criminal words. Thou art the Master, who distributest the good things of the earth, without inquiring after the merits of Thy chosen ones, and withdrawing Thy gifts at Thy pleasure. Thou knowest what Thou doest.

27. Thou smitest my interests; Thou art only trying me for my good.

28. O friendly, loving God, grant me Thy favor once more! Thou art Justice itself; and when Thou smitest me, it must be that I have unconsciously done some wrong.

29. O Lord, if Thou returnest my riches to me, I vow, I will obey Thy laws with increased rigor. I will exploit the wageworkers more mercilessly than ever; I will deceive the consumers with greater cunning; I will pluck the stockholders and investors more wholesale.

30. I crawl before Thee like a dog before the master who beats him. I am Thy property. May Thy will be done!

The above - certainly worth a chuckle today - was written by Paul Lafargue in 1887, part of his longer satirical piece The Religion of Capital. Lafargue was a pioneer in developing a Marxist understanding of culture, and was an important communist organizer in his own right. He was also Marx's son-in-law.

i published the Religion of Capital as a pamphlet a few years back (it's still available, just email me), and have the entire text uploaded to my Kersplebedeb website along with a page i wrote about Lafargue himself. Enjoy.

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Settler Colonies

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French Jesuit Mission of St. Sauveur in Acadia:
corrupting the Wabanaki Nation with christianity

someone emailed me asking what the definition of a "settler-colony" was...

i gave a lame ass answer, but then figured i should post it here so that people can either agree with it or explain to me the places i'm wrong...

this is a paraphrase of what i answered, based on my sketchy memory of high school history class...

i went to high school in Quebec, and from memory we were taught that France was defeated in North America because its mode of colonization was insufficiently settler-oriented. By this what was meant was that instead of building new European-style societies in areas claimed by the French crown, the colonial policy relied heavily on planting flags around the continent and and saying "this belongs to us now."

The strategy was to corrupt the Indigenous nations, to have them reorient their economies to serve as the labour behind the fur trade. The idea was also that these Indigenous nations would provide military support in the recurrent conflicts with the British crown. The idea was not to create a white North America, not even a French-speaking North America - both those goals came much later, and were never taken up by anyone's ruling class, lip service aside - the real aim was to create a Roman Catholic North America serving the economic interests of the increasingly dysfunctional French monarchy.

A few white settlements on the banks of the St-Lawrence were supposed to be the base for mass conversion of francization of indigenous folks across North America. Cultural genocide yes, physical extermination only in exceptional circumstances.

The French were using methods that today we associate with neo-colonialism (fucking with your economy and culture to make you dependent) instead of what we often think of as classic colonialism. Which just goes to show the degree to which what we consider "classic" is really modeled on the British strategy which ended up fathering the United States... perhaps another example of tunnel vision on the u.s. experience?

The French model worked fine for them for centuries in places like the Maghreb, but couldn't compete side by side with an aggressive anglo-capitalism based on settler colonies. which is why although a Quebecois nation exists in a corner of the continent, most of those places claimed by the French crown have been easily anglicized. Just think of all the American cities with French names...

Again according to my high skool history teacher, the reason the English won out was they utilized a different mode of colonization. The details - really only glossed over in skool - being that this model was based on displacing Indigenous peoples or physically exterminating them and setting up settlements of Europeans who might use Indigenous slave labour (or imported Africans) but whose communities were meant to replace, not incorporate, the previous inhabitants' society.

So a colony would be any outpost of a foreign power (in the case of North America, these powers being England, France or Spain) which is meant to be permanent, whereas a settler colony would be a subset of colonies which are based on importing new populations to set up a new society replacing completely that which existed before, either through exterminating the previous inhabitants or else shoehorning them into the new society, generally as a proletarian layer whose labour is used to support the settler population.

Comments?

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The Roots of Divers/Cite

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It’s coming up that time of year again: Divers/Cite, Montreal’s “LBGTA” pride event.

As some know, but too many do not, Pride in Montreal takes place later than in most North American cities, commemorating as it does not Stonewall, but Sexgarage, an after-hours party that was subject to a violent police raid in 1990. A raid that was followed by a queer protest against police brutality which would itself then be violently attacked by the police

Or as party-goer – and photographer – Linda Hammond recalls:

On the evening of Saturday, July 14th, 1990, a party attended by over 400 people in the warehouse district of Old Montreal became the scene of a violent police attack on its patrons. The incident sparked a chain of events which changed the face of Montreal gay politics and greatly affected the lives of those involved. The party was called SEXGARAGE, and the incident became regarded as the Stonewall of Montreal.

(Rather than give a play by play of the party, i'll just direct you all to Hammond's site - an excellent historical document of Montreal police homophobia and brutality, full of pictures - you have to click on the images, including the entry ticket, to see the display.)

As i mentioned above, the violent police raid provoked a peaceful "love in" against police brutality... which was itself attacked by cops from Station 25 (which at that time was where the C.O. Sud is today), who of course showed their homo-sensitivity by putting on rubber gloves before the fun began.

Summer of 90: police glove up before beating queer protesters in front of Station 25

Forty four people were arrested, countless more hurt. As one self-identified "heterosexual onlooker" wrote in to a local entertainment paper after the attack:

I saw a policeman push a woman across her breasts with his riot stick. I saw a policeman jab a young man in the groin with his riot stick. I saw another officer wear a grin of joy, as he grabbed a young man by his belt, clearly inflicting pain... These people needed protection from the police!

(Letter to the Editor, Montreal Mirror July 26 - Aug 9 1990)

But this show of brutality was not really a show of strength, and if the hope had been to intimidate the new generation of queer activists... well let's just say it didn't...

Doesn't power always looks the same when it has lost? Looking back at police actions that summer, it is clear that there was no plan, there was no strategy, and there was no real question of the queer community not "winning", all that was needed was the will to win. And for once, that there certainly was. (As to how much more could have been won, that's another story...)

A few days after the "love in" was attacked by Station 25, hundreds marched through the streets. Again and again, the link was made between police violence against queers and the police killings of Black youth in Montreal, and the ongoing repression of the First Nations. This was not "single issue", this was not "single community", and in the minds of those who marched with their signs against homophobia and taunted cops with their boxes from dunkin donuts, this was not a parade.

Now the police did not attack, which in retrospect can be read as "the police backed down".

Then again, a week later, on Sunday July 29th it was not hundreds but thousands of queers and supporters who marched through downtown Montreal, in what has since been commemorated every year as "Divers/Cite".

Sunday July 30th, 1990: not a parade, it was a demonstration

In terms roughly like what i have just recounted, the "summer of 90" has been described before. It's a story that gets surprisingly little play from the official Divers/Cite organizers, but it's not unknown, or inaccessible, and there's usually an article in a local newspaper or two around this time of year filling people in on the colourful history. Which is good.

But it all gives rise to two questions.

The most obvious: what the fuck happened since? It's been a long time now that Divers/Cite has been a parade more akin to St-Patrick's Day than a demonstration against oppression or police brutality. Indeed, a few years ago parade organizers welcomed former police chief Duchesneau to march with them (he was "shot" with waterguns full of red dye by some radicals who remembered the police murders and brutality that had occurred on his watch), and then the organizers actually had the police intervene to throw out a tiny contingent of queer anarchists. Like other corporate tourtisty events, Divers/Cite is now an excuse for the police to clamp down on homeless kids and sex workers who might spoil the sanitized atmosphere... or as the organizers of this year's radical queer "Pervers/Cite" event put it, Divers/Cite has become "white, mainstream and corporate", a far cry from what it was when it began.

And of course: this is not a Montreal phenomenon, but one which spans North America, as "Pride" events are generally corporate events, with little connection to or input from radicals or the oppressed.

For the moment, i'm not going to delve into that question, though i certainly think it's a problem worth pondering. (For those interested in resisting this trend, i encourage you to attend the Pervers/Cite demonstration on Sunday: it's meant to highlight the politics and solidarity which are absent from the official celebrations, and as a demonstration wil attempt to join the parade... people are all to meet at de Lorimier and Ontario at 11:30am, we're leaving at noon sharp...)


But again, that question, the "selling out" of pride is not what i'm going to go on about.

What i do want to ask, as it is rarely if ever discussed, is why did people fight back in 1990?

As i mentioned above, the police had no "master plan", beating up gay kids was not a "strategic priority" so much as a fun pastime, and when push came to shove and people shoved back, and then shoved back some more, the cops quickly made nice. Their priority (not entirely unrelated to question-#1-which-i-shall-not-ponder!) at that point was getting a handle on the movement, identifying reasonable spokespeople (generally spokesmen) and "making sure this doesn't happen again". & by "this" different people certainly felt entitled to understand different things...

So what made 1990 different was not the police, or the powers that be. It was the hundreds of people who showed up at the "kiss in" at Station 25 just days after the first police attack of Sexgarage, and got beaten and arrested for their trouble. More importantly, it was the hundreds more who showed up to march through the streets just days later, despite the threat of violence. And the thousands a week after that.

Again with hindsight, one must wonder how much further things could have gone, had the envelope been pushed, had the tendencies towards solidarity been stronger... but i digress... and it certainly was better than what we generally see... my point is that all it took to win was the desire to win, and the willingness to fight back.

So again: why did people fight back in 1990?

Queer Crisis / Colonial Crisis: The Journal de Montreal July 17th 1990

Two factors coincided to allow people to fight back that July.

First, 1990 was the summer of the so-called "Oka Crisis". This is not the place to go into details, but in a nutshell, the Mohawk Nation (which holds territory around Montreal) was engaged in one of the most intense standoffs with Canadian colonialism in the 20th century. In Kanehsatake not an hour away, an entire community was resisting the State (the Canadian Army would be called in a month later). The Mercier bridge between Montreal and the south shore had been seized by warriors who, day after day, night after night, confronted racist mobs and police.

Racism was at a fever pitch in Montreal, and yet amongst those who identified - no matter how vicariously or unrealistically - with the Indigenous struggle against the State, it was a time of intense hope. As one comrade - who had been a politically active anarchist for years - confided in me, this was the first time he had ever seen the possibility of armed revolution in Canada.

It is important to keep this in mind, because i think it's really central to what felt possible at that point. There is a tendency, i know, to separate struggles, and to look with skepticism for attempts to harness the energies of one people's tradition to another people's benefit - a kind of "political appropriation" - and this makes sense because people do rip off other people's struggles, generally to the advantage of whomever is least oppressed. But that's not what i'm talking about here - rather, what i'm referring to is something organic, unorchestrated, and fundamentally healthy which occurs when people see others fighting back and come to understand that this is a possibility for them too.

Nor was this all on the level of the abstract or the sub-conscious - at the time too some people wondered at the timing. Linda Hammond suggests that one reason Montreal cops may have been in need of some "beat that dyke" excitement may have been their feelings of being left out, as they "couldn't get the Indians". After the Station 25 attack the Journal de Montreal ran a side-by-side spread of photos of the queer fightback and the Mohawk resistance (see above). Many of the same activists who were involved in organizing against the police attacks were also involved in organizing in support of the Mohawk Nation, days being divided between both campaigns as best they could. Statements against racism and in support of the Mohawk struggle were made at both the July 22nd and 29th demonstrations against police homophobia - and many were those queers who missed that historic demonstration on the 29th because we had trekked to the rally held that day just outside Oka against Canadian colonialism.

All of which should not be overstated. What i'm describing is not cause and effect, rather a very meaningful coincidence. And any honest observer has to note that the trajectories of the Mohawk Nation and canadian queers over the next seventeen years could not be more different, with the latter being promised acceptance as the court jesters of the hetero-patriarchy and the latter continuing to be buffeted by the kind of economic and political exclusion capitalism reserves for its internal colonies... but again, i digress..

Montreal Daily News, sometime that week in March '89

There is a second, more overt, set of events which also did their part to foment the initial queer fightback in 1990.

On March 19th 1989 a young gay man living with AIDS, Joe Rose, was murdered on a Montreal city bus. The details quickly circulated amongst his friends, and got picked up by the media:

According to his companion, when Rose tried to leave the bus at Frontenac Metro station, the group surrounded him.

"They pulled off his hat," he said.

"They were chanting 'faggot, faggot'."

Rose's lover, who asked to be identified as Daniel told the Daly News details of the grisly crime circulated quickly in the gay community.

"They were playing football with him," Daniel said.

"They were throwing him back and forth, knifing him in the abdomen. When they finished their business he [Rose] walked three steps and collapsed.

"While he was lying there in the fetal position the group moved in and kicked him. They kicked him at least 50 times."

(Montreal Daily News, March 21st 1989)

Rose had been working on getting a hospice opened for PWAs, and had been thinking of starting a PWA magazine. He and many of his friends were part of a continent-wide wave of queer activism around AIDS, and within days of his murder there was a quickly-organized rally in downtown Montreal, and that same week several dozen people met in the space above the anarchist Alternative Bookstore and founded Reaction Sida, the idea being that this group could both act against street violence and politically to bring attention to the ongoing AIDS calamity.

It was a coming together of many different people from many different scenes - feminist dykes and gay men, anglophones and francophones, mainly but not only quite young... most from Montreal, but some who would travel back and forth to New York City where they were already active with ACT UP. As well as more than a few anarchists, as in the late 80s queer and AIDS-related campaigns seemed the closest thing in many of our lives to a mass movement with radical politics.

Reaction Sida did not last long, but before it faded it got to tag along as AIDS Action Now, ACT UP New York and hundreds of AIDS activists from across the continent descended on Montreal for the Fifth International AIDS Conference which luck had happening in Montreal that summer. In many ways it was a perfect match: the out of town activists had knowledge, experience, and undeniable legitimacy as they had often built real fighting organizations in their own cities. What Reaction Sida lacked in AIDS-related experience it made up for in local legitimacy and contacts, and so (with the hiccups and clashes that are par for the course in such situations) the match was consummated... and the protests were incredibly empowering.

The 5th IAC: AIDS activist crash the party?
AIDS activists are the party!

The International AIDS Conference was an event of the World Health Organization, and as you would expect was a top-down affair meant for professionals - doctors, politicians, researchers - with people living with AIDS and organizing around their illness hardly on the agenda. Indeed, the infamous $500 entrance fee was almost guaranteed to keep things that way.

From the beginning members of ACT UP, AAN and Reaction Sida took matters into their own hands. Storming the opening session, they confronted conference organizers with the choice of either calling the cops to arrest the demonstrators, or allowing them to stay. Calling the cops would have been a public relations disaster, and so the activists held the floor for an hour, chanting slogans and reading a ten point manifesto demanding an international code of rights for people infected with HIV, international standardisation of the criteria for approving drugs and treatments in order to speed up worldwide access to new therapies and guaranteed access to approved and experimental drugs and treatments and the right to confidential and anonymous testing for infection with HIV. The Mulroney government in particular was attacked for its lackadaisical approach towards the plague.

As one participant recalls:

I’ll never forget the sight of our ragtag group of 300 protesters brushing past the security guards in the lobby of the Palais de Congress, the fleet of “Silence=Death” posters gliding up the escalator to the opening ceremony or our chants thundering throughout the cavernous hall. There we were, the uninvited guests, taking our rightful place at the heart of the conference. And when PWA Tim McCaskell grabbed the microphone and “officially” opened the conference “on behalf of people with AIDS from Canada and around the world,” even the scientists stood and cheered.

But it was only when we refused to leave the auditorium and instead parked ourselves in the VIP section that the crowd realized that our action was more than just a symbolic protest. Despite threats and rumors of a potential “international incident,” we remained in our seats, alternately chanting and cheering, and giving notice that PWAs were “inside” the conference to stay. From that point on in the crisis, researchers would have to make extra room at the table for PWAs and their advocates.

(POZ, July 1998)

Indeed, conference organizers at first offered 200 free passes to PWAs, and then simply said that any self-identified PWA could attend for free. There was street theater, pointed interventions, and protests every day...

...in short, it was all a success, and a generation of Montreal queers felt that much more able to challenge the powers that be and win.

(That the "victory" at the IAC failed in any way to stem the overarching decline of the AIDS activist movement is, again, something we'll leave for another day.)

fun and games at the 5th International AIDS Conference

*******************

Finally, there was still a feminist movement in the late 1980s, and it retained a militant wing. Many of the leading activists in AIDS activist organizations - including Reaction Sida - were feminists and lesbians, and besides this there was a kind of "women's community" of struggle the likes of which has not been seen for some time. (i'm not in a position to comment on whether this was a good or a bad thing: many of the women involved in that scene were themselves harsh critics of what they described as the racism, transphobia, whore-bashing, and even sexphobia of their own movement. Yet obviously they themselves fought against these tendencies... my point being - and remember i observed this as a guy who was obviously not a part of it - it was their movement, and even in their criticisms they seemed to draw on lessons and strengths which came from their movement and its theoreticians.)

So i would also suggest that within this momentum of struggle which led to the decisive advances of 1990 there is a clear feminist trajectory. Already in the fall of '89 queers from Concordia's Women's Collective were holding kiss-ins to protest a local restaurant's lesbophobia. When Marc Lepine entered the University of Montreal engineering department on December 6th and killed fourteen women (as part of what he described as his struggle against feminism) local organizations including the Women's Defense Committee responded organizing a monster vigil of thousands.

The Women's Defense Committee would continue to carry out actions to protest sexism and male violence against women for the next few years. When police would next attack a Montreal queer demo in 1992, it would be because it was marching in solidarity with a WDC march protesting Canada's sexist laws criminalizing women who went topless. By that time the women from that scene had been elected to the Concordia Students Union under the slogan "Feminism Works", and they were having lots of fun and games of their own... all of which i am sure will be discussed some day - but not today!

*******************

It has been eighteen years since Joe Rose was killed and the International AIDS Conference was stormed, seventeen years since the Oka Crisis and the Sexgarage raids. It is in many ways a different world as processes as big and complex as neo-colonialism, the fall of the Soviet bloc and globalization have unleashed profound changes we are only beginning to identify.

Meanwhile, despite the hype, despite Will and Grace and gay marriage and "cool queers" there is more and more that needs to be done. "Gay acceptability" has come at a steep cost to gay runaways and sex workers and others who are now a liability to the respectable and admirable homosexual entrepreneur. Guppification plays out in a cruel dialectic with homophobic and whore-phobic violence, each of which makes the oppressed ever more vulnerable. The very public embrace of gay entertainers is cold comfort as we get the sneaking suspicion that we could simply be being set up as scapegoats when the water gets choppy.

There is as much reason to organize and fight back now as their ever was. The only question - now as seventeen years ago - is what will allow people to feel that winning is possible, that fighting back is worth it.

That's what we have to figure out.

**************

This year's radical queer march to join with the Divers/Cite parade is meeting on Sunday July 29th at 11:30 AM: meet at the park on the corner of de Lorimier & Ontario. At noon sharp, we will leave the park to join the Pride Parade. For more information see the Pervers/Cite call out.

**************

Thanks to the nice things people have told me about this text, i decided to lay it out as a pamphlet - it is available through my distro Kersplebedeb. You can email me at info@kersplebedeb.com to order a copy; also check out my Radical Literature page for loads more pamphlets and books.

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