Guest submission by alex
There has been an onslaught of imagery from Palestine since October 7, a day that was defined in part by the images of resistance fighters bulldozing through the wall of their great open-air concentration camp juxtaposed with images of a crowd of men spitting on the motionless body of a woman, incidentally framed in a way to make her appear more naked and injured than she was. People an ocean away ran with both, of course, and the media front of the war opened with fury.
In this image, taken from a video posted on twitter, we see an IDF soldier turn to his comrade-in-arms, perhaps to make sure he is recording, stalk over to the door of a mosque as the call to prayer sounds, and throw what appears to be some variety of flashbang grenade inside where it detonates.
This of course is not the first time that we as the audience of these horrors have seen the dogs of the state gleefully, happily, joyfully brutalizing the populations that their masters have set them loose upon. Nor is it the only place that is happening right now.
My concern today is not primarily the spectacle, or our consumption of it. Rather, my concern is the production of it--the very concrete acts and choices that make it up. I am not interested in exporting this question to the people of Palestine, or litigating on their behalf the character of their resistance to genocide from the comfort of my desk in America. I'm interested in what the language of violence means for dissidents of all stripes here, at the heart of empire.
Some years ago, Little Black Cart distributed the journal Atassa, which was an anthology of responses and reflections to violence that contextualized the activities of the eco-extremists known as ITS, a purported network of anti-humanist insurgents who probably need no introduction or elaboration here. From what I can tell, this was done as a tactical confrontation of all of the various tendencies and ideological traditions that call, either explicitly or implicitly, for violent confrontation with the state, or society, or civilization, or the entire species. The critique, I believe, boiled down to: do we understand what violence is, when we call for it? or are we merely playing with fire? If we don't understand it, if we're only playing with it, would we be able to direct it against our enemies when the mythical battle occurs - or would it rebound on us, serve our enemies, consolidate their power when the dust settles - as it has, over and over again, throughout the historical record.
Needless to say, this message was not received well, or kindly. The critique did not come home, the cruel joke at its heart did not land. Anarchists fly off to fight and die for Ukraine here, show up to stop a boat from moving and let themselves be corralled by professional activists there. Life goes on.
So here is the question: what does it mean for there to be an “armed joy”? How is that different than taking joy in arms - which must in the final instance mean taking joy in killing? Can we face it when that is demonstrated by our enemies, and can we then turn back to ourselves and locate any kind of clarity there? What does it mean for “joy” to be politicized at all, to be instrumentalized, to be called for–which must result in its performance, for the camera, for the audience, for digestion by and absorption into and shitting out of the community? Is that really the kind of joy that we can be happy with?