money remakes the world in its own image; marxists write chic (and expensive) books on the globalization of the capitalist economy; Obama and Clinton battle over who will be the best at restoring the facade of the State as the representative of the common interest; avant-garde radicals denounce US imperialism and proclaim the end of the nation-state at the same time; the "sanctity of marriage" is lifted up as a banner around which US reactionaries rally, in the proud tradition of "law and order" and the "purity of white womanhood"; the murderers at citibank/citigroup realized yesterday that there are indeed economic consequences to sucking blood too quickly, and perhaps all the accumulation since the 1980's might mean a depression unprecedented since the 30's; CNN concerns itself with the most crucial questions: "did Hillary cry and is that why women in New Hampshire voted for her?" and "when will the screen writer's union stop ruining the award show season with their strike?" meanwhile i write post after post about moments in the day and my love affair with a state suffering the longest drought in its recorded history.
for three days i have been trying to come up with some good topics to write about "politics." maybe i could write about why a lot of Black folks get excited (some of us despite ourselves) when Obama wins something and also why some of us want him to lose or to get killed to "prove" that racism still exists. or maybe i could write about how CNN has more conservative propaganda shows than anything these days and how shameless the spin is really getting. or about the rise in hate crimes and hate groups, the largest loss of housing since the great depression, or...you get the picture. i wanted to write something about each or any of these things, but whenever i got started my heart just couldn't get into it.
"oh no!" i thought "will my blog turn into a dictation of my navel-gazing adventures?" i mean, here before us is probably one of the greatest times of change in the structure of US society and the world, and all i can write about is poetry? but then, why not poetry?
we are living in an age of transition. the social structures as we have known them are nearing the breaking point as social contradictions clash with increasing velocity. but if you think that this is just about the "crisis of the nation-state" and the "restructuring of the global economy" you are mistaken. you cannot separate major social change from lived experience. we are feeling the blistering pace of change, not only in oil prices and wage cuts, but also in a growing sense of helplessness and desperation. change, after all, means uncertainty.
i do not think that it is a coincidence that the past year has been one of the hardest in my life and in the lives of so many of the people that i know. that sense of being alone, of not knowing where we are heading, that feeling that forces beyond our control seem to head us off at every pass--these intuitions are not isolated perceptions, they are the experience of a changing society measured through the emotional barometers of 6.5 billion people.
i mentioned earlier the pop-marxists who are writing about economic changes in fancy books with trendy covers and catchy PoMo (post-modern) titles. if my contempt for these texts hasn't saturated the page already then let me express myself directly: i do not think that these books offer us the necessary tools for intervening in this age of transition. instead of giving us a view of the world from the perspective of the oppressed, they give us a view of the changing world from the point of view of capital. they give us endless details about stock market liquidity, structural adjustment, interest rates, petro dollars, and free trade agreements, but in all of this the human being is nowhere to be found, except as a statistic, a casualty of war.
i have been accused of being an anti-intellectual for saying this before, so let me be clear: i am not against structural analysis. i am, however, opposed to violent abstractions, to theoretical processes that suggest that we can only understand the world if we abandon the oppressed and human point of view and assume the perspective of the elites. i think that a structural analysis, if it is to be of use for revolution, must connect to a people who are confident in their ability to re-conceptualize the world, to re-think it and re-make it from the bottom up.
this isn't simply a process of preaching radical political-economic theory. there is a genuine need for us to "educate our feelings". we must find a way to dispel fear and despair. we must learn courage. we must teach ourselves to see the world as possibility. we must learn not to be afraid of power and we must learn how to turn love into the strength to fight for what we believe in.
poetry gathers up our fears and our uncertainties and draws them near so that we need no longer be crippled by them. it speaks up honestly about our rage and our powerlessness. poetry opens our eyes and quickens our blood. poetry acknowledges the everyday struggle of the god-damn grind and rebukes the politician who would enlist our hope without knowing the lines in the face of a true depression. it goads our companions who sit by while injustice continues. poetry remembers, oh my friends, poetry is memory.
the rich people of our times gather in their hands the greatest accumulation of weapons, traitors, wealth, propaganda, and hopelessness that we have ever seen. what do we have? we have, among other things, words--true words, radical words--we have words that can and MUST move us. words that can change us because they were born in our change; words that can hold us together. words which organize. words which show our comrades that we are in the struggle for the duration and words which recreate the contours of their dreams, showing them why they should join us.
i can go on endlessly analyzing politicians and the economy, and it is true that this takes serious study and rigor. but there is nothing which compares to finding the words that will touch others in a way that draws our lives together into a strength that reorganizes the structure of our world. the struggle to live in a way that gives birth to true words, the struggle to live in a way that inspires trust and makes others strive to be a little better everyday, the struggle to cultivate the words that help the defeated stand, once more and stand together--finding these words is what poetry is about.
trust me, i know it takes more than poetry to change the world. it takes organized movements. it takes a grasp of the social forces at work. but most importantly, it takes the ability to name the world, to name our pain and our fear and our hope, to name the changes in our lives, and it takes the ability to inspire us to commit to something greater. so, i say again, why not poetry?
for three days i have been trying to come up with some good topics to write about "politics." maybe i could write about why a lot of Black folks get excited (some of us despite ourselves) when Obama wins something and also why some of us want him to lose or to get killed to "prove" that racism still exists. or maybe i could write about how CNN has more conservative propaganda shows than anything these days and how shameless the spin is really getting. or about the rise in hate crimes and hate groups, the largest loss of housing since the great depression, or...you get the picture. i wanted to write something about each or any of these things, but whenever i got started my heart just couldn't get into it.
"oh no!" i thought "will my blog turn into a dictation of my navel-gazing adventures?" i mean, here before us is probably one of the greatest times of change in the structure of US society and the world, and all i can write about is poetry? but then, why not poetry?
we are living in an age of transition. the social structures as we have known them are nearing the breaking point as social contradictions clash with increasing velocity. but if you think that this is just about the "crisis of the nation-state" and the "restructuring of the global economy" you are mistaken. you cannot separate major social change from lived experience. we are feeling the blistering pace of change, not only in oil prices and wage cuts, but also in a growing sense of helplessness and desperation. change, after all, means uncertainty.
i do not think that it is a coincidence that the past year has been one of the hardest in my life and in the lives of so many of the people that i know. that sense of being alone, of not knowing where we are heading, that feeling that forces beyond our control seem to head us off at every pass--these intuitions are not isolated perceptions, they are the experience of a changing society measured through the emotional barometers of 6.5 billion people.
i mentioned earlier the pop-marxists who are writing about economic changes in fancy books with trendy covers and catchy PoMo (post-modern) titles. if my contempt for these texts hasn't saturated the page already then let me express myself directly: i do not think that these books offer us the necessary tools for intervening in this age of transition. instead of giving us a view of the world from the perspective of the oppressed, they give us a view of the changing world from the point of view of capital. they give us endless details about stock market liquidity, structural adjustment, interest rates, petro dollars, and free trade agreements, but in all of this the human being is nowhere to be found, except as a statistic, a casualty of war.
i have been accused of being an anti-intellectual for saying this before, so let me be clear: i am not against structural analysis. i am, however, opposed to violent abstractions, to theoretical processes that suggest that we can only understand the world if we abandon the oppressed and human point of view and assume the perspective of the elites. i think that a structural analysis, if it is to be of use for revolution, must connect to a people who are confident in their ability to re-conceptualize the world, to re-think it and re-make it from the bottom up.
this isn't simply a process of preaching radical political-economic theory. there is a genuine need for us to "educate our feelings". we must find a way to dispel fear and despair. we must learn courage. we must teach ourselves to see the world as possibility. we must learn not to be afraid of power and we must learn how to turn love into the strength to fight for what we believe in.
poetry gathers up our fears and our uncertainties and draws them near so that we need no longer be crippled by them. it speaks up honestly about our rage and our powerlessness. poetry opens our eyes and quickens our blood. poetry acknowledges the everyday struggle of the god-damn grind and rebukes the politician who would enlist our hope without knowing the lines in the face of a true depression. it goads our companions who sit by while injustice continues. poetry remembers, oh my friends, poetry is memory.
the rich people of our times gather in their hands the greatest accumulation of weapons, traitors, wealth, propaganda, and hopelessness that we have ever seen. what do we have? we have, among other things, words--true words, radical words--we have words that can and MUST move us. words that can change us because they were born in our change; words that can hold us together. words which organize. words which show our comrades that we are in the struggle for the duration and words which recreate the contours of their dreams, showing them why they should join us.
i can go on endlessly analyzing politicians and the economy, and it is true that this takes serious study and rigor. but there is nothing which compares to finding the words that will touch others in a way that draws our lives together into a strength that reorganizes the structure of our world. the struggle to live in a way that gives birth to true words, the struggle to live in a way that inspires trust and makes others strive to be a little better everyday, the struggle to cultivate the words that help the defeated stand, once more and stand together--finding these words is what poetry is about.
trust me, i know it takes more than poetry to change the world. it takes organized movements. it takes a grasp of the social forces at work. but most importantly, it takes the ability to name the world, to name our pain and our fear and our hope, to name the changes in our lives, and it takes the ability to inspire us to commit to something greater. so, i say again, why not poetry?
3 comments:
love it...
a little long but i love it
- Alana
oh sendolo. again. so many head nods. i bet you know which parts of that in particular nailed me. i think if i smoked i'd need a smoke after reading your blogs. instead i'll just lie back and try to get that last half hour of sleep im supposed to be getting and let it all sink in.
so so good.
xoxo
elizabeth
"...but this only underlines how these spectral zones are always the fulcrum of the moral imagination, a kind of creative reservoir, too, of potential revolutionary change. It's precisely from these invisible spaces--invisible, most of all, to power--whence the potential for insurrection, and the extraordinary social creativity that seems to emerge out of nowhere in revolutionary moments, actually comes... Counterpower is first and foremost rooted in the imagination." --David Graeber.
love you.
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