When the battle was over,
and the fighter was dead, a man came toward him
and said to him: "Do not die; I love you so!"
But the corpse, it was sad!, went on dying.
And two came near, and told him again and again:
"Do not leave us! Courage! Return to life!"
But the corpse, it was sad!, went on dying.
Twenty arrived, a hundred, a thousand, five hundred thousand,
shouting: "So much love, and it can do nothing against death!"
But the corpse, it was sad!, went on dying.
Millions of persons stood around him,
all speaking the same thing: "Stay here, brother!"
But the corpse, it was sad!, went on dying.
Then all the men on the earth
stood around him; the corpse looked at them sadly, deeply moved;
he sat up slowly,
put his arms around the first man; started to walk...
Friday, February 22, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
From Criticalism to Radicalism
The Poverty of Criticism
"A philosophy that begins in radical doubt ends in radical despair."
-Abraham J Heschel, Man Is Not Alone
The more I speak with other radicals the more I am convinced that radicalism in our times too often degenerates from a creative philosophy and profound encounter with and in the world to a mere method of critique. From proposing a revolutionary vision of society and a more dignified vision of what it means (and could mean) to be human, radicalism falls into a fetishism of "critical thinking" characterized more by cynicism than question posing.
"Radicalization,"writes Paulo Freire, "involves increasing commitment to the position that one has taken, and thus ever greater engagement in the effort to transform concrete, objective reality." But what position do today's critical critics take? To what transformation of concrete reality are they committed? They are more concerned with debunking ideas than transforming conditions. They are more opposed to the Enlightenment than they are to the exploitation of labor which is the true essence of modernity.
Today's critical critics, who fancy themselves to be revolutionaries who have "overthrown" modernism with the power of their criticisms, are really "sheep, who take themselves and are taken for wolves"The German Ideology. Intoxicated by their own intellectual capacity to doubt they fancy that criticism has achieved what social revolution could not: a "post-modern" era. Armed with the great thunderbolt of disbelief they have stormed the fortresses of intellect and laid low Truth, History, and Rationality with unyielding blows of critique. But the end result has not been the emergence of a new freedom, only more criticism, endless criticism.
Immobilized by their own inability to believe in anything criticalists find it impossible to commit to anything or anyone, besides their own pristine skepticism. They cannot think, which would require them to create hypotheses about the world which they are willing to stand by; they can only criticize. Consumed by the fetishization of the 'negative dialectic' they have abandoned the project of the 'negation of the negation', i.e. of creation as an act which transcends the negative critique and resolves the contradiction of the old system by establishing new principles that we may live by.
Under the influence of the 'critical' revolution radicalism has become nothing so much as a philosophy of doubt and, ultimately, despair. One can identify the so-called radicals of this tradition by their overdeveloped skills of intellectual interrogation and their underdeveloped creativity, by their inability to pose questions that frame paths to solutions, and by the self-devouring sense of emptiness that overwhelms them when there is no "enemy" to critque and the moment calls for acts of construction. Cut off from a radical commitment, critique loses its greatest strength: the ability to pose solutions in the form of questions. As Marx wrote, a question is a "new way of formulating the problem [which] already contains its solution" 1844 Manuscripts. But criticalism forgets this fact and this has resulted in the posing of questions that fail to unveil opportunities for intervention in the world.
There are those who believe that criticalism is an affair of academics, of armchair revolutionaries and post-modern philosophers. They oppose to theory and "intellectualism" the "down to earth", "concrete" immediacy of activity. Yet they have not escaped criticalism, they merely put into political practice the criticalist philosophy which others "only" theorize. Activism is the critique of the policies of those in power through action. Activism does not proceed from the critique of power to the re-creation of new forms of democratic power. It stops short of re-making the organization of society and limits itself to protesting particular aspects. As such it is only a particular form of criticalism, and is, in the end, constantly haunted by a sense of despair.
A return to radicalism means moving from critique to analysis. It means putting forward our own conception(s) of the organization of society as it is, as how it could be, and how we might get there. A return to radicalism means moving from analysis to a political program. It means creating a revolutionary project in which the broad popular classes can participate in the transformation and governance of society.
But we can only accomplish this movement from criticalism to radicalism if we return to what defines radicals: the commitment to the liberation of human labor--of praxis, of the power to transform the world--from a social order which sees in that labor only the means of accumulating private wealth. I do not mean by this the emancipation of wage-labor. I mean a radical conception of the total liberation of the ways that human beings create and recreate from the dominance and exploitation of capital.
We must see (again) that labor is how a mother and a neighbor raise children, the way queer people create pleasure from touch and from love. Labor is the way that a song electrifies the air and makes tears and laughter bubble up from our hearts. It is the struggle of white companer@s against being swallowed by a system that isolates and destroys them. Labor is the culture of resistance passed down in Black families. It is the refusal of a woman who will no longer be an object. It is finger paints and a good meal shared between those who nourish one another and change the world. Labor is the creation of new things and new relations; of new structures and new meanings. Only when we return to labor radicalism of this sort, a philosophy of praxis, will we find ourselves, once again, motivated and committed.
As papa Paulo writes:
"the power to create and transform, even when thwarted in concrete situations, tends to be reborn. And that rebirth can occur — not gratuitously, but in and through the struggle for liberation — in the supersedence of slave labor by emancipated labor which gives zest to life."
"A philosophy that begins in radical doubt ends in radical despair."
-Abraham J Heschel, Man Is Not Alone
The more I speak with other radicals the more I am convinced that radicalism in our times too often degenerates from a creative philosophy and profound encounter with and in the world to a mere method of critique. From proposing a revolutionary vision of society and a more dignified vision of what it means (and could mean) to be human, radicalism falls into a fetishism of "critical thinking" characterized more by cynicism than question posing.
"Radicalization,"writes Paulo Freire, "involves increasing commitment to the position that one has taken, and thus ever greater engagement in the effort to transform concrete, objective reality." But what position do today's critical critics take? To what transformation of concrete reality are they committed? They are more concerned with debunking ideas than transforming conditions. They are more opposed to the Enlightenment than they are to the exploitation of labor which is the true essence of modernity.
Today's critical critics, who fancy themselves to be revolutionaries who have "overthrown" modernism with the power of their criticisms, are really "sheep, who take themselves and are taken for wolves"The German Ideology. Intoxicated by their own intellectual capacity to doubt they fancy that criticism has achieved what social revolution could not: a "post-modern" era. Armed with the great thunderbolt of disbelief they have stormed the fortresses of intellect and laid low Truth, History, and Rationality with unyielding blows of critique. But the end result has not been the emergence of a new freedom, only more criticism, endless criticism.
Immobilized by their own inability to believe in anything criticalists find it impossible to commit to anything or anyone, besides their own pristine skepticism. They cannot think, which would require them to create hypotheses about the world which they are willing to stand by; they can only criticize. Consumed by the fetishization of the 'negative dialectic' they have abandoned the project of the 'negation of the negation', i.e. of creation as an act which transcends the negative critique and resolves the contradiction of the old system by establishing new principles that we may live by.
Under the influence of the 'critical' revolution radicalism has become nothing so much as a philosophy of doubt and, ultimately, despair. One can identify the so-called radicals of this tradition by their overdeveloped skills of intellectual interrogation and their underdeveloped creativity, by their inability to pose questions that frame paths to solutions, and by the self-devouring sense of emptiness that overwhelms them when there is no "enemy" to critque and the moment calls for acts of construction. Cut off from a radical commitment, critique loses its greatest strength: the ability to pose solutions in the form of questions. As Marx wrote, a question is a "new way of formulating the problem [which] already contains its solution" 1844 Manuscripts. But criticalism forgets this fact and this has resulted in the posing of questions that fail to unveil opportunities for intervention in the world.
There are those who believe that criticalism is an affair of academics, of armchair revolutionaries and post-modern philosophers. They oppose to theory and "intellectualism" the "down to earth", "concrete" immediacy of activity. Yet they have not escaped criticalism, they merely put into political practice the criticalist philosophy which others "only" theorize. Activism is the critique of the policies of those in power through action. Activism does not proceed from the critique of power to the re-creation of new forms of democratic power. It stops short of re-making the organization of society and limits itself to protesting particular aspects. As such it is only a particular form of criticalism, and is, in the end, constantly haunted by a sense of despair.
A return to radicalism means moving from critique to analysis. It means putting forward our own conception(s) of the organization of society as it is, as how it could be, and how we might get there. A return to radicalism means moving from analysis to a political program. It means creating a revolutionary project in which the broad popular classes can participate in the transformation and governance of society.
But we can only accomplish this movement from criticalism to radicalism if we return to what defines radicals: the commitment to the liberation of human labor--of praxis, of the power to transform the world--from a social order which sees in that labor only the means of accumulating private wealth. I do not mean by this the emancipation of wage-labor. I mean a radical conception of the total liberation of the ways that human beings create and recreate from the dominance and exploitation of capital.
We must see (again) that labor is how a mother and a neighbor raise children, the way queer people create pleasure from touch and from love. Labor is the way that a song electrifies the air and makes tears and laughter bubble up from our hearts. It is the struggle of white companer@s against being swallowed by a system that isolates and destroys them. Labor is the culture of resistance passed down in Black families. It is the refusal of a woman who will no longer be an object. It is finger paints and a good meal shared between those who nourish one another and change the world. Labor is the creation of new things and new relations; of new structures and new meanings. Only when we return to labor radicalism of this sort, a philosophy of praxis, will we find ourselves, once again, motivated and committed.
As papa Paulo writes:
"the power to create and transform, even when thwarted in concrete situations, tends to be reborn. And that rebirth can occur — not gratuitously, but in and through the struggle for liberation — in the supersedence of slave labor by emancipated labor which gives zest to life."
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Vanguard
Sometimes politics is a vision, an endless coral reef, the creation
of one thousand generations. Everything imaginable lives
there and the things that we must do are clear, imminent. Sometimes
politics is a power with which I write the truth
into the heavens; I think constellational thoughts by which
women and men guide the planetary ship.
And then, other times, politics is a world with gravity in
which my life is less than ash, times
when I am the remainder of a defeated people.
By my name the world marks the mass grave
of Black humanism; today's struggle is a memorial revolt
against the already forgone genocide that hasn't caught
up to our bodies.
When politics is cosmology, the multiplying universe
and I are one; I am not afraid of mortality or the distance
between galaxies and history is a love affair between possibility
and matter. When politics is the play thing of
the powerful I, like Job, want god's sense of history
to turn away from me, for I fear that I am a slug
on the boulder that crushes the poor.
Politics is elation; politics is despair.
Know that I am most content when politics is names
that I know, hearts that come together, words
that begin universal and end unique like a single loaf
of bread that ends in our mouths. When politics
is wanting to be a human being and nothing else
heaven does not tempt me and power is not triumph.
Politics is the word compañero in many mouths.
of one thousand generations. Everything imaginable lives
there and the things that we must do are clear, imminent. Sometimes
politics is a power with which I write the truth
into the heavens; I think constellational thoughts by which
women and men guide the planetary ship.
And then, other times, politics is a world with gravity in
which my life is less than ash, times
when I am the remainder of a defeated people.
By my name the world marks the mass grave
of Black humanism; today's struggle is a memorial revolt
against the already forgone genocide that hasn't caught
up to our bodies.
When politics is cosmology, the multiplying universe
and I are one; I am not afraid of mortality or the distance
between galaxies and history is a love affair between possibility
and matter. When politics is the play thing of
the powerful I, like Job, want god's sense of history
to turn away from me, for I fear that I am a slug
on the boulder that crushes the poor.
Politics is elation; politics is despair.
Know that I am most content when politics is names
that I know, hearts that come together, words
that begin universal and end unique like a single loaf
of bread that ends in our mouths. When politics
is wanting to be a human being and nothing else
heaven does not tempt me and power is not triumph.
Politics is the word compañero in many mouths.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Praxis & Pillow Talk
been awhile since i last posted. lots goin on in the life. let me start getting back in the habit of writing by talking about the event that inaugerated the 22nd year of my life...
on the eve of my birthday (jan 27th), i found myself discussing dialectics and kissing. after years of fantasizing about it i finally had an intimate encounter where i felt free to fully be myself. i'm sure plenty of people would think it's lame to talk about praxis and the division of labor between affections, but it was the best experience of my sexual life. instead of feeling pent up because i'm unable to express myself, i was free to talk and to express myself physically. the subjects of discussion ranged from homosexual identity to gentrification and the physical was just as versatile (hehe). for once i didn't feel any shame about my body, my insecurities, or my passions. they all blended together seamlessly. we kissed, giggled like kids, talked, and said "i love you" hungrily.
all of this happened with my friend Sean. we've been really close for about three years now, but since he's been living in Hawai'i until recently and because i moved away from nyc before he moved into the city, most of our relatinship has developed over the phone or email. strange, huh? over the phone we helped each other come out to our families and get over shitty relationships. and in the few times when we were physically together we played like teenagers. it was only after years of this kind of interaction that sexuality made its way into our relationship.
and it seems it was better that way. by the time we were in bed watching Chocolat it didn't matter that i fell asleep and drooled on him. we knew one another pretty well and trusted each other.
the other side of all of this was the masturbatory rigor (Adam Israel, Dorm Dialogues 2005) i've been practicing with great discipline for the past year or so. laugh if you want to but there's a difference between jacking off and exploring yourself. learning more about our bodies and what they want and can do takes time and attention...and dildos.
i remember my first year at hunter college when i went to see The Vagina Monologues. call me strange, but the part about women discovering their clitoris in workshops got me all excited. why shouldn't men get to know their prostate in some similar way? it was a year or so later, but i finally got down to the business of learning about orgasms, qi flow, and that pleasurable little gland that makes men shiver. i won't inundate you with descriptions, just read The Multi-Orgasmic Male. cheesy title, somewhat corny language, great techniques.
[now, usually when people talk about sexual techniques it's done in a way that makes the person speaking look like they're sex gods. but when i'm talking about technique, i just mean figuring out ways to explore our bodies and to do so on levels beyond our habits and particularly beyond the sex roles we've been taught on tv and in bad relationships.]
anyhow, i've spent the last year really learning about myself. and while all this was happening i was reading lesbian/feminist and gay liberation literature on liberation from sexual oppression. so when i finally found myself with someone i was comfortable with, there was a whole range of feelings that i had never experienced before, or had never had at that level of intensity.
theory and practice. quantity into quality. hahaha
on the eve of my birthday (jan 27th), i found myself discussing dialectics and kissing. after years of fantasizing about it i finally had an intimate encounter where i felt free to fully be myself. i'm sure plenty of people would think it's lame to talk about praxis and the division of labor between affections, but it was the best experience of my sexual life. instead of feeling pent up because i'm unable to express myself, i was free to talk and to express myself physically. the subjects of discussion ranged from homosexual identity to gentrification and the physical was just as versatile (hehe). for once i didn't feel any shame about my body, my insecurities, or my passions. they all blended together seamlessly. we kissed, giggled like kids, talked, and said "i love you" hungrily.
all of this happened with my friend Sean. we've been really close for about three years now, but since he's been living in Hawai'i until recently and because i moved away from nyc before he moved into the city, most of our relatinship has developed over the phone or email. strange, huh? over the phone we helped each other come out to our families and get over shitty relationships. and in the few times when we were physically together we played like teenagers. it was only after years of this kind of interaction that sexuality made its way into our relationship.
and it seems it was better that way. by the time we were in bed watching Chocolat it didn't matter that i fell asleep and drooled on him. we knew one another pretty well and trusted each other.
the other side of all of this was the masturbatory rigor (Adam Israel, Dorm Dialogues 2005) i've been practicing with great discipline for the past year or so. laugh if you want to but there's a difference between jacking off and exploring yourself. learning more about our bodies and what they want and can do takes time and attention...and dildos.
i remember my first year at hunter college when i went to see The Vagina Monologues. call me strange, but the part about women discovering their clitoris in workshops got me all excited. why shouldn't men get to know their prostate in some similar way? it was a year or so later, but i finally got down to the business of learning about orgasms, qi flow, and that pleasurable little gland that makes men shiver. i won't inundate you with descriptions, just read The Multi-Orgasmic Male. cheesy title, somewhat corny language, great techniques.
[now, usually when people talk about sexual techniques it's done in a way that makes the person speaking look like they're sex gods. but when i'm talking about technique, i just mean figuring out ways to explore our bodies and to do so on levels beyond our habits and particularly beyond the sex roles we've been taught on tv and in bad relationships.]
anyhow, i've spent the last year really learning about myself. and while all this was happening i was reading lesbian/feminist and gay liberation literature on liberation from sexual oppression. so when i finally found myself with someone i was comfortable with, there was a whole range of feelings that i had never experienced before, or had never had at that level of intensity.
theory and practice. quantity into quality. hahaha
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