“Is the crossing vertiginous? Like every crossing. Useless to contemplate nor fathom what separates: the abyss is always invented by our fear. We leap and there is grace. Acrobats know: do not look at the separation. Have eyes, have bodies, only for there, for the other.”
- Helene Cixous, ‘Tancredi Continues’, 1991: 79
The empathic, embodied, affective, playful, poetic, ludic and [insert more touchy feely adjectives here] aspects of activism are heavily emphasised by the global justice movement, and this is particularly evident in its ‘autonomous’ elements. This is reflected in the literature on autonomy and the GJM, (and more broadly on social theory about contemporary social movements, such as Alberto Melucci’s use of psychoanalysis and sociology to theorise ‘new social movements’). For example, George Katsiaficas describes ‘the eros effect’ which is ‘the intuitive spread of tactics and movements without direct organizational intervention’. Damien Grenfell refers to ‘a moment, not a movement’. At the 2004 Sydney Social Forum, James Goodman suggested that social forums are a form of ‘operationalizing affect’. Kevin McDonald refers to an intense process of ‘becoming the other’ in anti-globalisation activism, where ‘there are parallels between the transformation in grammars of action and the contemporary experience of love’ (2004 p.590). This correlates directly to the logic of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, where it is posed that ’such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life’ (Bey p.2). Chesters and Welsh illustrate ‘a movement culture that prizes the affective, emotional and intuitive dimensions of collective action’ (2004 p.329). The role of positive energy, passion and inspiration is regularly raised by activists when they are questioned about their motivations and their ideas about social change, and how they have created/are creating it. What other meanings could this have, apart from just making people feel good? Or is it that the feelgood factor is more powerful than we realise?
There is obvious debate in academic and activist discourse about the Movimento Sem Terra, or MST. In fact, it’s almost like there are several distinct MST stories. The dominant story is of the daring and inspirational MST. This MST is participatory, de-centralised, flexible, creative, transparent, grassroots … focussed on making structural changes in education levels, gender relations, land distribution, wealth distribution, farming practices, property ownership. The others include the MST as dogmatically Leninist or Stalinist in organisation, manipulative of the families on the settlements, or even as just a loose construct that consists more of merchandise and regular media stories than an integrated social movement. I don’t think the debate is exactly polarised, and its only as fierce as any debate over activist practice. However there are strikingly different positions within Brasil and further afield as to what’s going on with this movement.
I wonder how much this debate might play into my use of reflexivity* in theorising activist practice. So far I think it’s safe to say that reflexivity is important to any social movement or protest event with the agenda of justice for people who are being structurally fucked over. But I can see how it is limited by its origins in Western liberal theories of modernization, and that it might be too politically ‘neutral’ to be applicable in my research (as far as anything can be politically neutral, I suppose).
*reflexivity in my research so far = reflection on action that brings about re-constitution … a reflexive social movement is one that reflects on its actions in terms of what it is trying to achieve, and changes its shape in response to this reflection. I’m into applying Lash & Urry’s theory of aesthetic reflexivity to social movements like the MST at the moment, but I am seeing some big gaps. Consequently, The Stack is growing again…
Madeleine Bunting says it thoughtfully:
“The strategy is bold but risky - it’s blowing the expense account; Africa won’t get public attention like this again for a long time, yet Africa needs a generation (at least) of sustained campaigning if it is to have any chance of tackling the catastrophe of Aids and its particular vulnerability to the looming crisis of climate change. Plus, there’s the increasingly embarrassing problem that African voices are virtually non-existent - not just their bizarre omission from Live 8, but everywhere; this is the rich north talking to itself about another continent’s future. That is mighty lopsided.
…..
The impatience of consumer culture with the complex and the slow moving might mean that certain marketing tricks are necessary to capture short attention spans. As [Kirsty] Milne points out: ‘For a generation that can vote someone out of the Big Brother house in minutes, a month-long media uproar makes more sense.’
‘Media uproar’ gives the illusion of a lot of support - are those watching Live 8 protesting or enjoying themselves? - and politicians are responsive to that. It doesn’t fit the template of how we have understood politics and protest in the past, but I’m hoping that doesn’t mean it won’t work. ”
I was bound to blog about this eventually, i.e. the G7-8 decision to cancel the odious debts of Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. I may have been quashing my cynicism in favour of my ignorance here, but I thought the decision was a bit special when I read about it nearly a week ago now (even with that photo of Feckin Bob Geldof - the man we all love to hate). The debts of these countries are *so* emblematic of the worst of structural global injustice. To cancel these debts would mean that national governments are practically enabled to budget for basic needs over servicing their debts to other governments and financial institutions who already have plenty to play with and are generally hell bent on keeping it that way.
It seems pretty clear, as George Monbiot writes, that ‘cancellation’ comes with the same old conditions as the structural adjustment loans that brought on odious debt in the first place (and is therefore not really cancellation). Not much will change for people who will no more benefit from ‘public’ funds than they did before this decision. Anyway, the ‘granting’ of ‘relief’ by the global oligarchy on their terms is paternalistic and doesn’t suggest a radical shift in the balance of power.
But … it *is* a shift of sorts, and one that has been brought about by the exertion of pressure on the rich and powerful to take some responsibility for perpetuating such dire, endemic poverty - which is surely the stuff of change. In this sense, I can’t help but feel the debt ‘cancellation’ is, just maybe, in some ways, with lots of brow-furrowing caveats and mental gymnastics, a hopeful and joyous thing. Maybe not in a strictly political, linear sense - but when hearts are moved a tiny bit …. well, maybe we underestimate the power of this. Like the impending changes to Australia’s refugee policy, the decisions are so bound up in the desire to maintain dominance. And yet, because these decisions respond to basic human need, they still carry some potential for the radical change that is so required. Hopefully.
I have decided to embrace biochemical determinism and start taking The Pill again. I’ve tried taking it on a few occasions over the past 9 years, and every time it has sent me completely mental. So I was never on it for very long, and I always started taking it *after* I had fallen in like/lust/love and was therefore in an unaltered hormonal state at the time of attraction. However! perhaps it was my *reasoning* for taking the Pill that was totally wak, i.e. to avoid getting pregnant.
My *new* reason for Pill-popping is to change who I ‘have chemistry’ with. Scientific rumour has it that taking the contraceptive pill alters your pheromones/reception of pheromones, and therefore alters *who you are attracted to*. The experiments reported in 2001 suggested that women who were on the pill were attracted to a completely different set of genetic characteristics than those who were not. Women on the pill had chemistry with men whom their bodies thought would be appropriate people to mate with more permanently, because the pill makes the body thinks it is pregnant and therefore seeks out stability and protection (sure I might end up getting starry-eyed over my eighth cousin, and it might reduce fertility and/or fecundity, but perhaps these are risks I’m willing to take). So it was suggested to women that, “if you are on the pill and meet someone you want to have children with, you should stop taking oral contraceptives.” You should “Go off [oral contraceptives] … to see if you’re still attracted.”
Presumably, going *on* the pill will provoke a similar alteration - and therefore, chances are, I will stop wanting to be entwined with the wrong people, and start getting happy love feelings for more appropriate ones (albeit with strangely familiar features and reduced chances of offspring). Brilliant!
Whilst procrastinating on marking this morning, I discovered the Database of Virtual Art. And Civiblog.
Whilst doing *that*, I heard on the news that the Greens and Democrats are going to try and block the changes to Australia’s asylum seeker policies announced by John Howard on Friday.
Apart from the potential outcome of making life slightly more liveable for people who have been monumentously fucked over, both the changes and the planned blockage strike me as an unusually dynamic exercise of parliamentary democracy in Australia. A few backbenchers (on behalf of many a proudly bleeding heart) seeking some moderate, merciful changes to a draconian system succeed in using the institutional mechanisms to do so. The minority opposition, knowing that it’s still not enough (mandatory and indefinite detention as well as temporary protection status still strangles the life out of basic human rights), do *their* bit in the democratic machine to push this forward. Interesting, and hopefully nothing but good news for people in immigration detention and on temporary protection visas, whose experiences are inscribed here, here, here and here. And in many other places.
Finally! A reason for that short-lived supergroup, the Wild Stallyns from the Planet of Regret, to re-form (though perhaps sans Bobby Derrida and Werner Duke, who, rumour has it, are now pursuing ’solo projects’). With this number on the playlist, Emma GoldmAnn, Staline Moondust and Sir Terence Wintermute with Rebeccasexual and Lady Karenski may actually have a set (the other items obviously being ‘Discoursin’ in the Dark’, ‘Problems with the Greengrocer’, and ‘Dr Wood’). A guest appearance by the Coptic Girls of Abbysinia would be a must, too (not unlike the way Shotpointblank and Jungle Fever often constitute a double bill).
I recall writing another verse of this when Derrida (Jacques, not Bobby) died - something about post-revolutionary Unley waking up to find the streets full of chalk and making the bourgeoisie balk. A reference to those notorious propagandettes Those Meddling Kids, of course:
Discoursin’ in the Dark (WSFTPOR, 2004)
Foucault’s no liar!
Wand’rin’ round, trying to mend a broken Barthes
Derrida’s for hire
Can’t read DeBord without a scarf
Lacan’s on fire!
Found another phallus in a work of art
Caught in a textual mire
They’re just discoursin’ in the dark.
Deleuze gets tired
Wondrin’ why his trousers keep falling apart
It’s rhizomic attire
Guattari bought them at K-Mart
Nietzsche’s desire!
A woman who’s an easy mark
Tripped on Irigaray’s wire
He’s just discoursin’ in the dark ….
1. Nancy Fraser’s visit and writing some questions for her.
2. Livelihood struggles being defined and maintained through collectivity, because the autonomous projects of the self can’t take place in the same way when hunger, homelessness and police/military repression are such proximate threats. This could frame discussion of the difference between rich and poor activism within the ‘autonomy-in-solidarity’ of the global justice movement: i.e. that activists in rich locales privelege autonomy whereas activists in poor locales privelege solidarity. The importance of ‘the Marxist story’ in livelihood struggles. Treating Marxism as a narrative that gives form. delegates roles and tasks etc (particularly evident in the MST and the overlay of liberation theology).
3. The comparative role of leadership and charisma.
4. The concept of ‘reflexivity’ being a bit bollocksy and potentially politically neutral and not how people generally talk about their experiences.
5. My understandings and uses of and ideas about aesthetic reflexivity and social movements needing to be further situated in/bounded by the general literature on reflexivity and my reservations about using the notion as in point 4.
6. Therefore writing my seminar paper on how I am using/working with/working through reflexivity.
7. Therefore also really spelling out what I mean by aesthetic reflexivity in my conference paper.
8. Consciousness re gaps in the literature re feminist theory and activism and living with the tensions of activism - making this part of my thesis.
9. Looking after myself in Brazil. Drinking caipirinhas whenever possible.
Heavenstobetsy - I leave for Brazil in exactly ten (10) weeks. In an effort to be Calm And Adult about this reality, I have written myself a mature and orderly Plan for this period:
*Week beginning June 13:*
- Lit review on track
- Conference paper outlined
- Seminar paper outlined
- Mark 4896720301 exams
*June 20:*
- Exams back to students
- Final marks sent through
- Outline/draft of paper/s to supervisor
*June 27:*
- Paper writing
- Lit Review
- Melbourne trip 1
*July 4:*
- Paper writing
- Lit Review
- Brazil internal flights organised
*July 11 :*
- News on ethics?
- News on grants?
- Paper writing: meet with supervisor
- Review Lit Review
- Final Portuguese class
*July 18 :*
- Brazil accommodation sorted
- Melbourne trip 2: give conference paper
- Seminar paper
- Learn Portuguese
*July 25 :*
- Give seminar paper
- Learn Portuguese
- Do relevant medical things (e.g. briefly contract yellow fever)
*August 1 :*
- Reading for research design
- Review Lit Review
- Think about packing and storage
- Think about other such practical things that need to be done
- Learn Portuguese
*Aug 8:*
- Itinerary and finances finalised
- General confirming of things
- Trip to Adelaide?
*Aug 15 :*
- Freak out, forget how to speak Portuguese, decide my true career is as a gossip columnist and it’s not too late, develop airplane phobia, etc.
Leave in the afternoon of August 21. Arrive in Porto Alegre 20something hours later via Buenos Aires. Still on August 21st.
Powered by WordPress