Smile: Subjectivity Politics
I realized today how different the life is that Iâm living from the life Iâd like to live. The problem (and the clichĂ©) with saying that kind of thing is that it gets immediately reduced to an individual decision or choice. Do something different. Pursue your dreams. Change your life. Be the change you want to see in the world. Strive. Innovate. Pursue. Devote. Sacrifice. What really hit today--and for personal reasons around systems of oppression within which my immediate family is embedded and benefits from--is how deeply weâre invested in these systems until they rub us the wrong way, at which point we seek to flee them into even more striated systems of oppression. One you see *ALL THE TIME* is how white folks talk about public education. Even in the crunchiest of crunchy white urban & suburban public schools, if a parent isnât getting the results they seek for their kid, what do they do? Pull them out and send them off to private school. The privilegest of the privileged. And what are they gonna say? âI believe in public schools in theory, but in practice it isnât working for my kid.â GTFO. And thatâs how we gotta be about this a whole bunch more, not just white folks, but everyone who is opening their eyes up to the reality of class oppression and exploitation in the United States, which is extremely significantly--*but not exclusively*--rooted in racial oppression and exploitation. When are we gonna rally around some kind of new ways of being with each other to say *WE* arenât going to have it anymore and demand a voice in the process? I just donât see it. Even with all of the energy surrounding anti-Trump âprogressive politicsâ in 2018 leading to a Blue Wave (which I most definitely hope to see), we donât have anything close to a consciousness of a collective subject emerging to take the reigns of government in this country (and beyond). We are empty and weak when it comes to collective imagination. I believe that identity politics has its role and power in our country today, but this is the deep insufficiency of identity politics. We need a *subjectivity politics* where we are experimenting with something new to bind us together, without losing sight of the identifications that have been used to discriminate against, divide, and oppress. We can have difference and still wrestle with inequality in the process of forging new collective subjects for social change. Maybe itâs not just class. Maybe itâs not just race. Maybe itâs not just gender. Maybe itâs not just disability. Thatâs not to discount the great significance of all of these interlocking forms of systemic, bodily oppression, exploitation, and exclusion that governs peopleâs existences from before the time they can even talk. But it is to say that âweâ need to move from being identified subjects to even beyond subjects who take control of that position as subjects and demand recognition. We need to construct new subjectivities. We need to wrestle away that position from people like myself (straight white men) and create a new structure of enunciation, narration, identification (Is âidentityâ really even desirable?), solidarity, commitment, accountability that stretches not only across the old gender/racial/national/ethnic/sexuality categorizations and divides, but actively constructs new collective ways of being together. They donât have to be hard and fast. They can break down and start anew. Let yourself break down. Let yourself be broken to the point of needing another, someone who is entirely different from you. see what you can create, how you can co-inhabit the earth. Lodge yourselves into hinged selves that articulate with one another and with other one anothers into multiple selves. Laugh at your nationality, your race, your gender, your class, your sexuality, your âabilities,â your...nothing anymore. Get rid of individual possessions at the level of identity, but donât float freely. Commit. Who are you holding onto. Who can hold onto you. When you ask that question, look around and beyond to think of you you have. Who are your people. Are they the same class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality as yourself? If so, itâs time to change your life, and not for yourself. Do not innovate or strive or devote or sacrifice or any of that fucking bullshit. Let that be seen as the managerial ideology that it is. Break loose. Become other. Become together with others to forge new selves, new subjects capable of entirely new forms of action and everyday life. Thatâs what I need to do as much as anyone. Iâve gotten so far away from organizing and it fucking kills me, since I can always say that I have too much shit to do, and that the union is annoying, and that I need to remain committed to this bourgeois life that I have in order to remain connected up with my wife and son. But what if I canât anymore? Not to leave my family (thatâs not on the table at all, and itâs overwhelmingly because I donât desire to), but to perhaps try to organize them into modes of life that I feel are far more in tune with what a non-oppressive, non-imperialist way of living together might be. Thatâs my striving, although I still donât want to use that word. Iâm not trying to âsucceed.â We need to rid ourselves of that concept. We need to think about what is a desirable life together on this rotten skin on top of a hot, wet fruit for the time being. Iâm here for that. Thatâs what weâre gonna do. Commitment and devotion and sacrifice and all that isnât bad, but I want something different: experimentation (with the essential risk of failure), curiosity, creativity, construction, deconstruction, struggle,...I want all of that. I need to put myself in it to get there. This is helping me break down those walls that are blocking my perception... https://soundcloud.com/rottingsky/smile
