Hermes was a Bird and I Bit his Bowstring

And this is my blog.

[hermesbowstring]

I just finished Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and Wretched of the Earth, and I've been reminded of and thinking a lot about a fucked up dream I had in high school. I haven't really posted in a while. Maybe I've been too busy with grad school, maybe I haven't felt the need to post since I left the University of Miami and know have other outlets for creative intellectual expression. 

For those who haven't picked up any Fanon, he's a founding postcolonial theorist as well as a psychoanalytical and existentialist thinker. He's most known for his defense of violent revolution, which he frames in Wretched of the Earth as a cleansing, liberating praxis through which colonized peoples fully reject dehumanizing colonial worldviews (because colonialism is an "unthinking" system of violence, Fanon suggests that it can only be transformed through force or greater violence). Behind this is Fanon's perhaps more fundamental theory, which is that colonialism is a "Manichean worldview," a binary framework that opposes whiteness, civilization, purity, intellect, and everything good against blackness, savagery, evilness, passion, and sexual taboos. The psychological violence of colonialism, as discussed in Black Skin, White Masks, pushes colonized people to reject "blackness" desire and identify with "whiteness" (the opposite is also possible, but requires conscious political and symbolic maneuvering). In fact, however, the savage other is the creation of colonial situations - not only is there no colonized without the colonizer, but "blackness" in this Manichean system is in actuality a reflection of colonial anxieties.

So anyway, enough background. My dream took place in the colonial era (I think it was in Congo, but it was a long time ago), and I was both a missionary and a colonial subject. I mean, I was seeing the world through both peoples' eyes, but they weren't actually the same person. As a missionary, I was standing on a tall ladder outside of the church doing some kind of repair work. As a colonized subject, I was running through some dense underbrush to the mission (I guess there's no need to sugarcoat it - my unconscious coded the whole scene within "the jungle").

My missionary self knew that my colonial subject self wanted to kill me (since I could see both worlds at once). I was completely terrified. But I remember not being surprised - I may have even thought I deserved it. At that point, my colonized subject self ran out of the jungle and pushed the ladder down. The missionary self fell and I broke my neck. 

At that moment, I woke up. I remember feeling terrified that I could intentionally kill someone - even in a dream. 

[hermesbowstring]

A lot of what passes as "social justice"

is just a power struggle among elite groups playing out in the lives of the poor.

Elections make me sad. Although less sad than un-elected dictators.

[hermesbowstring]

Hi there. I am looking for models of service learning that don't reproduce systems of domination and oppression. Any advice?

Sorry for not getting to this sooner. I'm sure another person would answer differently, but I'm not sure such a thing exists. I mean, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Service-learning should undercut oppression and oppressive ideology, and that's important, that can have lasting effects that are hard to conceive of. But it also is totally dependent on hierarchy and students tend to gain significantly more access to key resources (in the form of competitiveness for employment) than community members.

My thoughts are to pay a lot of attention to the organization you partner with. Unfortunately, its often easiest to work with big nonprofit institutions that take in lots of volunteers - especially if you're trying to place a whole bunch of students. The problem is that these kind of institutions tend to run on a cooperate model. These organizations may address key needs (such as hunger, the need for housing) and learning to see this side of the world can be immensely powerful for students. And the non-profits do benefit from student labor. However, I don't think these kinds of non-profits ever get to the root issue, and in fact recreate the problem by producing wealthy CEOs and privileged non-profit sector employees. On the other hand, if you're working with a smaller group of students you may be able to work with a community organization or social movement. Decentralization is way undervalued in service-learning, at least in my experience. Or you may just find a super awesome and super reflective non-profit. But the question here is to what extent can service-learning actually empower communities, confront the legacies of white supremacy and colonialism, engage in mutual learning that helps people apprehend and transform the limits of their situation, produce consciously political subjectivities (and so forth) because we can pretty much assume that you'll be reproducing privilege at the same time.

There are other kinds of models that can be useful, too. Communities can be involved in planning service-learning, but again you have to ask the question of whose voices are you actually getting (e.g., the voices of nonprofit CEOs, mostly men in the community, etc). An asset based approach can also be helpful in that the project works off the community's strengths rather than their needs. There is a subtle, but powerful difference between approaching a community to address their "needs" and building off of a sense of self-worth to tackle community-defined concerns. This approach also can teach students not to think of oppressed groups in terms of a lack or absence, but rather as vital and creative communities.

Finally, if you're going to reproduce domination, my position is that you can teach people to see it at the same time. Try and educate your students to think about how their service-learning actually reproduces asymmetries, and about what kinds of social change might be necessary for radical, transformative change. Talk with the community leadership, provide them with access to your key resources (e.g., theory, comparative knowledge, etc.), listen to how they see their community and what is important to them. Move between the particular and the general. This can be about mutual-learning where students, community members, and yourself exchange their resources, learn to better theorize the world, and construct methods for social change.

Its 8 in the morning so I hope this is all somewhat coherent.

[hermesbowstring]

Domination

Today I learned that oppression is best expressed as a segment of binary code. It is exactly as long as the number of discrete categories of identity you can name.

If you can't represent domination using this model it doesn't count.

[hermesbowstring]

On Making Progressive Ideology Work for Inequality

I am so sick of working in this place that is so dedicated to imperialism. I’m sick of its neoliberal ideologies, its bourgeois anxieties, and its equivocal claim to social justice. I’m sick of its organizational inertia in the face of critique. So I’m dedicating the next few posts about it and its problematic politics.

I work at a place called the “Office of Civic and Community Engagement,” which exists within the administration of a large-ish private university. I am a lowly AmeriCorps*VISTA, which means that I'm payed by the federal government and placed in a public or nonprofit organization under a general rhetoric of "alleviating poverty." So lets start off satirically, if simplistically: I alleviate poverty by building programs at a private university. The mission of my office is to “enhance university-community collaborations by engaging the university’s academic resources in the enrichment of civic and community life in South Florida.” I have found that “enrichment” in particular fulfills a double meaning, on the one hand framing rhetoric of social justice while on the other signifying a “Freudian slip” of sorts that signals our commitment to neoliberal expansionism. For the purposes of this blog, I assume that “enriching” South Florida within a capitalist framework also creates poverty, but you can read more about that here, here, or here.

I first became conscious of these tensions playing out in the office in late October. We had organized programing for Food Day, a national event focusing on health, sustainability, and worker justice. As you might expect, emphasis at our events was placed on the first two, although the CIW was kind enough to send a representative from Immokalee to speak on our panel despite that we did not cover their travel or lodging expenses (I think they spent the night at Occupy Miami, and I’m embarrassed to say that I did not realize this at the time and did not offer them my own place, either). Also, the comments directed at the CIW devolved into an elderly woman angrily telling the representative that she owned a small farm and that they should just go to the government and that will solve everything. I wanted to be all like, “READ THE REPORTS LINKED ON OUR WEBSITE,” but I asked my supervisor to say something to that extent in the closing remarks, instead.

We also organized a “Fair Food Fair” for organizations to table. One student group was distributing information about injustices, violations, and/or the lack of a living wage for food service workers in the university’s cafeteria. To give you some additional background, this particular student organization was a strong alley that organized demonstrations in support of a major custodial workers’ strike at the university back in 2006. This movement, which received a great deal of student, faculty, and community support, protested unfair labor practices, substandard pay, lack of benefits, and poor workplace safety.

The day after Food Day, we found out that we were in trouble! Apparently, the administration was concerned that the students actions, and more specifically their actions at an institutionally-sponsored event, could create tensions between the university and it’s cafeteria company. Our supervisor was chewed out by her higher-up, and she in turn made it clear that we would have to be more careful about these things in the future. Really!

What I learned from the experience: “civic and community engagement” happens off-campus, in “other” spaces,” but not within the campus community. Inequality can be addressed where we can be the ones “helping” rather than the ones profiting. “Positive social change” must exist within parameters set by the institution: It should not challenge the social relations within the institution, or provide space for organizations that may vocalize injustice perpetuated by the university.

It is often tempting to categorize social and political movement into categories or sections of right/left. However, upon deeper reflection people, organizations, and institutions that seem progressive may actually be highly invested in stabilizing the old regime and legitimizing exploitation. This is simply a matter of how you frame “social justice.” I think that this is the case in Miami, or at least in my office. Our role as the “Office of Civic and Community Engagement,” and our supposed goal of “positive social change,” these values directly conflict with our position within a private, bourgeois institution of higher education.

So here’s my starting place: I plan on continuing to building on these ideas in further posts.

[hermesbowstring]

10 Reasons Why Archaeology is Like Science Fiction

Involves thinking seriously about alternative social realities

Involves thinking and rethinking the relationship between humans and technology/material culture

Makes me feel distopian

Marks its possibilities as such by situating its narratives in different moments in time

Tells us a great deal about contemporary mythologies

Is often whitewashed

Specifically, often relies on latent social-evolutionist models of social change, and hiearachical stages within this model are marked by "technological advancement"

Is often appropriated for radical counter-projects 

Is literally scientific fiction, in the sense that it is a social-scientific genre that explores the possibilities of past societies

Is frickin' awesome

Basically, all these points can be reduced to... imagination! Also, 5-7 are all the same point.

P.S. Important difference: one involves imagining people who actually existed. Who are other peoples ancestors. The other does not.

[nokkerosor-deactivated20130918]

Cholitas Luchadores: Bolivias Female Wrestlers.

The fighting cholitas see themselves as symbols of strength: Their opponents include bigotry and sexism. “My goal,” says one fighter, “is to lift up indigenous women, who have been treated with contempt.”

“We fighters carry within us a kind of fire that nothing can quench.”

[hermesbowstring]

Re Map of Native North American linguistic groups: Thanks for adding that. Since I've posted it I've had a number of people point out the things that were wrong with it that I would never have known about.

Yeah, the picture sparked a lot of really great conversation! Plus, my knowledge of Native languages outside the Southeast is really limited, so it's helpful for me, as well.

[illuminateinspire-deactivated20]

[political-linguaphile-deactivat]

The most beautiful and saddening representation of North America that I have ever seen.

[karlsparxxx-blog]

My school’s mascot is the Seminole, and people here call themselves Noles.

NO

UNLESS YOU’RE ACTUALLY SEMINOLE NATIVE.

[femmchantress]

And Seminole is also just a derogatory term invented by the Spanish for all of the Native American tribes that settled in Florida after their presence wiped out the original inhabitants. >.> It comes from a Spanish term for “Wild men”.

[hermesbowstring]

Actually, the narrative is that "Seminole" comes from cimarron, which means maroon or escaped slave. Second of all, settlers are always making up crazy stories about how the names of Indigenous ethnic groups are offensive European translations. It's some kind of twisted, psuedo-remorseful form of settler privilege that insists that white people are the agents of everything. 

Third of all, the Spanish didn't "wipe out" the Native peoples, they're still here. You probably know lots of Indigenous peoples. Some live on reservations and some do not. Most don't wear a sign saying that they're Native and they may not look like the image of an "Indian" that you have in your head. Now, I assume you're referring the Great Dying, but if you were familiar with some of the oral histories of North Florida peoples (which I wouldn't expect of anyone who went to school in the dominant culture), you'd have questions as to if this may actually have happened before Spanish settlement (European fishers, after all, rarely published their maps or voyages). While these diseases were terrible, many people survived. After settlement, Spain still didn't "wipe out" the Native peoples: while they did many awful things, the Spanish tended to live with and intermarry into the Native groups that would have them (of course, they did this with an colonial agenda). On the other hand, it was actually the English who conducted raids that led to the *temporary* abandonment of the panhandle and the US that conducted three wars that pushed the Seminoles and the Miccosukee into the Everglades and the Bahamas (where they continue to live today). In spite of all this, there are Indigenous peoples living all across Florida, whether they have official "tribal recognition" from the settler state or not.

P.S., the Seminole Tribal Government actually likes the FSU mascot. They are very proud to have resisted being conquered to this day. While I would tend to agree with the above comment about FSU culture, the world of Native representations and desires are really complex.

[dawndrawsnear]

A post I reblogged earlier got me thinking. Many atheists, myself included, see the “atheism has stolen morality from [certain religion] and claimed that it exists separately from [certain religion]” argument quite a bit.

Obviously I hardly think this is the case, and I have yet to see any proof...

[hermesbowstring]

The issue is actually an epistemological one. Your premise is positivism (which focuses on the myth of capital-"T," universal Truth), and the critique you're referring too is called social constructivism (which emphasizing the processes of making knowledge, over time, by humans in relationship to the world). For this reason, the issue is less about achieving "proof" (since the discussion is actually closer to what constitutes as "proof"), but more about the models that you use to perceive and act upon the world.  When you say that *your* morals are distinct from religion, you create an individualistic narrative that assumes the autonomy of subjects and of knowledge. This framework is incapable of accounting for the collective and historical work of culture and knowledge. That is, you ideas are formed within a specific context, in response to specific things, and premised on ideas that came before. You may not be aware of learning many of these assumptions because they are *implicit* in your culture, e.g., individualism, proof. While it is tempting to see these things as "universal" and natural representations of reality, these concepts are really quite narrow (it's just hard to know that without already knowing what exists outside of, or in slightly different forms of, these concepts). Even the words you use, such as "unbaised," "religion," and "actual," carry certain histories and implicit assumptions with them, regardless of whether you recognize it or not.

Ultimately, the issue is that you fail to acknowledge the extent to which your behavior and beliefs are learned and see yourself acting within larger histories. Yet despite this, you insist on your ability to "know" the world "better" than others and construct a false binary between scientific and other traditions of knowledge (a tradition not practiced by the people you borrow ideas from).

Also, foundational sociological texts.

[hermesbowstring]

When you ask an anti-racist to write an assessment

for a service-learning program, especially one that allegedly takes aim at oppression, you are going to get an assessment that confronts the reproduction of classism through the program.

Why is anyone surprised that this happened? Were they expecting something else to happen? Sometimes I just don't get higher education.

[hermesbowstring]

I got this in the mail today. I blocked out the company's name because otherwise I'd feel like more of a tool than I already do.

[hermesbowstring]

months later i'm still laughing.

A few weeks ago I was talking to the editor of an anthropological journal and I said that it's interesting how my work was received very differently as a presentation than as a written text.  I was talking about the flow of the narrative, but the editor just said, "Yeah, they're two different animals.  People can be more critical of written documents because they can go back over and read the parts again."  That's strange, I thought.  My impression was not that the reviewers of my manuscript were more critical than the audience of my presentation, but that they took it really literally (rather than thinking through the metaphorical elements that structured the argument).

What a non-anthropological thing for them to say.  Lol.  I guess in anthropology you don't say that writing is inherently superior, you just kinda do it.

[hermesbowstring]

"I think I get the part about decolonizing anthropology, but is it scientific?"

[hermesbowstring]

Pretending I have ethics as I work for the government and a private university

I have ethical issues.  At work I’m writing a benchmarking report retain recent college graduates.  The idea is that Miami (my city) needs to reverse the “brain drain” of smarties leaving the region and retain young professionals and entrepreneurs because the economy (specifically, the ongoing shift to the creative/information economy), so I’m researching initiatives developed in six other cities across the US that address this problem and writing a preliminary report.  My office was asked to do this by the Knight Foundation.  They’re kinda a big deal and we’re a new office, so I guess the thought process might be that it's a good chance to get our name out.  So we’re doing this preliminary report and then we’ll ask Knight for the funds to do a full study – maybe even with surveys and focus-groups – that can made formal recommendations for the city.

The thing is, I tend to think in terms of colonialism and, well, this is pretty much what colonialism looks like.  The entire rational of the project is to raise Miami up within the economic hierarchy – to strategically engage in the old struggle if establishing a place as a metropolis within the world system (or, at least, closer to the core in relation to the periphery).  The goal, then, is to invest in (what will grow into) a stronger professional and elite class.  And we do that by making Miami more attractive for the young professionals. 

What does it mean to shift a city’s resources towards materializing an “attractive” social landscape targeted for a professional and entrepreneurial class of young people (and draining these "human resources" from other places)?  Well, I guess it just means that social reality continues to be enacted through a uneven process of history (or power) in ways that disenfranchise poor people, especially if they don't have the same access to higher education.  Actually, one of the practices I’m finding in this benchmarking study is engaging students and young professionals through civic engagement (volunteering, service-learning, etc).  I have very little confidence that this will have positive social effect.  Rather, I would expect that the general thrust would be a playing out of class anxieties that effects a so-called “social justice” that ultimately reenacts and extends the process of privileged groups deciding what the lives of oppressed people should look like according to elite norms and assumptions about how reality happens.

But then again, what can Miami do besides compete to move towards the colonial core?  Wouldn’t the other option be decline?  As Judith Halberstam once said, ‘when I have only two options I try to think about what else might be possible’ (or something like that).  The entire orientation behind the “retaining graduates” concept/strategy betrays a fundamental lack of imagination – actually, scratch that, because this benchmarking study itself is an exercise in imagination – it is a flexing of a colonial imagination.  Sure, coming up with a radical alternative will probably require more work than this study and I’m not going to pretend I have "the" answer.  But the point is that desiring those radical alternatives is a feasible starting point for a process of collective imagination, just as much as this study is a process of collective imagination.  We might not have all the theories we need, but otherwise we're working with ones that we know are violent, so we might as well try.

Anyway, as I said I’m writing this post because I have ethical issues.  Should I make the report bad?  Can I even make it bad without making it also look like I did it on purpose?  Could I even, on a basic emotional level, hand a bad paper in (I certainly was trained not to!)?  Ultimately, I don’t even think that would work because even if I did (and even if I got away with it), once it was in the hands of my very capable coworker and supervisor, they’d just make it good.  Should I turn the report in and just say, “I have major ethical issues with this document and fully believe that it is part of a colonial process?”

The other day, I asked my supervisor if anything could come out of this report other than gentrification.  He told me he would be surprised if even that came out of it.  So there’s that.

[hermesbowstring]

Life in the Colonial Culture

I said that there are subjected bodies of knowledge that reproduce themselves on the margins of colonial society that have important things to say about the dominant discourse.  I said that these social memories extend farther back in time than I would have thought imaginable.  I said that entire philosophies, frameworks for reality and society predicated on entirely different assumptions, have been maintained in these spaces.  I said that what we don't know is far more important than what we do.

One person asks me how I know the people I work with are "authentic" Indians.

Another asks me about the "accuracy" of oral histories.

Whatever.

[hermesbowstring]

And then this happened...

The other day a student at the university I work at called me "bro" in an email.  This is a marked escalation from the use of "my friend" in this students' previous emails.  Just to be clear, I know I've met this student in person at one point because his name is on the sign-in sheet for an anti-oppression workshop my office ran- but otherwise I have no idea who this person is.

Oh, the life of a university administrator.