Go Forth (Vol. 38)
Go Forth is a series that offers a look into the publishing industry and contemporary small-press literature. See more of the series.
An Interview with Cassandra Troyan
I recently read Cassandra Troyan’s KILL MANUAL and quickly found myself loving it. Her writing, described by Blake Butler, “takes the Sade-ian end of the oversharing shtick, turning one’s own private human pain into a diorama reflecting the environments and brains that birthed it.” Her books are THRONE OF BLOOD (Solar Luxuriance, 2013), BLACKEN ME BLACKEN ME, GROWLED (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2014), KILL MANUAL (Artifice Books, 2014) and the chapbook HATRED OF WOMEN (Solar Luxuriance, 2014). Forthcoming in 2016 is a chapbook from Kenning Editions’ Ordinance series, entitled “FREEDOM & PROSTITUTION.” Do yourself a favor and check out her work—she’s a writer to watch.
—Brandon Hobson
BRANDON HOBSON: At the beginning of Kill Manual, you say that pain is a type of love. The narrator in Hatred of Women also seems to be interested in this same idea. At one point she talks about weaponized masculinity and the sexual assault by police officers, followed by the lines: “Ma’am I’m gonna need you to step to the side / Ma’am I’m gonna need you to stop filming me / Ma’am I’m gonna need you to stop filming me unless it’s my cock.” Can you talk a bit more about your interest in this?
CASSANDRA TROYAN: I think of weaponized masculinity as an atavistic turn to recover a primal essence construed as male since transgender, non-binary, and non-conforming folks, along with queerness and intersectional feminism have threatened the security of men’s hegemony by calling into question the validity of a sexed and gendered class society. (Or, why do feminists have no sense of humor?) In cultural phenomena this manifests as: obsessions with 1950’s American culture (Mad Men), forms of sport and exercise privileging survival-like skills (CrossFit, Tough Mudder, The Paleo Diet), Libertarian ideology, ammunition hoarding, along with the near sovereign status of the military and police (including the militarization of the police), which Foucault would see as an extension of “pastoral power.”
(On a side-note, this is not to create false binaries between the cerebral/physical, feminine/masculine, since I am personally invested in fitness and learning different techniques as a generalized practice in the diversification of all skills, more in lines with something like a post-left materialist dexterity rather than pure brute force. My critique is concerned with when these practices adopt a reductionist purview which reproduces forms of violent engagement uncritically or views their practice as an end in of itself.)
A study by the ACLU in June 2014 tracked the rise of military policing through the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, which has funneled paramilitary weapons into US police departments. It is estimated that 500 law enforcement agencies have received Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles built to withstand armor-piercing roadside bombs. Although the most deadly result is not the weapons themselves but a psychological attunement to a “Warrior Mindset” which urges officers to “Steel Your Battlemind,” defined as “a warrior’s inner strength to face fear and adversity during combat with courage. It is the will to persevere and win. It is resilience.” This is presented in SWAT team trainings where most raids are taking place in people’s homes for low-level drug investigations. Naturally, this allows for more unchecked brutality and violence to be waged against black and brown communities even though they have been harassed and killed by the police long before the integration of military tactics and weapons. The Battlemind psychically extends into all domains of daily life by the totalizing authority of the state and the subjects it produces.
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