“When I think about bina­ries, I think of how much the West loves sys­tems of codes and cat­e­gories. Every­thing must fit into neat lit­tle dis­crete boxes and there is no room for play or flu­id­ity. I think about the vio­lence that goes into pro­duc­ing, per­pet­u­at­ing and ren­der­ing those boxes unques­tion­able, be that vio­lence of the obstetrician’s knife, the vio­lence of the prison indus­trial com­plex, or the vio­lence of col­o­niza­tion. It is dif­fi­cult to think of col­o­niza­tion with­out these bound­aries, bina­ries, and sys­tems of cod­ing. Col­o­niza­tion at its essence seems to be about the cod­ing of indige­nous bod­ies and knowl­edges into West­ern sys­tems of clas­si­fi­ca­tion through mate­r­ial and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal violence.”

When I posted this on the dis­cus­sion board, it was in the con­text of the Healthy Planet exhibit, the nar­ra­tive of which cre­ated bound­aries between the Global North and Global South and between nation-states and cul­tures– to make a point about health, devel­op­ment, cul­ture and food. Lack­ing from the exhibit, beyond it’s absence of any kind of crit­i­cal analy­sis,  was any sense of move­ment– every­thing was very fixed into these bound­aries and if there was move­ment, it was things being exported from the West to the rest of the world: brands, foods, etc: glob­al­iza­tion, McDonaldiza­tion: eco­nomic neo-colonialism.

How DO we think about decol­o­niza­tion in this con­text: the con­text of bound­ary pro­duc­tion and sys­tems of clas­si­fi­ca­tion on a global level? I catch myself think­ing in bina­ries con­stantly. Things are. Or they are not. Cer­tain things are good; oth­ers are shit. It is dif­fi­cult to think about col­o­niza­tion and glob­al­iza­tion with­out hav­ing this very vis­ceral reac­tion to the vio­lence in both. And to see one’s self impli­cated in this is trou­ble­some, to put it extra­or­di­nar­ily mildly. It is one thing to think we are all indige­nous to some­where and quite another to think about my ances­tors com­ing over on the Mayflower. To locate one’s self at this nexus of priv­i­lege on a global scale…

Is decol­o­niza­tion the removal of bound­aries? The dis­mem­ber­ment of sys­tems of clas­si­fi­ca­tion? No. When I think about decolonization’s res­o­nances, I think about envi­ron­men­tal pas­toral rhetoric– the return to this bucolic time before indus­tri­al­iza­tion, before peo­ple, before col­o­niza­tion. And I feel like within the con­text of envi­ron­men­tal­ism, it rings espe­cially bull­shit– there never was a myth­i­cal past pre-people pre-degradation that we can return to, espe­cially since this par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive has a ten­dency to erase indige­nous peo­ples when told by white envi­ros. we don’t have access to that past and every attempt to tell it is steeped in nos­tal­gia and pol­i­tics. To return to decol­o­niza­tion, I feel like there is some­thing sim­i­lar but not analagous– we don’t have access to a pre-colonial time, we can’t rebuild the Amer­i­cas circa 1491 and indeed that desire can lead us to some geno­ci­dal places. Instead when I think seri­ously about decol­o­niza­tion, I think about a third syn­cretic option: the dis­rup­tion of bina­ries in a much more sub­tle way.

I think rev­o­lu­tion­ary rhetoric is shit on a cer­tain level. There will be no rev­o­lu­tion. There will be no lib­er­a­tion as this tele­l­og­i­cal end point; the end of his­tory, the grand sweep­ing vio­lent ush­er­ing in of a thou­sand year reign of social jus­tice. The rev­o­lu­tion, the lib­er­a­tion is a process, is the strug­gle itself, is you and me talk­ing, is tiny acts of resis­tance now and for­ever. This is not to say that cap­i­tal­ism wont crum­ble at some point nor that we aren’t liv­ing in inter­est­ing times, nor to dis­re­gard rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle here and abroad. But I think its very much a sim­i­lar thing with decol­o­niza­tion. Decol­o­niza­tion is a process. Decol­o­niza­tion is not some­thing sta­tic. It exists within these West­ern boundary/binary/classification sys­tems and yet at the same time apart, resis­tant. To build resis­tance within the belly of the beast, that is per­haps the truly rad­i­cal move. But at the same time, that is such an ambiva­lent posi­tion and so much ten­sion to hold within one’s self. I think that is what I was try­ing to get at in my paper for Fem Search Meth.

I also think about the ways that bound­aries play out on a very micro scale, sep­a­rat­ing peo­ple from one another through these rei­fied, “self-evident” bound­aries. Reach­ing across insti­tu­tion­al­ized hier­ar­chies is a truly human ges­ture but its also incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult. But that is part of decol­o­niza­tion, per­haps. Thank you so much for an excel­lent quarter.

When I think about his­tor­i­cal trauma, I think about trans­mis­sion of affect. I just fin­ished this book for another class that cen­tered on the role of emo­tion and affect in rad­i­cal orga­niz­ing dur­ing the begin­ning of the AIDS epi­demic. The author, draw­ing from Mas­sumi and a bunch of other affect stud­ies the­o­rist, explains affect as a non-conscious somatic response to out­side forces that exists before and dur­ing its artic­u­la­tion (to ones self or to oth­ers) as emo­tion. So as an inter­per­sonal exam­ple, feel­ing someone’s vibe or feel­ing the ten­sion in a room is affect. When affect is artic­u­lated, there is always an excess of it that resists artic­u­la­tion or even con­scious under­stand­ing. Affect is messy, multi-directional, and inter­per­sonal. How this relates to his­tor­i­cal trauma is per­haps in its trans­mis­sion. The suf­fer­ing of oth­ers, one’s loved ones, one’s fam­ily, one’s com­mu­nity, the land itself, has weight of its own that resists artic­u­la­tion but is deeply felt.

In many ways, we expe­ri­ence the world as the sto­ries that we tell about it, about our­selves, and about oth­ers. Nar­ra­tiv­ity of the self is a cru­cial part of many forms of psy­chother­apy. One can imag­ine absorb­ing the impacts of his­tor­i­cal trauma through the sto­ries told by fam­ily and com­mu­nity mem­bers or through the sto­ries the dom­i­nant cul­ture tells about those it leaves in its wake. Part of these sto­ries or of the trans­mis­sion of these sto­ries is the affec­tual response that accom­pa­nies them but can­not be made part of the sto­ries, that belongs to the body. Bod­ies them­selves tell sto­ries that escape artic­u­la­tion not just in that they absorb the impacts of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age but in that they con­tain the excess of affect that trans­mits trauma.

“That is the trick­ery of the witch­craft. They want us to believe…”

Decon­tex­tu­al­ized like this, this prompt makes me think about the amount of self-deception nec­es­sary in sus­tain­ing an unex­am­ined life of priv­i­lege and inac­tion in a self-destructive, mas­sively top heavy cul­ture of death, poised to come crash­ing down around our shoul­ders at any moment. There is sleight of hand in obscur­ing inter­lock­ing sys­tems of oppres­sion but there is also will­ful belief.

On the one hand, per­haps it refers to witch­craft: the culture-wide per­for­mance involved in sus­tain­ing a vision of “the West” as coher­ent, just, ratio­nal, demo­c­ra­tic. Or  the ide­ol­ogy that obscures the inequitable work­ings of cap­i­tal­ist eco­nomic sys­tem in con­junc­tion with var­i­ous cul­tural and insti­tu­tional sys­tems of mak­ing “isms” simul­ta­ne­ously pro­duc­tive and invis­i­ble. Or the dif­fu­sion of a matrix of power that inter­acts that pro­duces and acts upon var­i­ous dif­fer­ent sub­jects. This is all witchcraft.

On the other hand, per­haps it refers to the witch­craft that ensures we remain invested in the sta­tus quo in so far as we can­not con­ceive of some­thing else, some­thing fea­si­ble. Or, as I am often caught, if we can con­ceive of some­thing else, some utopian vision of lib­er­a­tion or an end to strug­gle but find our­selves too woven into our own web of cyn­i­cism and dis­trust of the state, left­ist alter­na­tives, and our­selves: a posi­tion equally apo­lit­i­cal. In this way cyn­i­cism can often be a crutch that dis­avows a more ten­able posi­tion. It’s also a decid­edly white mas­culin­ist posi­tion and, hon­estly, fuck that. I’d like to think I grew out of this posi­tion years ago but in my weaker moments, I find myself think­ing that John Zerzan, Der­rick Jensen, and Ted Kaczyn­ski might have their redeem­ing qualities.