Observations: difference and repetition
« Fais avec moi »
This is an invitation to detachment.
But I warn you: If you are attached to any call-to-action, my invitation may make you defensive. That’s not my intention. This invitation is not an either/or. These are just some words and stuff. Low theory. It is time to “revel in the domain of failure” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 27).
Attempts at political mobilization that centre identities and involve identarian affirmation (“I am this, what are/aren’t you?”, and “I do this, what do/don’t you do?”) can only ever redistribute power within existing power structures. Anti-revolution. Often, we inadvertently reinforce the same power we set out to subvert. Redistribution within existing structures — why bother?
Only you know the reasons you still try. Elsewhere these issues are theorized as problematics of identity politics.
Detachment, for me, involves an attempt at writing more accessibly. I remain receptive to hearing that I have failed. And, until someone chimes in and says I need to shut up: all I can do is try. First, I need to get out of formation.
Can you picture the popular political graphic of a large fish made up of many smaller fish? The text reads simply “Organize,” and it is a provocation.
Next, do you remember early-2000s Bushisms, including condemnation for a water dam project in Michigan state. He said: “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
Structural power has a close relationship to categorization. How are we reinforcing those structures? Community organizing that is identity-affirming is also, almost always, vulnerability-enhancing. How do you prevent the formation of a “like you” category for political fodder? Organization into categories (like schools of fish) allows us to be netted all at once.
If I were writing theory I might ask: Beyond reifying structures of disempowerment, how does participation in these structures also limit possibility? Do other options exist beyond the call to “organize”?
Of all the possible shapes to take — why take the shape of a fish?
Don’t answer the question. I am not advocating for identity deconstruction. This invitation to detachment produces a lifelong process for which I am not an ideal template. I am not your teacher.
As Deleuze (1994, p. 23) said:
The movement of the swimmer does not resemble that of the wave; in particular, the movements of the swimming instructor which we reproduce on the sand bear no relation to the movements of the wave, which we learn to deal with only by grasping the former in practice as signs. That is why it is so difficult to say how someone learns, which means that there is something amorous - but also something fatal - about all education.
We learn nothing from those who say: 'Do as I do'. Our only teachers are those who tell us to ‘do with me'”
Do with me… Next time you can’t sleep, write a list of the things you are attached to.
I write lists compulsively. I fill pages and volumes — a long form person, by nature. Gold pen dripped onto the cover of a black journal reads “DETACH” and it contains an archive of failed efforts. It’s unending. Now, as public performance of the usually-private, I transcribe verbatim:
Practice detachment from the concept of “your” politics as anything externally identifiable, claimable, or capable of being categorized. Get out of formation. Refuse to organize political discussions as “I am this, what are/aren’t you?” ... and learn about refusal as a political practice connected to your identities. Let down your titles. Commit to learning your place. Develop a language for difference. Don’t cite your politics in biographies of 350-characters or less. Do (organize, if you must) and also detach. Relationality involves fumbling and failure far more than purity or perfection. Reject the pedestal and the podium. Feel contagious. Embrace contamination and practice abundant care. Grey-it-out and resist the never ending pull to either/or with a determined both/and. Revel in the rot like, "What grows here?" and "How?" Be imperfect, and make room for others at the great table of imperfection. Raise a toast. Work to find resonance wherever you first want to yell out in alarm: “DIFFERENCE!” ... Repeat.
« Fais avec moi »
Now what?