Hey there! It's me, Elæ - I'm going to caption
this myself, so it's going to be spelled right
- otherwise it most definitely would not be!
um - just want to tell you that this is like
the fourth time I'm making this video today
because I'm really trying to make sure that
it has captions for the different types of
people in this potential audience. So: here
I am, in my house, which I am so grateful
to have, um, here in Brooklyn in New York
City, today's gregorian calendar date is Friday
the 13th in the year we call 2020...that we
call a "year."
Um, and: I am thinking about the ways in which
the tools that I am lucky to have available
to me are leading me to think about the current
situation (oh, here's Ruby) that other people
may not be using or employing right now as
so much panic fills our collective body...
um, and I was just thinking about this as
an opportunity to communicate with my community
and with other people and potentially to provide
a sort of service even from my house, as long
as we have the gift of the platforms that
are currently available to us.
If you are at home today, I say hello to you,
I reach across the ether; if you are at work
today, I give gratitude whether you are there
because of precariousness that doesn't allow
you to take off of work or whether you are
there because you are in a critical service
position in hospitals or in other jobs that
are so sorely needed right now. Thank you
so much you are all doing us such a great
service right now in not being able to think
about your own needs today first.
So (I'm sorry I'm now, like, petting my cat
while I'm talking to you) - my cat is over
here... that's Ruby.
So, the first thing that I wanted to say is,
sort of a quick introduction to the idea of
a sort of a "speculative solidarity": and
so, when I think about "speculative" thinking,
to me that is the type of thinking that allows
us to utilize the tools and language available
to us but in ways that are not yet employed.
So, it means that we are utilizing the current
to go into the future and consider potentials
that we could shift into or that we might
imagine shifting into whether it was done
agentively or not.
So, a speculative solidarity in a time like
this means that I'm thinking about ways that
we can think collectively and independently
in this moment about forms of solidarity,
community formation, networking, kinship,
mutual aid, support, and how we might transform
this moment into one wherein we are able to
rebuild and shift into something different,
during and after this crisis. I see it as
potentially a great gift that only something
of this scale would really allow at this time.
Today's "episode" (since I'm going to try
to make a bunch of these) is called "Breaking
up with Capitalism" and "Relanguaging for
(r)Evolution."
So the first part, Breaking up with Capitalism,
has to do with not only "Capitalism," but
it uses the idea of a "breakup" or idea of
a "relationship" as something that we are
all in with the systems at play in our world.
And just as you might do, if you were in a
relationship with a partner or a family member
or a friend or a boss -- hopefully you have
the power to do that -- that you found to
be abusive, or that you found someone else
was in that kind of abusive relationship,
we might say to ourselves "hey," you know,
"I have to get myself out of this," #boundaries,
#selfcare, and many of us unfortunately are
not able to do that, even in relationships,
for a variety of reasons having to do with
trauma; and that's a whole other conversation.
But, in terms of the systems of financial....
the ways finances and power and the body often
work together in tandem in our world -- which
we could frame as being specifically something
that has to do with Capitalism, which is the
mode through which money and labor happens
in this particular system -- if we think about
that, we can think about being in what is
essentially an abusive relationship, a relationship
that gaslights, a relationship that attempts
to control not only your understanding of
yourself, but of your world, etc. as being
the only one that holds its logic, as opposed
to presenting its logic to you as one of a
choice of many.
Right, so, the way that this becomes so institutionally
pervasive is through media, through school,
through any form in which you get your *language*.
So, language becomes the channel by which
the body begins to be inscribed by the logic
of this system. That may not make a lot of
sense! but hopefully I'm going to break it
down for you in a way that works.
So, when newspapers, or the media, or things
that fly around on social media, videos, etc.
movies, stories, etc. use language that comes
from a capitalist understanding and we hear
it again and again and we're not really offered
alternatives we start to think that those
things just ARE the "world," instead of understanding
that those things come from a source, and
that they aren't FIXED.
And yet, we have heard them so often and they're
so much the logic that pervades every different
way that we learn and think and act and operate
-- and the ways that other people do that
and mirror back to us -- that it's hard for
us to kind of recognize that this is something
that's actually been *created,* right? Monetary
systems have also been created, etc. The way
that they work, land ownership, the idea that
one person has more than another, and is able
to have access to something and someone else
isn't, this is a system that we did actually
PRODUCE.
And so, I wanted to sort of start us out with
this idea of, like, what it would mean to
"break up" from capitalism--and of course,
like, in operation, that's very difficult
for so many of us who are precarious: meaning,
that we don't have enough resources to free
ourselves from the cycle of labor or the cycle
of finances that we find ourselves in, cycles
of debt, etc.
However, I think that there is a way to conceptually,
intellectually, and ideologically free ourselves
-- and our bodies, as well -- from Capitalism,
and that starts to be some of the speculative
work that we can start doing.
Um, and, it starts to help you step back -- almost
in the way that you try to do in meditation
-- where you are actually kind of outside
the relationship with capitalism or the kind
of system that you're in, looking AT it, as
opposed to just being IN it, and having it
act UPON you as an unwitting body.
So the first thing that I wanted to kind of
-- haha I say the "first thing" but I've already
been talking for 8 minutes! but that is just
where we are -- SO. Um, I wanted to bring
up this idea or sort of framework that Sylvia
Federici uses, I think in a very interesting
and useful way (this is from Federici's book,
CALIBAN AND THE WITCH, I think it's published
by Autonomedia but I don't have it with me
right now becuase it's in my office, where
I teach) but the idea -- and this is in a
chapter about how the body starts to be controlled
-- is that the body is capitalism's first
MACHINE, before the clock, and before the
printing press.
So, what does she mean by that? What Federici
is talking about is that, in the shift in
Western Europe from a place where (she's talking
specifically about Western Europe, and I don't
have the capacity to make this an evaluation
in every place, but I can say that a lot of
what happened in Western capitalism was then
exported, as a short thing)-- so, what's happening
in Western Europe in the time that Federici
is particularly interested in is that there
is a move from sort of a commons ownership
of land and also sort of a commons intelligence
(plant medicine, community ways of healing,
and sharing goods, resources, land, healing,
kinship networks, etc) and removing that from
a commons holding into a place of vilifying
different ways of operating against the modes
of, now, top down land-ownership, the production
of a labor force, (wherein the body is now
laboring for someone else, and in order to
provide yourself with resources you need to
labor for a certain amount of time or a certain
amount of productivity in order to gain the
resources that you need in order to survive).
So this move is one that people did not participate
in willingly, and so this whole process was
one wherein people had to really be coerced
and forced (often violently) into what would
become a labor body, which we talk about as
sort of a "biopolitics," which is sort of
the political relationship to the body. So
we get moved into this biopolitical state
wherein the peasantry who have had their own
relationship to the land and their own relationship
to resources -- and to their time and to what
they do with their bodies and the way that
they interact with their world -- there was
a lot of resistance (obviously) and so what
happens is there was a process of creating
all of this literature, all this narrative,
around the evil of the body, and the ways
in which people who were working with plant
medicines were anti the church, and so in
this way the church and state make this attack
on these old ways of being.
So when we talk about the body being Capitalism's
first machine we talk about it as this process
by which we convince ourselves that the body
was this laboring body and also that we needed
to ignore what was happening in the body in
order to be our "best" selves. So this continues
on through Cartesian thinking, Descartes and
other philosophers wherein Western philosophy
starts to be a space in which the sort of
subjugation of the body and repression of
its urges and repression of its needs becomes
synonymous with the "better" capacities of
the "mind," which was erroneously, as result,
divided from the way we understood the body
for a really long time.
And so, when we, in our own lives are participating
in capitalism, we're doing so as part of a
long history of the subjugation of the body
and its needs, and a sort of dialectic, this
kind of divorce and binary thinking that's
been set up and passed down to us, about how
we are weak or not being the best that we
can if we aren't, actually, ignoring the needs
of the body, in order to participate in the
systems of Capitalism, ie, "WORK," ie "PRODUCTION,"
ie, "EARNING" to earn your keep, etc etc.
The whole problem with this, of course, is
that there is no "earning your keep," without
Capitalism. There is no need for currency
in order to acquire food without this system
in play, right, and so what is so important
is that part of it is, how are we LANGUAGING
ourselves, right? So how can we use language
as a way to start moving out of this ideological
trap that we're in with capitalism? How can
we use speculative thinking, as well as a
selfhacking mechanism, for changing the way
that we talk about ourselves, our lives, and
other people, so that we can start to really
hold on to these fissures and break them and
start to see how much this has a hold on us.
So, as we take time, right now, to consider
what it means to care for ourselves and others
in a time of great disruption and illness,
and when we see the systems of capitalism
are so so so so so deeply broken, the institutions
are so deeply broken that in New York City
we can't close the public schools (or they're
saying you can't close the public schools)
because we can't feed the homeless children
that rely on them, or, where other work is
having a slow down and people are being asked
to work from home as opposed to just resting,
or taking time to care for their families
and set up a contingency plan because so essential
is the idea that capitalism moves forward
so that the ability to care for ourselves
is visualized as part of this system wherein
money comes "down" because we work, as opposed
to there being resources are actually not
connected to "work."
And so some of the ways that I have been watching
this play out in my own community are these:
what does it mean to consider yourself to
be doing a thing that is not-working? Right?
What is that *state*? If you can only consider
what is happening when you're "not-working"
to be in relationship to "work," then this
is kind of a hint that you've gotten sucked
in by this ideology, right?
Very similar is the idea that if you see a
person who is not partnered or coupled as
"single" the word "single" (which is in relationship
to the not having as a partner) as opposed
to just being a person; the personhood doesn't
have anything to do with couplehood or with
the ways in which we form relationships, and
yet the way that we talk about it is about
the lack thereof because's its so institutionally
normalized.
Same thing for the body versus the disabled
body or the crip body or the mad body, right,
when we use the word "normal" to talk about
an "able" body with certain characteristics
or certain capacities, we create a verbal
way of narrating the body that is actually
inaccurate.
And so, when we use these words around labor,
and we say, oh, we're all on "vacation" -- we're
not "on vacation"-- what does it mean to think
about this time as a different time, what
does it mean to recognize that the systems
are not set up to actually allow everyone
to stop working and care for themselves. To
stop "working" and and produce networks of
emergency strategies for people who will be
without homes, people who will be without
food, people who will be without connections,
elders who will be without people to get in
touch with them -- if this isn't slowing down,
and if the government is spending its money
on bailing out companies and banks instead
of giving it to people -- money that was "not
available" -- this should give you the sense
that you are in this model, and it does not
have to be.
So, how can we use this moment to kind of
go, WOAH, and pull ourselves way back -- what
does it mean to tell yourself, right now,
(this came up in my facebook yesterday)--
what does it mean if you're at home and you're
supposed to be ("supposed", right, even this
word) -- someone has *asked you to work,*--
and you don't feel like you CAN? What does
that mean? Are you getting down on yourself?
Are you thinking, "wow, I'm so DISTRACTED!"
I'm so "UNFOCUSED"-- those were words that
I was hearing.
What if it's not distraction? What if it's
not "lack of focus"? what if it is actually
the total opposite, which is your body is
trying to give you information about where
it needs to put ITS focus? That your world
is giving you information about where we,
collectively, need to put OUR focus? Right?
What is the purpose right now, of moving "forward"
with our "jobs"? Obviously, there is a certain
type of breakdown that happens if everyone
just anarchically stops laboring, but the
point is not to stop doing things in service
of ourselves and each other. The purpose is
to say that the WAYS that we do that are obviously
broken, they've CAUSED this situation, and
so to desperately try to fit it into these
new modes is not necessarily really what we
need right now.
So, who's going to stand up and say, "I need
to reconsider what it even means to be in
my body. So many people are about to die."
They still want you to focus primarily on
"working" for someone else.
So... yeah. That's Part I. Who knows what
I just said? I have to go back and type it
all! [Note: if someone has a great way of
taking auto-captions, I have done so much
research and really am coming up short, so
transcribed this manually....]
I'd like to talk a little bit, maybe tomorrow
or the next time I make a video, about a speculative
SOMATICS, about how you can be working with
your BODY right now to deal with the very
well founded anxiety that you're undoubtedly
having and I am as well: what you can doing
to stay from being isolated, how you can help
others in your community that really are at
greater risk than you perhaps, or if you are
someone at great risk, how you can communicate
that?
We're up to almost a 20 minute video! But
I just wanted to put this out there, hopefully
it helps someone, I'm thinking of you, I'm
thinking of me, I'm thinking of what all of
us need, and I'm hoping for a little bit of
revolution!
(blows kiss)
xx
