Toward a Critique of our Identities: a response to the drama.

Toward A Critique Of Our Identities.

This short writing was prompted by the article titled: Febuary 1st: A Black Bloc Gone Wrong, as well as by a number of commenters on that article, Feb 4th's Anarchist General Assembly, as well as by the authors of the response letter and various other conversations had over the past few weeks with a number of our comrades. I am not taking sides on the issue but am calling both sides out. This is one reaction and critique of the demand for an adherence to the identity politics brought fourth by the letters and comments and members of our tendency (anarchist) which is seemingly being forced on the anarchist milieu as a whole. I understand that I maybe long winded, that most of these ideas may be taken from elsewhere, and that people who come from backgrounds in oppressed social positions may resent some of my critiques but I want to assure those of you who will read this that I'm writing in hopes to improve our own analysis, to inject my own perspective, and to further encourage debate, dialogue, and growth within Atlanta's Anarchist milieu.

In reading, I saw a lot of people broadly equating anarchist cis-gendered white men with violence, oppressive behavior, abuse, rape, and a danger to the community. I've grown used to navigating these stigmas as they pop up time and time again weather it be from the mouths of one of my own comrades or your typical career activist. The first time I heard this, to be honest, it hurt and what I heard was met with resent if only because I knew that I would be typified a 'man' yet I don't harbor the desired to abuse, mistreat, or dominate other people. I feel safe in writing that the same can be said for my bepenised friends in this milieu. In fact, I've always made it a point to avoid social circles and relationships built on posturing and machismo and social competition. But, as I encounter this dogma every day, the reasons for my anger have changed and I can now see this dogma for what I believe it is: A litany for the feminist version of the ideology of victimization- an ideology which promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently dependence on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from the authorities) as well as a blindness to all realities and interpretations of experience that do not conform to one's view of oneself as a victim.

I won't deny that there is some reality behind the ideology of victimization. I myself am poor, would not be socially typified as white, nor do I identify as straight and I have experienced my own fare share of hostilities stemming from where society has chosen to box me in. Frankly, no ideology could work if it had no basis whatsoever in reality. We have all spent our entire lives in a society which is based on the repression and exploitation of our desires, our passions, and our individuality, often binding our subjectivities to identities we often find hard to escape, but it is surely absurd to embrace defeat by defining ourselves in terms of our victimization. An affirmation of that which ties us to our oppressive social relations rather than it's negation.

As a means of social control, social institutions reinforce the feeling of victimization in each of us, disempowering us, reminding us of our roll and social position while focusing these feelings in directions that reinforce dependence on these very social institutions. The media bombards us with stories of crime, imminent collapse, political and corporate corruption, powerlessness, racial and gender strife, scarcity and war. While these tales often have a basis in reality, they are presented quite clearly to reinforce fear and to disempower. For those of us who already doubt the media, we are served up a whole slew of 'radical' ideologies--all containing a grain of real perception, but all blind to whatever does not fit into their ideological structures. Each one of these ideologies reinforces the ideology of victimization and focuses the energy of individuals away from an examination of society in its totality and of their role in reproducing it. Both the media and all versions of ideological radicalism reinforce the idea that we are victimized by that which is 'outside', by the Other, and that social structures--the family, the cops, the law, therapy and support groups, education, 'radical' organizations or anything else that can reinforce a sense of dependence--are there to protect us. If society did not produce these mechanisms- including the structures of false, ideological, partial opposition- to protect itself, we might just examine society in its totality and come to recognize its dependence upon our activity to reproduce it. Then, every chance we get, we might refuse our roles as dependent/victim of society. But the emotions, attitudes, and modes of thought evoked by the ideology of victimization make such a reversal of perspective very difficult.

Those who are allowed to act and react are determined via our milieu's own oppression olympics. An all to familiar contest in which varying social groupings compete for recognition and power over each other. This is the result of disempowering and the false scarcity presented to us as fact by capital. Worse than living in a social reality that pits every subjectivity for themselves, we are instead supposed to root for our team be it queer, black, trans, worker, or puerto rican reaffirming our own powerless social positions instead of emancipating our bodies and potentialities from them.

In accepting the ideology of victimization in any form, we choose to live in fear. The people throwing around terms like "man-archist" in an attempt to delegitimize a group that has already openly admitted to being made up of and organized by majority women and queer militants were most likely feminist, people who saw their act as a radical defiance of patriarchal oppression. But such proclamations, in fact, merely add to a climate of fear that already exists. Instead of giving women and queer people, as individuals a feeling of strength, acknowledging their agency and emancipatory potentialities, the fact that women and queer identified people too can respond to violence with violence, it reinforces the idea that women and queer people are essentially victims, and those who read it, even if they consciously reject the dogma behind it, probably walk the streets more fearfully. The ideology of victimization that permeates so much feminist discourse can be found in some form in gay liberation, racial/national liberation, class war and damn near every other 'radical' ideology. Fear of an actual, immediate, readily identified threat to an individual can motivate intelligent action to eradicate the threat, but the fear created by the ideology of victimization is a fear of forces both too large and too abstract for the individual to deal with. It ends up becoming a climate of fear, suspicion and paranoia which makes the mediations which are the network of social control seem necessary and even good.

It is this seemingly overwhelming climate of fear that creates the sense of weakness, the sense of essential victimhood, in individuals. While it is true that various ideological "liberationists" often bluster with militant rage, it rarely goes beyond to the point of actually threatening power. Instead, they 'demand' (read "militantly beg") that those they define as their oppressors grant them their 'liberation'. Although this can easily be pointed to in just about any liberal advocacy group, NGO, and activist formation, we can also see this after groups of militants such as those in our very own milieu get together. There is no question that at most meetings and workshops I attend, men tend to talk more than women. But I've yet to see anyone attempt to silence or stop women from speaking, and I haven't noticed any lack of respect being show to women who do speak up. Yet, the accusation has become an all to familiar one of 'men' dominating the discussions and keeping 'women' from speaking. The orator often 'demands' (again, read "militantly begs") that men make sure that they gave women space to speak. In other words, to grant the 'rights' of the oppressed--an attitude which, by implication, accepts the role of man as oppressor and woman as victim. There certainly have been meetings and workshops where certain individuals did dominate the discussions, but a person who is acting from the strength of their individuality will deal with such a situation by immediately confronting it as it occurs and will deal with the people involved as individuals. The need to put such situations into an ideological context and to rent the individuals involved as social roles, turning the real, immediate experience into abstract categories is a sign that one has chosen to be weak, to be a victim, and have abandoned the possibility of confrontation and thus emancipation. Embracing weakness puts one in the absurd position of having to beg one's oppressor to grant one's liberation--guaranteeing that one will never be free to be anything but a victim.

A reversal of this has also become all to familiar in our milieu. Women who for whatever reason do not want to speak in large groups are called out and "encouraged" (read: shamed) into speaking up while their male counterparts can comfortably sit silently without ever raising a suspicion. How many times has any one of us been involved in a conversation dealing with oppression and resistance where a specific person was singled out and solicited for information or an opinion not based on respect for that person's ideas but as a result of the tokenization of their identity. Likewise, progressive organizations are rightfully pressured to feel that it is their responsibility to include women but instead of opening up space for people who identify as women to organize and act (ie: empowering) they generally "encourage" (read: shame) the women already involved into taking on rolls they originally had no interest in--not because they are the right ones for the job but because they happen to have a vagina thus creating a cycle of tokenization that rarely leads to self empowerment and certainly never to emancipation.

Like all ideologies, the varieties of the ideology of victimization are forms of fake consciousness. Accepting the social role of victim--in whatever one of its many forms--is choosing to not even create one's life for oneself or to explore one's real relationships to the social structures. All of the partial liberation movements--feminism, gay liberation, racial liberation, workers movements and so on--define individuals in terms of their social roles. Because of this, these movements not only do not include a reversal of perspectives which breaks down social roles and allows individuals to create a praxis built on their own passions and desires; they actually work against such a reversal of perspective. The 'liberation' of a social role to which the individual remains subject. But the essence of these social roles within the framework of these 'liberation' ideologies is victimhood. So the litanies of wrongs suffered must be sung over and over to guarantee the 'victims' never forget that is what they are. These 'radical' liberation movements help to guarantee that the climate of fear never disappears, and that individuals continue to see themselves weak and to see their strength as lying in the social roles which are, in fact, the source of their victimization. In this way, these movements and ideologies act to prevent the possibility of a potent revolt against all authority and all social roles.

If I may be so bold as to pull from Marx, it was his opinion that the proletariat would emancipate itself and bring down class society not by asserting it's roll as proletarians and workers as the militant unionists of old attempted to do but by abolishing itself and in doing so abolishing class society. The syndicalist strategy of the early twentieth century although encouraging and impressive, failed miserably not because it looked to liberate workers from the fields and factories but simply liberate the social roll of "worker" from capital; that is, liberate work from the capitalist and render it into the hands of the worker all the while forcing the individuals who people that identity to remain its subjects. Since the 1960s this failure has been relived time and time again through the many liberation struggles that have attempted to assert their roll within oppressive social relations rather than abolish them in a way that leaves room for open play between subjectivities.

True revolt is never safe. Those who choose to define themselves in terms of their role as a victim do not dare to try total revolt, because it would threaten the safety of their roles. But, as Nietzsche said: "The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is to live dangerously!" Only a conscious rejection of the ideology of victimization, a refusal to live in fear and weakness, and an acceptance of the strength of our own passions and desires of ourselves as individuals who are greater than, and so capable of living beyond, all social roles, as well as the power found in our collectivity and collaboration can provide a basis for total rebellion against society. Such a rebellion is certainly fueled, in part, by rage, but not the strident, resentful, frustrated rage of the victim which motivates feminists, racial liberationists, gay liberationists and the like to 'demand' their 'rights' from the authorities. Rather it is the rage of our desires unchained, the return of the repressed in full force and undisguised. But more essentially, total revolt is fueled by a spirit of free play and of joy in adventure--by a desire to explore every possibility for intense life which society tries to deny us. For all of us who want to live fully and without constraint, the time is past when we can tolerate living like shy mice inside the walls. Every form of the ideology of victimization moves us to live as shy mice. Instead, let's be crazed & laughing monsters, joyfully tearing down the walls of society and creating lives of wonder and amazement for ourselves.

Again… I could care less about whatever spat may have occurred between the individuals quarreling in the atlanta Anarchist community but if your goal is anti-oppression (and the language used in both letters clearly point to an anti-oppression praxis) you might want to consider dropping the assertive identity politic in exchange for total negation and social war but please note that this is a recommendation originating from someone who identifies as an insurrectionist, post structuralist, and a participant in many'a black bloc.

We're all anarchists.