A well deserved critique
I am an anarchist, a radical feminist, and an anti-oppression activist (and yes, these positions can overlap in different ways).
However, I am not beyond self-critique.
You see, the more I have come to understand oppression mechanics and see their extent, the more I have become familiar with historical resistance to justice (in a general sense and not just in a juridical justice one), and the more I have actually experienced that resistance in my life, the more I developed a very complex and mixed feeling of Anger and Love. Anger at complacency towards injustices and resistance to openness. Love at a my fellow human beings whose felicity brings me joy, and whose harming hurts me. I do not want to get poetic here, I am just trying as best I can to describe how I feel [and since I need to get back to work as quickly as possible, I cannot dwell to long on finding the right words and phrasing to convey those feelings].
Unfortunately, my impatience (or «our», because I am not alone in this), coupled with the dimming of my hope had started to weigh on me lately (up to the «epiphany» moment, that is). I can see there is something very dangerous to loosing (all) hope and becoming utterly cynical. And it has different results depending on whether we are on the right, on the center, on the left or on the left of lefts. When we are on the left of lefts, we tend to grow a more-radical-than-thou and anti-fun attitude that proves to be more harmful than anything else. Lots of us also tend to lump up anything that is bad and oppressive (no matter what its degree or shade of grey is) in the utterBad category. For instance, many radical leftists and anarchist posit that there is no difference between Obama and McCain. Sadly and ironically enough, this is binary thinking, one of the main tools of oppression (although some power positions are, indeed, binary).
Of course, that lumping of shades of bad into utterbad comes partly from historical experience. Too often in the past, radical activists have sided with reformists in the fight against injustices and their actions gradually became diluded and their effectiveness eventually dwindled. As long as we will not work on the root causes of a problem, we will stay mired forever in putting plasters on bobos. However, staying alert at the cost of fun undermines the very objective for which we fight: more love, equality, and happiness. I don't know how we can taste happiness with grim faces. Or how we can imagine that after being all grimmy with staying alert and fighting, we will, all of a sudden, become happy. As if the opening gates of Revolution were like the opening gates of Heaven.
In his essay Some cyonide to go with that whine? Obama's victory and the rage of the barbiturate left, that you can find on his red room blog, Tim Wise nails it pretty well.
Fortunately, we are not the Borg and some of us do have fun. But we should all heed the words of Emma Goldman, who was herself an anarchist:
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (1931, p. 56)
* This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants:
If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming.
This is but a perspective from one single activist. Many others are aware of the importance of fun and I presume many others could provide intesting thoughts on this.
I guess the fear lots of us have - at least it is the fear I have - when we insert the fun component, is that fun be taken even more often as an excuse for prejudice than it already is. For instance all the racist, sexist, heterosexist humor that are excused away as «only being jokes». All the sexist and racist and heterosexist imagery, songs, movies (or components of movies) that are minimized as «just» being funny. Because «we know how much anarchists, feminists or anti-racists can be "humorless" or "funless"». I fear our stressing of heeding the importance of fun can be construed, by lots of people as being allowed complacency and prejudice.
How can we go around this. My bet is that we try to show that it is possible to have lots of fun without prejudiced humor. This, is just an example, and wow does he make me laugh! :D
Cultivating non-prejudiced fun is precious. It allows us some breaks and we can even mix it with activism! :D
...as usual I wrote far more than I first wanted, and I did not even mention all the nuances I wanted to bring forth. But hey, I need to go have fun correcting my students copies :P
However, I am not beyond self-critique.
You see, the more I have come to understand oppression mechanics and see their extent, the more I have become familiar with historical resistance to justice (in a general sense and not just in a juridical justice one), and the more I have actually experienced that resistance in my life, the more I developed a very complex and mixed feeling of Anger and Love. Anger at complacency towards injustices and resistance to openness. Love at a my fellow human beings whose felicity brings me joy, and whose harming hurts me. I do not want to get poetic here, I am just trying as best I can to describe how I feel [and since I need to get back to work as quickly as possible, I cannot dwell to long on finding the right words and phrasing to convey those feelings].
Unfortunately, my impatience (or «our», because I am not alone in this), coupled with the dimming of my hope had started to weigh on me lately (up to the «epiphany» moment, that is). I can see there is something very dangerous to loosing (all) hope and becoming utterly cynical. And it has different results depending on whether we are on the right, on the center, on the left or on the left of lefts. When we are on the left of lefts, we tend to grow a more-radical-than-thou and anti-fun attitude that proves to be more harmful than anything else. Lots of us also tend to lump up anything that is bad and oppressive (no matter what its degree or shade of grey is) in the utterBad category. For instance, many radical leftists and anarchist posit that there is no difference between Obama and McCain. Sadly and ironically enough, this is binary thinking, one of the main tools of oppression (although some power positions are, indeed, binary).
Of course, that lumping of shades of bad into utterbad comes partly from historical experience. Too often in the past, radical activists have sided with reformists in the fight against injustices and their actions gradually became diluded and their effectiveness eventually dwindled. As long as we will not work on the root causes of a problem, we will stay mired forever in putting plasters on bobos. However, staying alert at the cost of fun undermines the very objective for which we fight: more love, equality, and happiness. I don't know how we can taste happiness with grim faces. Or how we can imagine that after being all grimmy with staying alert and fighting, we will, all of a sudden, become happy. As if the opening gates of Revolution were like the opening gates of Heaven.
In his essay Some cyonide to go with that whine? Obama's victory and the rage of the barbiturate left, that you can find on his red room blog, Tim Wise nails it pretty well.
Fortunately, we are not the Borg and some of us do have fun. But we should all heed the words of Emma Goldman, who was herself an anarchist:
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (1931, p. 56)
* This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants:
If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming.
This is but a perspective from one single activist. Many others are aware of the importance of fun and I presume many others could provide intesting thoughts on this.
I guess the fear lots of us have - at least it is the fear I have - when we insert the fun component, is that fun be taken even more often as an excuse for prejudice than it already is. For instance all the racist, sexist, heterosexist humor that are excused away as «only being jokes». All the sexist and racist and heterosexist imagery, songs, movies (or components of movies) that are minimized as «just» being funny. Because «we know how much anarchists, feminists or anti-racists can be "humorless" or "funless"». I fear our stressing of heeding the importance of fun can be construed, by lots of people as being allowed complacency and prejudice.
How can we go around this. My bet is that we try to show that it is possible to have lots of fun without prejudiced humor. This, is just an example, and wow does he make me laugh! :D
Cultivating non-prejudiced fun is precious. It allows us some breaks and we can even mix it with activism! :D
...as usual I wrote far more than I first wanted, and I did not even mention all the nuances I wanted to bring forth. But hey, I need to go have fun correcting my students copies :P