party?
a friend at ucsc writes this:
Here is my idea for a response to the recent election:
Have a big party. Really big. Close the campus for a day. Invite everyone in Northern California and beyond. Provide transportation. Have lots of free food and free music. Respond to de-humanization with the exuberant incitement of enjoyment. Why a Party? That sounds so Wrong! What is there to celebrate anyway? It's time for a serious political response. Find out how a big party can effectively counter: The Christian right! The nation-state! Capital! Seriously, Parties can do this!
Here's how:
Eating wonderful foods, moving to wonderful musics, looking at great art, and relaxing in communion with other people provides a transformative, affective, enjoyable response to fear, depression, and foreclosure. Parties provide a supplement to political action in ways that can create mobile, performative, and temporary, spaces and times for relaxed and unexpected engagements with other people working toward change. Not only political change, but with transformative affective and relational change within various communities of activisms. It also can create times and spaces for turning toward each other, in contingent spaces and times of enjoyment, as a means to create and support provisional, mobile, and differential, and differently articulated, communities of political activisms.
Parties provide a response to foreclosed possibilities of community. For instance, within the “queer community”, the turn away from the celebrations of libidinally infused communities was accomplished, in part by a turn toward an aspirationalist individualism that has resulted in the elevation of the couple, the legally married couple, to a “community” objective. To the extent that the replacement of various and celebratory, imaginative, performative, and temporary, possibilities of “queer communities” have been subsumed by the aspiration for state-sanctioned coupledom, the “queer community” actively participated in the foreclosure of the conditions of possibility for risking the enjoyable and collaborative process of imagining and performing communities. The “queer community” risks becoming a single already imagined community of aspirationalist couples, when it could become a multiply sited and differently performed, proliferation of differentially imagining communities. If the Christian right had a clue, they would have voted to support “gay marriage” and thus, encouraged the speedy dissolution of “queer community.” But they perceived the foreclosure of “gay marriage” as a foreclosure of “gay” enjoyment and voted to curb that instead.
Parties, can create the conditions of possibility for enjoyment that creatively diverge from the dominantly articulated, legally circumscribed, state-sanctioned, notion of the “enjoyments of rights.” For, in part, the results of this election reaffirm and extend the very exclusions that make “enjoyment of rights” enjoyable - particularly for Christians. Part of the rhetoric of fear relies, for its efficacy, on the implicit suggestion that someone else, usually from “elsewhere”, will “enjoy” rights, should they receive them, more than those who already have them. Thus, the fear might be that immigrants may enjoy the rights of citizenship more than they “should.” “Criminals” might enjoy the “right to be free” more than they “should.” Nations might enjoy the right to self determination more than they “should.” Gays might enjoy marriage more than they “should.” Workers might enjoy health care benefits more than they “should.” In other words, they might actually experience the enjoyment that Christianity enjoys foreclosing.
If Christianity played a significant role in this election, also in its secular forms, then it is critical to respond to Christian culture, specifically, to the ways that Christianity enjoys its foreclosure of enjoyment. So, if the current dominant reading of this election is that a response to “moral issues” not only brought out the Christian right but activated a variety of presumably secular “communities”, then it is crucial to note how this unexpected turn out, was, in part, a response effected by the specifically Christian enjoyment of foreclosing enjoyment. This is an integral part of the deep affective structure of both secular and non-secular Christian communities. Thus, in Christian inflected communities, it can be actively enjoyable to foreclose the possibility of other people’s and your own enjoyments. It is not only fear that drove the Christian right and secular Christian communities to vote to create legal barriers to marriage, health care, national self determination, incarceration . . . - it was the enjoyment inherent in these acts of foreclosure. In an enjoyable way, Christianity’s disavowed structure of enjoyment makes it possible to foreclose the option of marriage to “queer” members of your own family, because this form of Christian enjoyment already has built into it a requirement for painful sacrifice as a constitutive marker of legitimate moral action. Thus, this affective structure of enjoyment can subsume, and may take even more enjoyment in subsuming, the foreclosure of the possibility of enjoyments, not only for unfamiliar others, but for people who are also known, intimate friends or family.
An engaged response to this form of enjoyment that forecloses enjoyment might be the tactical deployment of various and multiple forms of mobile, performative, temporary enjoyments, for instance: huge, free, parties. A response to this election that forecloses the production of the conditions of possibility for supplemental, interactive, intrapersonal, potentially communities-enhancing, enjoyments, is a response that risks internalizes this Christian-based structure of the enjoyment of foreclosure of enjoyment. It also risks colluding with capital and with the nation-state.
Parties, as a supplement to political actions, can provide performative structures for response-able relation. Hard to believe, I know. However, as contingent, situated, sites of temporary performative intersections, parties are open to the unexpected encounter and provide forms of affective relation that can infuse political action. People interact differently in different environments and food, music, art, performance, etc. help create conditions of possibility for ex-centric exchanges that extend beyond a single event. If, part of political response-ability now and here, involves a response to Christian-inflected communities mobilized by the constitutive intersection of enjoyment and fear, then one response to this might be to risk the creation the conditions of possibility for contingent sites for the exuberant performance of unexpected and potentializing communities of enjoyment. These contingent, temporary, and mobile sites for interactivisms are not institutional, for instance, not like a church. Parties, as an ongoing supplement to political action, could create spaces and times for imagining communities to perform differently, in constantly changing articulations, across various spaces and times.
One thing that institutionalized religion provides is a means to construct ongoing, deeply structured affective relationships within a recognizable community, relationships that are somewhat mobile, in that institutionalized religion provides widely disseminated discursive frames through which to make connections across various times and spaces in ways that foster the creation of ongoing interpersonal relation. Relation that is not limited to an event, or a meeting, or even a series of meetings, but functions to support, shape, and structure for its members multiple adaptable forms of everyday living in a community -- living based not only on an institution, or doctrine, but based in everyday interpersonal relation. To respond response-ably to what is being presented as a Christian inflected response to “moral issues” might involve the consideration of how to respond to the Christian right’s deep affective communal structures of everyday living. In other words, a response might require an effort to understand the political efficacy of communities, their internal structures of relation, and the relation of “community” to the nation-state. Not in a way that relegates the notion of “community” as practiced by the religious right to some regressive, anomalous-in-the-modern world, throwback formation. Nor in a way that sees “community” as simply identity-based or as exclusively political.
One question that the political efficacy of “communities of faith” raise for exclusively political activists may be those of culture and of relation. One response to the political efficacy of communities of faith might be to understand how deep structures of everyday relation function across cultural and political spaces and times. After this, then to begin imagining ways to imagine activist communities differently, in order to create the conditions of possibility for a supplement to political action that includes a potentializing and sustaining culture of everyday relation. This may involve risking the creation the conditions of possibility for imagining times and spaces of affective, relation-based political-cultural activisms that extend beyond the event, the meetings, and the big mobilization. Why did so many people on this list feel lost the day after the election without immediate recourse to political action? Part of the answer might be that primarily political forms of activisms do not provide the supplement of affectively structured relational communities that can affectively respond to despair and de-humanization. That is, in this admittedly transient space of the academy, in which broad affective structures of relation are difficult to build and sustain, purely political responses to events, like the election, may not provide transformative spaces and times from which to build everyday relations that sustain and supplement political activisms. In this way, temporary, mobile, and performative spaces and times of relation may provide unexpected possibilities for intra “community” transformation, as well as, cross communities ex-centric ex-change.
Plus, there are serious material and ideological implications if political activisms do not supplement their political work with, for instance, parties. Specifically, what is risked by political activisms that are exclusively political is their collusion with capital and with the form/frame of the nation-state. If the narrative of capital seeks the destruction of communities and their subsumption by the political community of the nation-state, as Partha Chatterjee suggests, albeit in an altogether different context, then political activisms that do not supplement their work with actions, say, like parties, risk furthering capital’s narrative and a restrictive political imaginary centered on the state.
Parties, as a supplement to political activisms, however, may provide spaces and times to begin to create the conditions of possibility for more deeply structured, mobile, temporary and performative instances of communities that work across the cultural and the political. They might help to provide contingent, mobile, spaces for affective, embodied, responses to foreclosures of enjoyment through the provocation of relational enjoyment and create spaces where unexpected intersections can occur in an atmosphere where food and music provide incentives for lingering that work against disciplinary time, and spaces where the rhetoric of fear fails to thrive, because dancing with other people is just too damn enjoyable.
So, my idea for a response to the election and its effects is: party on. And on. And on. Respond to party politics as usual with the unusual politics of the party.
Really, there are some great djs, with massively crazy cd collections who actually know how to mix across genres and styles really really well, plus bands, plus performers, plus art, and plus lots and lots of tasty foods. What better place to begin than Santa Cruz, CA, USA?
Here is my idea for a response to the recent election:
Have a big party. Really big. Close the campus for a day. Invite everyone in Northern California and beyond. Provide transportation. Have lots of free food and free music. Respond to de-humanization with the exuberant incitement of enjoyment. Why a Party? That sounds so Wrong! What is there to celebrate anyway? It's time for a serious political response. Find out how a big party can effectively counter: The Christian right! The nation-state! Capital! Seriously, Parties can do this!
Here's how:
Eating wonderful foods, moving to wonderful musics, looking at great art, and relaxing in communion with other people provides a transformative, affective, enjoyable response to fear, depression, and foreclosure. Parties provide a supplement to political action in ways that can create mobile, performative, and temporary, spaces and times for relaxed and unexpected engagements with other people working toward change. Not only political change, but with transformative affective and relational change within various communities of activisms. It also can create times and spaces for turning toward each other, in contingent spaces and times of enjoyment, as a means to create and support provisional, mobile, and differential, and differently articulated, communities of political activisms.
Parties provide a response to foreclosed possibilities of community. For instance, within the “queer community”, the turn away from the celebrations of libidinally infused communities was accomplished, in part by a turn toward an aspirationalist individualism that has resulted in the elevation of the couple, the legally married couple, to a “community” objective. To the extent that the replacement of various and celebratory, imaginative, performative, and temporary, possibilities of “queer communities” have been subsumed by the aspiration for state-sanctioned coupledom, the “queer community” actively participated in the foreclosure of the conditions of possibility for risking the enjoyable and collaborative process of imagining and performing communities. The “queer community” risks becoming a single already imagined community of aspirationalist couples, when it could become a multiply sited and differently performed, proliferation of differentially imagining communities. If the Christian right had a clue, they would have voted to support “gay marriage” and thus, encouraged the speedy dissolution of “queer community.” But they perceived the foreclosure of “gay marriage” as a foreclosure of “gay” enjoyment and voted to curb that instead.
Parties, can create the conditions of possibility for enjoyment that creatively diverge from the dominantly articulated, legally circumscribed, state-sanctioned, notion of the “enjoyments of rights.” For, in part, the results of this election reaffirm and extend the very exclusions that make “enjoyment of rights” enjoyable - particularly for Christians. Part of the rhetoric of fear relies, for its efficacy, on the implicit suggestion that someone else, usually from “elsewhere”, will “enjoy” rights, should they receive them, more than those who already have them. Thus, the fear might be that immigrants may enjoy the rights of citizenship more than they “should.” “Criminals” might enjoy the “right to be free” more than they “should.” Nations might enjoy the right to self determination more than they “should.” Gays might enjoy marriage more than they “should.” Workers might enjoy health care benefits more than they “should.” In other words, they might actually experience the enjoyment that Christianity enjoys foreclosing.
If Christianity played a significant role in this election, also in its secular forms, then it is critical to respond to Christian culture, specifically, to the ways that Christianity enjoys its foreclosure of enjoyment. So, if the current dominant reading of this election is that a response to “moral issues” not only brought out the Christian right but activated a variety of presumably secular “communities”, then it is crucial to note how this unexpected turn out, was, in part, a response effected by the specifically Christian enjoyment of foreclosing enjoyment. This is an integral part of the deep affective structure of both secular and non-secular Christian communities. Thus, in Christian inflected communities, it can be actively enjoyable to foreclose the possibility of other people’s and your own enjoyments. It is not only fear that drove the Christian right and secular Christian communities to vote to create legal barriers to marriage, health care, national self determination, incarceration . . . - it was the enjoyment inherent in these acts of foreclosure. In an enjoyable way, Christianity’s disavowed structure of enjoyment makes it possible to foreclose the option of marriage to “queer” members of your own family, because this form of Christian enjoyment already has built into it a requirement for painful sacrifice as a constitutive marker of legitimate moral action. Thus, this affective structure of enjoyment can subsume, and may take even more enjoyment in subsuming, the foreclosure of the possibility of enjoyments, not only for unfamiliar others, but for people who are also known, intimate friends or family.
An engaged response to this form of enjoyment that forecloses enjoyment might be the tactical deployment of various and multiple forms of mobile, performative, temporary enjoyments, for instance: huge, free, parties. A response to this election that forecloses the production of the conditions of possibility for supplemental, interactive, intrapersonal, potentially communities-enhancing, enjoyments, is a response that risks internalizes this Christian-based structure of the enjoyment of foreclosure of enjoyment. It also risks colluding with capital and with the nation-state.
Parties, as a supplement to political actions, can provide performative structures for response-able relation. Hard to believe, I know. However, as contingent, situated, sites of temporary performative intersections, parties are open to the unexpected encounter and provide forms of affective relation that can infuse political action. People interact differently in different environments and food, music, art, performance, etc. help create conditions of possibility for ex-centric exchanges that extend beyond a single event. If, part of political response-ability now and here, involves a response to Christian-inflected communities mobilized by the constitutive intersection of enjoyment and fear, then one response to this might be to risk the creation the conditions of possibility for contingent sites for the exuberant performance of unexpected and potentializing communities of enjoyment. These contingent, temporary, and mobile sites for interactivisms are not institutional, for instance, not like a church. Parties, as an ongoing supplement to political action, could create spaces and times for imagining communities to perform differently, in constantly changing articulations, across various spaces and times.
One thing that institutionalized religion provides is a means to construct ongoing, deeply structured affective relationships within a recognizable community, relationships that are somewhat mobile, in that institutionalized religion provides widely disseminated discursive frames through which to make connections across various times and spaces in ways that foster the creation of ongoing interpersonal relation. Relation that is not limited to an event, or a meeting, or even a series of meetings, but functions to support, shape, and structure for its members multiple adaptable forms of everyday living in a community -- living based not only on an institution, or doctrine, but based in everyday interpersonal relation. To respond response-ably to what is being presented as a Christian inflected response to “moral issues” might involve the consideration of how to respond to the Christian right’s deep affective communal structures of everyday living. In other words, a response might require an effort to understand the political efficacy of communities, their internal structures of relation, and the relation of “community” to the nation-state. Not in a way that relegates the notion of “community” as practiced by the religious right to some regressive, anomalous-in-the-modern world, throwback formation. Nor in a way that sees “community” as simply identity-based or as exclusively political.
One question that the political efficacy of “communities of faith” raise for exclusively political activists may be those of culture and of relation. One response to the political efficacy of communities of faith might be to understand how deep structures of everyday relation function across cultural and political spaces and times. After this, then to begin imagining ways to imagine activist communities differently, in order to create the conditions of possibility for a supplement to political action that includes a potentializing and sustaining culture of everyday relation. This may involve risking the creation the conditions of possibility for imagining times and spaces of affective, relation-based political-cultural activisms that extend beyond the event, the meetings, and the big mobilization. Why did so many people on this list feel lost the day after the election without immediate recourse to political action? Part of the answer might be that primarily political forms of activisms do not provide the supplement of affectively structured relational communities that can affectively respond to despair and de-humanization. That is, in this admittedly transient space of the academy, in which broad affective structures of relation are difficult to build and sustain, purely political responses to events, like the election, may not provide transformative spaces and times from which to build everyday relations that sustain and supplement political activisms. In this way, temporary, mobile, and performative spaces and times of relation may provide unexpected possibilities for intra “community” transformation, as well as, cross communities ex-centric ex-change.
Plus, there are serious material and ideological implications if political activisms do not supplement their political work with, for instance, parties. Specifically, what is risked by political activisms that are exclusively political is their collusion with capital and with the form/frame of the nation-state. If the narrative of capital seeks the destruction of communities and their subsumption by the political community of the nation-state, as Partha Chatterjee suggests, albeit in an altogether different context, then political activisms that do not supplement their work with actions, say, like parties, risk furthering capital’s narrative and a restrictive political imaginary centered on the state.
Parties, as a supplement to political activisms, however, may provide spaces and times to begin to create the conditions of possibility for more deeply structured, mobile, temporary and performative instances of communities that work across the cultural and the political. They might help to provide contingent, mobile, spaces for affective, embodied, responses to foreclosures of enjoyment through the provocation of relational enjoyment and create spaces where unexpected intersections can occur in an atmosphere where food and music provide incentives for lingering that work against disciplinary time, and spaces where the rhetoric of fear fails to thrive, because dancing with other people is just too damn enjoyable.
So, my idea for a response to the election and its effects is: party on. And on. And on. Respond to party politics as usual with the unusual politics of the party.
Really, there are some great djs, with massively crazy cd collections who actually know how to mix across genres and styles really really well, plus bands, plus performers, plus art, and plus lots and lots of tasty foods. What better place to begin than Santa Cruz, CA, USA?