Hello friends, rivals, enterprising local law enforcement officers and bored federal agents, here is my new blog. I have reposted everything I’d published on my old blog and nuked it.  I am aiming to post on here semi-regularly, mainly to try and build the habit of finishing something and getting it published, regularly. So quality may be uneven. Maybe this will occur as often as once a month? No promises. I have a couple ideas already in progress, but the issue has always been finishing. Anyways, thank you for reading, and thanks in advance for reading my future posts here. Tune in for: insurrectionary anarchy, anti-state communism of a vaguely “communization”-type flavor, anti-colonial theory, potentially engagements with afropessimism, potentially local/regional analysis, gay and trans shit, ETC. ♥️ -I.D.

This is the summary of some thoughts I’ve been having recently, trying to articulate what “communism” means to me. Being influenced by a good deal of nihilist, anti-civilization, or other explicitly not-communist forms of anarchism has given me cause to grapple with why exactly communism is a motivating concept for me, as an insurrectionary anarchist or whatever (tendency labels are always so imprecise). Originally published 9/26/20

Communism is the mode of existence in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” AKA wherein the already spurious contradiction in interests between individual and collective is materially dissolved. The singularity and uniqueness of individual persons flourishes with and because of their connection to each other. Importantly this implies not a flattening of difference, or even of conflict, but rather their most nourishing expression.

The traditional manner of thinking about communism is to posit it as a society-wide condition after an eschatological revolution. But in addition to being a condition, it is also a process: “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.” Just as with communism as an end goal, communism as process describes a unity, or at least a complementary relationship, between individual and collective interest. To the extent that one of these is overemphasized, it is not communism in practice and will fail to produce communism as an end goal. Therefore, the fact that statist, militaristic, authoritarian, and vanguardist approaches to producing communism continually fail is no surprise—you can’t just pivot from some entrenched despotic collectivism towards the cohesively individual-collective mode of existence that is communism.

This, to me, is the meaning of the term ‘communization’: that, to actualize communism one has to make communism in the present. Communism as an end goal relies upon (perhaps is, all along) the process of communism. Therefore, there might be a post-revolution communism, but it is necessarily preceded by an accumulation of smaller communisms, localized communisms, a swarm of communist war machines. This is an immanent conception of communism. While I still maintain the possibility of an all-encompassing revolution, I feel that what is more likely is the increasing balkanization of capitalist states under conditions of worsening climate collapse, with pockets of libertarian autonomy opening up just as surely as pockets of grassroots fascism and outright dead zones.

I believe that this view of communism is well suited to these conditions we find ourselves in: not waiting for a revolution, but reaching around us to grasp what vital communal relations we can, to arm our loves for a communism extant within, against, and beyond this world. Obviously, the goal is still to make an irreversible break with racial capitalist civilization and extinguish its presence on the earth, but we cannot wait for that possibility to approach. We need each other, now.

This is intended as a living document, as a way to get my thoughts in order, and should not be viewed as finished product. Basically I realized that I’d never post anything theoretical if I wanted it to be exactly how I wanted, so I decided to post something intentionally incomplete to open myself up to feedback. I’ll probably do more of these. I encourage debate and discussion on what I say here, and would love if this prompted some collaboration with friends. Originally published 6/26/20

I think it could be extremely generative to connect contemporary understandings of trauma as a physiological experience, and empirically-grounded treatments thereof, to Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of ressentiment and the bad conscience. For Nietzsche, these concepts refer to embodied experiences, and their description resonates with contemporary understandings of trauma. Trauma can sometimes stem from experiences of powerlessness and immobility during situations of pain and violation, and it is proven that one way to treat trauma is to approximate the traumatizing situation but this time act to defend oneself or to attack, wielding agency that was before inaccessible (cf. The Body Keeps the Score). I believe that this method of trauma therapy could be named revenge. Here, I am interested in connecting these methods of trauma treatments to anarchist, queer, feminist, and anti-colonial meditations on revenge as liberatory practice. To put it another way, I am interested in surveying the literature on these conflictual trauma therapy methods and investigating to what extent these therapeutic methods could be described as revenge, and conversely surveying radical literature about revenge and investigating the extent to which their descriptions of and advocations of revenge could be mobilized as trauma therapy. I am curious to see how comfortably this might sit with the mobilization of Nietzschean concepts, though there is clearly a precedent for using Nietzsche to talk about revenge in a positive light (cf. Hostis, Bonanno, “Deleuze, Active Nihilism, Revolt”).

One concern I have about using Nietzsche is that sometimes the way that he talks about “sickness” is sort of ableist, in the sense that he sometimes seems to imply that one can just voluntaristically refuse sickness, premised on one having an essentially healthy nature (for example, “I took myself in hand, I made myself healthy again: the condition for this (…) is that one be healthy at bottom.” Ecce Homo, “Why I am So Wise,” Aphorism 2, pg. 224 in my copy). While it is certainly important to emphasize the real agency that people can and do exercise in recovery and healing, essentializing people as inherently healthy or sick does no one any favors, in fact does the opposite of maximizing agency, and simply does not square with reality. However, there are plenty of other moments in Nietzsche that can be mobilized for non-ableist approaches to health and recovery, and it is likely that his ableism can be discarded as neatly as his misogyny.

Another concern I have is that this study of revenge as trauma therapy/trauma therapy as revenge definitely runs the risk of privileging spectacular, ultraviolent forms of action. It’s important to acknowledge that healing, from trauma or from other afflictions, is a whole holistic process, built more through routine and small steps than through rupturous events. I am curious if there is a way to extend the concept of revenge to events, moments, or processes that one might not usually associate with the word, or if this would stretch the concept so far as to reduce its usefulness. One area I have little knowledge but would probably be generative to look into on this question are alternative therapy practices (or alternatives to therapy) experimented in by the anti-psychiatry movement(s).

Themes, Sources:

Differentiating revenge from justice (important to this will be Alfredo Bonanno’s evolution in thought regarding revenge from “Armed Joy” to “I Know Who Killed Police Superintendant Luigi Calabrese”).
Material practices of revenge (Bash Back!, burning the 3rd Precinct, burning down Wendy’s. the bulk of this so far was brainstormed before the start of the George Floyd uprisings, but I would argue that many moments in the past month are powerful examples of revenge in action).
Revenge as trauma therapy? Trauma therapy as revenge? This quote from Jackie Wang’s “Against Innocence” is relevant here: “For Fanon, it is precisely the element of risk that makes militant action more urgent — liberation can only be won by risking one’s life. Militancy is not just tactically necessary — its dual objective is to transform people and “fundamentally alter” their being by emboldening them, removing their passivity and cleansing them of “the core of despair” crystallized in their bodies.” (emphasis mine) Need to read Frantz Fanon, clearly (if I recall correctly the bits Wang is quoting from above are from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth).
With all of these, the role of guilt, ressentiment, the bad conscience…should maybe locate a good secondary source on Nietzsche to handle this effectively (Deleuze? well and of course Lucrezia’s “Deleuze, Active Nihilism, and Revolt” piece).

Originally published 4/24/20

sometimes my eyes despise everything they see, and
seeing is everything
seething—

I can bend backwards to feel a stretch
and some relief
if I care to
if I care to stop self-abuse for a short while
I don’t always care to.

I am nothing if not soulful
at holiest war with myself—
always the warden venting frustration
and the prisoner simmering with resentment
biding time.
what a curse it is to have a prison cell as vessel from which salvation must spring
the body is prisoner of the
Soul.
(or perhaps rather the soul is the very architecture that allows for and maintains this hostage situation in the first place, that perhaps could allow for no other situation, that is built for this purpose alone)

absence bears down upon me like an incoherent behemoth
and when I seek shelter it makes itself gaseous, seeping
into the smallest moments, where my guard is down.
I was once so much more full, and it won’t let me forget this

sometimes you’re just not okay and it just won’t
get better
and there’s no pleasant conclusion because life isn’t a fucking novel
shit just falls apart and it’s up
to you to pick up the pieces and put them
together again in poetry or in song or in
sex or in paints applied to canvas or paints
applied to walls and street signs and car windows or
in newspaper boxes and trash cans and those same street signs
and old mattresses and maybe even an old beater car
piled into the middle of the street
stopping traffic in lieu of our hearts but likewise “for honor’s sake”

blessed is
           the match
                    the flame
                             the heart

but really what is there to actualize of the above?
there is poetry, written on my laptop on the desk next to
the plants, writing punctuated by uncontrolled bouts of
crying in full view of the window, of the world.

there is song, occasionally, but not like before, when I was more
full, or filled up
with sights and sounds and the energy of fellow bodies,
and with a freshness and inspiration and audacity towards creation—
how far I am from that face-to-face world weaved with song, that I
weaved with song.

there is occasionally sex, but only with myself
and only occasionally is it sex;
it mostly is coping
with an absence.

I don’t have any paints or canvas
but have been meaning to get some spraypaint
it is the medium that I feel most connected to maybe, right now,
I like that it is equally an artform and
a weapon.

as for the rest:
that’s all pretty hard to pull off with just your depressed ass as
a form of weird, symbolic conflict therapy
isn’t it?
one day, surely (isn’t that what I always tell myself though?);
but perhaps I can grant myself the vote of confidence that
not only will the day, days, of fighting back come
but that they will be lived with friends, that we will
take care of each other, that we will
have joy and also have
tactics and strategies that we perfect and revise, that
together we can forge something within rupture that is
not just a dignified way to die.

I just feel lacking the patience for the delicate
and sometimes not so delicate
task of building a life worth living
it allegedly happens due to consistent construction of habit
and not in one earth-shattering instant!
I’m not interested in this tepid incrementalism!
but all is not exciting.

thinking of a spirituality without the soul: “what is marginal,
paranormal and unformed within
and between us”
being without interiority
let the inside out//let the outside in

dreaming of a redemption,
of a salvation without eschatology.
delicately kissing my wounds 1000 times a day
a communization of the psyche
a sharing of the
“troubling nuances of our collective selves”

but the very idea that there is a formula
to make it all right
doesn’t sit overly well with me.
I think the desire for neat and tidy answers
is part of the problem.
probably we have to befriend contingency and indeterminacy
in order to love ourselves
in order to love each other
to love our selves-as-other and others-as-self
.
.
.
this rain keeps me more locked inside myself
soulful
but is ultimately a friend I cannot live without—
I hope it helps ward away the worst of the fires
(though maybe too little too late)
I worry for all our lungs.

Originally published 1/14/19

You were always so solid…that a few bullets could cut you down must be a lie. But then again, this world is built on lies. You knew this, yet you were always so true. Intractably true; impossibly true. You carried zones of clarity with you. A few times I shared in it. And we raised our fists…

My fist is still raised. For you, for me, for all that exists and circulates between the people you touched, forever. So, to a friend I longed to know better; to a great lover and a great fighter; to someone whose every gesture and every word was revolution. To those friends and family most entwined with you who are left alive in your absence. The moon and the stars belong to you now. The liberation you saw in the distance we will taste. I know that is the greatest gift we could possibly give to your memory.

Originally published 12/18/18

Hydrate well, consume responsibly. Move your body vigorously. Become an effective self-regulating system. Enact self-care. Bootstrap self-love. Maintain your productivity. Adapt perfectly; integrate seamlessly. Name each feeling, track them on a chart. Happiness levels up, all others down. Good job.

Monitor yourself. Keep a schedule. Plan your work and work your plan. Your movements—clockwork. Account for everything. Maybe still surprise yourself once and a while, but we can fix that. Everything you want for yourself and your life can be acquired through the perfection of productivity. A schematized and profitable existence is what you want, after all.

Everything can be measured, you see, and indeed it is better when it is. After all, the brain is a computer—what is a human being but a computer too, a machine to be perfected? Sure, the other day you wept with sudden grief on the bus, looking around at the dead faces, remembering the childhood wonder that has left your body and whose memory hardly feels real anymore; and sure, every vanishingly-scarce moment you spend with your partner conjures (even briefly) the thought that maybe you don’t give a fuck about this career and would rather desert your post indefinitely to stroke their hair, feed each other strawberries, and talk shit in a field of daisies for the rest of your finite lives… But we can fix these thoughts! Glitches in the mainframe, nothing more.

Just like those moments of ruinous weakness, even that loathsome notion of ‘finite’ life is receding happily into the primitive past! New organs for when yours fail, new eyes to see better, maybe new arms hell yeah you can type fassst now, replace them quarterly and don’t forget to upgrade that heat shield. Imagine what you’ll be able to get done when you no longer have to take an indulgent ‘mental health day’ to get through your 80-hour work weeks! That is, if you still clock out (protip: winners never do). Just remember—every project must be extraordinary, you must look good but make it look effortless, be desirable but minimally desirous, not exceed or fall short of the body-shape quotas, maintain good skin pigmentation, have a commanding presence and also an inviting docility, keep your business commitments and toss all others, never ever complain, and be aware that They Are All Watching You. Enjoy immortality.