Worse Before It Gets Better December 17, 2010
Posted by alana in Depression, Economy, Marxism.2 comments
Over the last decade that I’ve been an activist, I’ve often heard repeated variations on the adage, “Things have to get worse before they get better.” The worse things get, the more frustrated I am whenever I hear this cynical and backward projection. Here’s my explanation for why I think that it’s wrong.
The most common expressions of the logic that “it has to get worse before it gets better” that I’ve heard are related to war and the economy. In the absence of an antiwar movement, people form the opinion that nobody is motivated to challenge the U.S.’s imperialist ventures because they aren’t personally affected, and there will be no resistance until there’s a draft. In the absence of fighting labor unions that actually represent the interests of workers rather than acting as mediators on behalf of management, people get the impression that working people are still too “comfortable” in their relative prosperity compared to the rest of the world and that greater economic hardship will be necessary to push them into action. In general, it is progressive liberals who hold this notion that most people are too complacent to agitate for real change – mainly because they buy into the mainstream ideology that “we are all middle class,” even if it’s on an unconscious level and they outwardly acknowledge that the middle class is disappearing. I think radicals can sometimes be subject to these same mistaken impressions, especially in academic environments where post-colonial theorists emphasize the ways in which all Americans benefit from exploitation of poorer nations. I would never seek to minimize or dismiss the plight of the so-called “Third World,” but comparing relative miseries and calling one of them a position of privilege because it is comparatively less miserable only allows the truly privileged ruling economic class off the hook and divides those of us who are exploited by them in different ways, but who share a common interest in ending exploitation. 
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Sanity Check November 5, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Environment, Marxism, Mental Illness, Sanity.1 comment so far
When the language used in politics so often resorts to insults regarding a person or group’s mental condition (crazy Right-wingers, loony Lefties, irrational Muslims, ignorant Christians, and so on), it is no wonder that an appeal to “sanity” would draw hundreds of thousands of people to the National Mall last weekend. Sanity and reason may well be something that most people can agree is desirable – but then the real question is, “What do we mean by sanity?” Is sanity something we only know negatively, by the absence of insanity? Or can we say positively what makes a person, an action, a political system, or a society sane? It’s not entirely unrelated to point out that only very recently, with Talal Asad’s groundbreaking work, has secularism been studied as a concept with its own positive traits rather than simply being assumed as the absence of religion. His anthropological exploration of the secular reveals how and why a Protestant ethic has been privileged and taken for granted as normal and neutral, when in fact it is grounded in religious ideas and practices that are specifically Christian. This helps explain why secular “tolerance” extends much more easily to Judeo-Christian faiths while Muslims are seen as a threat to the secular order. Similarly, we have generally understood sanity as the absence of whatever we might consider to be crazy – yet there are plenty of insanities that we quietly accept while others are deemed threatening and intolerable. One crude example on a personal level might be someone who is a “workaholic.” In our culture, overworking oneself isn’t considered crazy, and in many cases it is often praised. Being obsessed with one’s work and wrapping one’s entire identity in their career could easily be considered insane by another culture, but because the dominant culture gets to decide what is sane or normal or desirable, that is a problem that is not only allowed to stand but is actually encouraged. The point is, we can’t take for granted that the enduring “common-sense” ideas about what is sane and reasonable absolutely define what “sanity” is. When we assume that we all have the same picture, then our unity around working toward sanity becomes very fragile. (more…)
We Are All Monsters October 29, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Marxism, Mental Illness.2 comments
Those of us who have experienced serious mental health problems have an acute understanding of what it is like to feel monstrous. Lurking in the shadows beneath the enormous weight of a cold and fathomless ocean, numb to pain but hissing a warning that tentacles are ready to strangle anyone who might attempt to move us. Tearing at pillows and stifling screams of rage into them, pacing behind locked doors to spare the would-be victims of a red-eyed, howling fury. Sweating, shaking, and paralyzed with shame as the shrieking banshee of panic rises to the drumming heartbeat drowning out the surrounding mundane conversations of people who have begun to stare. We know instinctively that monsters are repulsive, abnormal, dangerous outcasts – and we identify with them. And we’re not the only ones. The enduring, overwhelming popularity of monsters demonstrates that millions of people see something of themselves in the monstrous. We all celebrated when Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth.” We’ve cried in empathy when Frankenstein’s monster declared, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” Many of us have secretly rooted for King Kong to destroy his human attackers, and we’ve made mutants from the Incredible Hulk to Spider-Man to the X-Men our heroes. Why is that?
China Miéville, a Marxist science fiction and fantasy writer, offers this explanation in a presentation (well worth listening to in its entirety) on “Marxism and Monsters” that he delivered at the British Socialist Worker’s Party Marxism Festival in 2005:
“Why would we secretly have this kind of simultaneous repulsion but also attraction to these horrendous figures, to these monsters which are the articulations of fears? Well, what I’m going to suggest is that if you think of Grendel as the sort of archetype for the outsider monster that gets back into the inside, think about the way the outsider is so threatening. Who is the outsider the most threatening to? The outsider is most threatening to the people who are telling you that what’s inside is basically alright. It is very, very functional to the status quo that it mustn’t be messed with. Now, those of us who are Marxists, who are socialists, have a whole theory of what’s wrong with the status quo, but what we know full well that for centuries, for millennia, people on the receiving end of the status quo: the oppressed, the marginalized, the alienated, have always known (whether or not they could articulate it) – that something was wrong. That this was not how they deserved to live. And what this means, therefore, is that while King Hrothgar is absolutely horrified that Grendel gets into his hoard and starts smashing shit up – if you weren’t that in love with the status quo anyway, it could be worse. You know, all of a sudden the intrusion of this monstrous thing starts throwing things around, threatening the status quo; well, in some way that you’ve never been able to articulate, you’ve never really been that in love with the status quo anyway. So I think the fact is, the fact that monsters are such sympathetic figures, is in a tremendously inchoate, mediated fashion an expression of the fact that most of us don’t really love the status quo. And this is why, you know, we are products of our society, so we are repelled by monsters, but we are also products of our society that know something’s wrong with our society, so we kind of have a sneaking admiration for them.”
The etymological root of the word “monster” is an interesting one. It comes from the Latin word monstrum, which could mean a monstrosity, but could also mean an omen, portent or sign. It derives from the verb monere, which means to warn or advise. The appearance of monsters and the monstrous is a critical warning that something is wrong; a signal of a threat which should be paid heed to rather than treated as a threat in itself. In his 1974-1975 lectures on “abnormality” at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault describes how people who were physically, mentally and behaviorally aberrant have been criminalized, punished, and disciplined in order to try to make them conform to the status quo, which is defined by its defenders as normal and sane. As Marxists, we would be more inclined to see monstrous expressions of alienation, pain or fury as symptoms of a sick status quo which itself should be changed. (more…)
Discrimination and Depression (Fox News is a Public Health Menace!) October 22, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Depression, Islamophobia, LGBT, Marxism, Racism.3 comments
When I was asked to speak at the National Equality March for LGBT rights in Washington, DC on October 11, 2009, I took that opportunity to speak out against Islamophobia, which may seem like an odd choice. What I said in my speech was this:
“I believe that for this movement to be strong enough to create real and lasting change, it will have to expand across borders. Not just state borders, but also the obstacles that continue to divide us both inside and outside the movement – like discrimination based on race, gender, or religious preference. Immediately after 9/11, Arabs and Muslims were instantly demonized, and Jerry Falwell said he believed the attack on the World Trade Center was a punishment from God; that the abortionists, feminists, and gays helped this to happen… Anyone who has ever been in the closet out of fear of retribution, hatred, and violence should know exactly how Arabs and Muslims feel when they are constantly suspected as terrorists.”
As a socialist, I think that identity politics divide and weaken the Left, so solidarity across all struggles for civil rights is crucial. When I worked to organize a coalition of all the LGBT activist groups in New York City to mobilize for the National Equality March, I constantly argued that we had to be principled anti-racists at the same time. The coalition ended up being overwhelmingly white, and I took the position that it was not enough to simply not be racist as individuals, but that active anti-racism had to be part of our work. There was verbal agreement, but I can’t say that it was something that was truly put into practice, for the most part. Today it still burns me up every time I hear a very dear friend of mine who is a gay Black man talk about how deeply hurtful it is for him to consistently see “no Black men” posted in otherwise appealing online dating profiles.
There is nothing more frustrating to me than arbitrary identity-based discrimination between people who should be on the same side. The advantage of Marxism is that, with a class-based understanding of society, the question of what side you are on depends on your material interests. Either you are part of the working majority who would benefit from higher wages, better social services, and social equality – or you are part of the elite capitalist minority that is only able to maintain power by keeping wages down, depriving people of social services, and keeping the majority from fighting for equality by exacerbating divisions based on race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, religious preference, and so on. (more…)
