Do You Know How to Bleed?
Do You Know How to Bleed?
reincantamentox.substack.com
Drop #36. Do You Know How to Bleed?
23 comments
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Either me or the author of this text doesn't understand what prefiguration means. Because to me, what they are calling for is exactly that, prefiguration aka, actively building the new in the shell of the old. So this text is a bit confusing.
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đź’Ż
If you want to expand your political environment, teach activists or organizers how to cook. Teach them how to talk about relationship problems. Organize tea parties, raves, and mending clubs. Create spaces to unwind after work. Infiltrate churches, sports clubs, gyms, games clubs, online forums. Turn street protests into a space for networking: nobody is listening to your chants anyway.
This is like prefigurative social building 101 - and sure there's always going to be the "if you want to report abuse you should call the cops" type "anarchists" - but this whole post reads like terminally-online schizo-posting and not useful advice for people that are already out in the world as they say "touching grass"
This is not a wishy-washy hippie approach to politics. It’s not the vapid appeal to community building of a New York artivist. It’s not about feeling good and projecting a vague sense of emotional intelligence onto the politics we do. It’s a sad, but necessary act. Sad because it adds to relationships an element of political motivation, and politics is always dirty. It is necessary because without a global-spanning web of social affordances, History won’t get back into motion.
Also in terms of practical advice this article sounds exactly like the "vapid" community building they're mocking. And while the hyper-violent "rivers of blood" framing may be useful for some - I thoroughly refuse the "sad" positioning as I'd much rather build toward happiness in the ideal of "If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution"
Idk it's an overall emotive text with imo like little substance that reads like "you believe in prefigurative action? that pales in comparison to my strategy - firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebombing a Walmart.
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And while the hyper-violent "rivers of blood" framing may be useful for some - I thoroughly refuse the "sad" positioning as I'd much rather build toward happiness in the ideal of "If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution"
I'm reminded of the old saying from the days of the AIDS crisis, when Reagan decided HIV was God's solution to homosexuality and researching a cure went against His will - bury your friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance all night.
Which does kind of put things into perspective.
And as to the OP's article - I got to the part where it said "Solidarity is a learned behavior" and was like, okay, yes, this is what prefigurative politics is for. You go out and do stuff together so you can learn to do stuff together so you can do bigger and more important stuff together.
But the article seems to use "prefigurative" to refer to slacktivism and online shitposting and political discussion that serves as virtue signaling rather than a goad to concrete action and so on.
Edit: I do think the article makes half of a good point. If we want to make a change we have to put in the work, go out, work with people, get our hands dirty. I'm not so sure about the sadness and the rivers of blood. I suspect that's counterproductive.
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Prefiguration is often understood as purely performative. "Behaving as if". For example, in Temporary Autonomous Zones that do not challenge existent power nor deal with the conflict coming from outside the prefigurative bubble.
"Building the new in the shell of the old" is just... change? It's the normal mutation of society. System shift, paradigm shift, etc etc.
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Hmm, I would call the first (after Scott) "anarchist calistenics". It's about learning to undo the conditioning of capitalist / hierachical society. It can appear a bit performative, but it is often very eye-opening for people new to anarchist concepts.
Prefiguration is about concrete actions for building community support structures that allow groups of people to have alternatives and fallbacks. It is also about planting the seeds for structures that can take over in times of disaster or societal upheaval. A tool library, even if only small, is prefiguration for example. I also consider running this Lemmy instance as a prefigurative action.
"Building the new in the shell of the old" does not refer to reforming the existing system. It acknoledges that the capitalist system can not be reformed, but will likely collapse due to internal contradictions (or the effects of climate change etc). at some point. Thus parallel structures need to be established inside the current system, to be prepared and to teach people that alternatives are possible.
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I read it as encouraging functional social relations, something anarchists are pretty bad at. I can't name a place in the US where the local leftist scene doesn't have a reputation for being a toxic trashcan fire. We tear ourselves apart and wonder why we can't come together and accomplish anything big.
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Nobody can do this work for you: learn to bleed with a smile.
Nope, quit reading there. My old doctor didn't believe in period pain and told me I just needed to learn how to smile through it.
23 comments