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Reanimating Settler Marxism and Kant in the the Murdered Present and Missing pg. 72 Revolutionary Actors pg. 38

The Power and Political Potentials of Images pg. 8

Ethnography as Espionage: An Interview with Katherine Verdery pg. 20 Contents editorial TECHNOLOGY EDITORIAL AND POLITICS Revolution and CUNY: www.GCadvocate.com Revolution and CUNY: Unmasking Musk: [email protected] Remembering the 1969 Envisioning HyperCapitalist Remembering the 1969 Fight for Open Admissions Fight for Open Admissions Futures Bhargav Rani Hillary Donnell pg. 3 pg. 44 Bhargav Rani Bhargav Rani Salami Tacticals: FEATURES Little Nukes — No Big Deal? Clifford D. Conner Nandini Ramachandran The Power and Political pg. 58 Potentials of Images he past month has seen a spate of in the postwar Western world. For a few exhilarat- Alessandro Zehra Husain CUNY LIFE retrospectives debating the legacy ing weeks, the revolution held open the promise of a Zammataro pg. 8 The Campaign for of the failed revolution of May 1968 beautiful world beyond capitalism. Full and Fair Funding of in France. Beginning in late March This past year, the Advocate has facilitated a pro- Ethnography as Espionage: all GC Doctoral Students as a cultural and sexual rebellion longed conversation on the theme of “Revolution and An Interview with The Adjunct Project among university students in Nan- Sovereignty” in its pages. Beginning with a prefatory Katherine Verdery pg. 58 terre, the movement spread like editorial on the “problem” of revolution, we have Nicholas Glastonbury wildfire, eventually inspiring hun- published a range of articles from various members pg. 14 Fan Fiction as Emotionally dreds of thousands of students across the country. of the Graduate Center community – from stories on Inclusive, Anti-Ableist Praxis TThe following weeks witnessed mass demonstra- the October Revolution on its centenary to the racial Jenn Polish tions, occupations and rallies by students, professors politics of the NFL; from the revolutionary force of Neoliberal Fictions pg. 64 and intellectuals, and there ensued daily brutal con- poetry, theatre, literature, and film to critiques of lib- Nandini Ramachandran frontations between the police with its riot shields eralism and conservatism; from an exploration of the and water cannons and the protestors armed with questions of individual sovereignty to the contempo- pg. 27 In Conversation with cobblestones dug up from the streets of Paris. By rary threats to national sovereignties under U.S. and Harry Belafonte mid-May, the workers too joined the movement, and British imperialism; and, from the politics of urban Christopher M. Morrow DEBATE sparked a general strike of about ten million people, revolutions to the neoliberalization of schooling and pg. 68 the largest in European history. The protests of 1968 education. Expanding on these conversations, the Settler Marxism and the questioned not only the inequities of capitalist rela- current issue of the Advocate contains articles on the Murdered and Missing REANIMATING KANT tions of production but also threatened to dismantle politics of scientific practice and technological prog- Revolutionary Actors IN THE PRESENT the political establishment that sustained it. While ress under capitalism, on “feminicide” as the grounds Sean M. Kennedy the movement eventually crumbled under the weight for an intersectional critique of settler Marxism, and pg. 38 Some Theses on Stupidity of its own contradictions, the revolution of May 1968 on the political potential of images, among others. Milo Ward was not only the first time that a student rebellion While the mythic specter of May 1968 casts its long pg. 72 stood at the vanguard of a mass workers’ revolt — it shadow on our political consciousness, this editorial was also the last serious threat posed to capitalism of the final issue addressing the theme seeks to bring Adam Robert’s The Thing Front Cover: “VERA” meets a securist. Itself: A Book Review in Four Surveillance photo, 1988, p. 169. Antinomies Asher Wycoff 2 — — Spring no. 3-4 2018 Spring no. 3-4 2018 — — 3 pg. 77 v editorial editorial

the conversation back to CUNY ents in New York eventually led 1969. and commemorate the spirit of to the founding of “Community In the wake of a decade of the May revolution as it animated College No. 7” (later named Med- historic struggles, from the Civil the militant student movements gar Evers College) in 1966-67 to Rights movement to the protests in our university around the same serve poor and working-class against the Vietnam War, more time. communities of color in Brooklyn. than 200 black and Puerto Rican This spirit of May 1968 is per- At the same time, the CUNY Board students padlocked the gates haps best seen in the struggles of Higher Education came under of the City College of New York for open admissions at CUNY in pressure to adopt an “open ad- in April 1969 and renamed it the the 1960s. The postwar years wit- missions” policy, which would en- “University of Harlem.” The pro- nessed an immense increase in sure that every New York city high testers at CCNY were soon joined the demand for state-sponsored school graduate was offered a seat by other students of color as well public higher education, leading in a CUNY college. The board fi- as white allies, leading to mass to the founding of the State Uni- nally approved the policy in 1966, rallies, demonstrations and oc- versity of New York (SUNY) in 1948 forced to concede to the demands cupations in Brooklyn College, and the consolidation of seven of increasingly insurgent New Queens College, and Borough senior and municipal community York residents and partly moti- of Manhattan Community Col- colleges under the CUNY system in vated by fear of a social revolution lege. Their demands included 1961. Over the next decade, CUNY that would extract more radical an increased intake of Black and opened nine new college cam- forms of change in the university. Puerto Rican students in CUNY puses, but this expansion could The policy was not intended take colleges, a strengthening of reme- not meet the escalating demand effect till 1975, offering some re- dial programs like SEEK, and the for higher education among the spite to the power brokers of the creation of new special programs nearly eight million New York resi- university. The administration geared towards preparing the dents. New York also experienced was also compelled to introduce new students of color for a college a major demographic shift in the innovative pedagogical strategies education. These student occupa- 1950s and the 1960s, with nearly and remedial teaching programs tions and strikes were the culmi- a million African Americans and for underprepared students en- nation of months of negotiations Puerto Ricans taking residence in tering from broken public schools, and confrontations between the the city, replacing white residents, most notably SEEK (Search for students and the administration. who had moved to nearby sub- Education, Elevation, and Knowl- As CUNY descended into a state urbs. Despite these demographic edge), but their outreach was lim- of siege, the New York City police Black and Latino students and community members proudly march on City College demanding Open Admissions and Black, Women’s, and pressures and the expansion of ited to a relatively small number was called in to suppress the stu- Asian Studies Departments 1969 – source: http://documentsofresistance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/demonstration.png the university system, CUNY’s of students in the 1960s. The in- dent uprisings and retake the uni- meritocratic admissions policies adequacy of the administration’s versity buildings, and the various Black League of African-American acquiesce to their demands. In dents occupied various university ensured that it remained over- measures to meet the growing de- campuses remained militarized Collegians (BLAC) organized with early May, these students, along buildings, spray-painted “power” whelmingly white and middle mand for higher education, cou- with their presence for several other student groups like Puerto with 40 white allies, occupied the and “revolution” across some of class throughout the 1960s. pled with widespread social and weeks after. Rican Alliance and Students for President’s office to present their its walls, started small fires across The persistent pressure of ac- political unrest, ultimately boiled At Brooklyn College, student a Democratic Society (SDS) to demands, whereupon the police campus, and declared, “We’re not tivist groups, students and par- over into a major confrontation in activists under the banner of pressure the administration to was called to confront them. Stu- taking any more from the presi-

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rests, around 200 students rallied created a racially and ethnically As we think back on the legacy at Brooklyn college in support of diverse pool of 253,000 matricu- of the revolution of May 1968, it the arrested students and to help lating undergraduates (a 55 per- behooves us to remember that collect bail. Students and faculty cent increase in total enrollment “revolution” has animated the went on strike the following day since 1969), all of whom attended struggles and aspirations of the to demand that the defendants tuition-free if they were enrolled students at CUNY in more imme- be released from prison imme- full-time. However, with the finan- diate ways than we can imagine in diately and all charges against cial crisis of 1976 – the same year the current political climate. It be- them dropped, that police pres- that the number of non-white stu- comes all the more important to ence on campus be removed, and dents enrolled exceeded white pay heed to this radical history of that student demands for an open students for the first time – which CUNY at the Graduate Center, for admissions policy, among others, crippled New York city with a debt our college remains the whitest of be accepted immediately. The de- it could not market, tuition was all CUNY colleges. Against an av- fendants were ultimately released imposed at CUNY for the first time. erage enrollment of 23.7 percent by the courts on the grounds that While the open admissions policy white students across the univer- there wasn’t enough evidence, marked a decisive move towards sity, 65.9 percent of the entering but the unrest that spread across a democratic and egalitarian edu- class of fall 2017 at the GC were campus, and CUNY, with their ar- cation system, the subsequent white. Furthermore, as a result of rest tipped the scales, making it introduction of tuition funda- the GC’s discriminatory two-tier difficult for the administration mentally eroded its emancipatory funding policy, underfunded stu- to ignore the students’ demands potential because it precluded dents find it particularly difficult any longer. At the urging of the a vast number of non-white stu- to pursue their research when President, the Board was finally dents from lower economic back- they are compelled to juggle mul- forced to implement the open ad- grounds from going to college. By tiple adjunct and research jobs to missions policy in the fall term of the end of the 1970s, there was a sustain themselves, as recorded 1970. decline of over 62,000 students in in the testimonies collated by the PSC demonstration at Chambers St. Near City Hall during the financial crisis of 1975, CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed July 16, 2018, The open admissions policy enrollment, with a 50 percent de- Adjunct Project for this issue of http://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/5642 radically changed the demo- cline in the number of black and the Advocate. As we continue to dent!” As tensions escalated and dents to the dean’s office, where violently manhandled, and their graphics of the university. En- Latino students in the entering grapple with the recurring crises police presence increased on cam- the students broke the dean’s homes raided. All the arrested rollment for first-time students class of 1980. Since then, CUNY of the neoliberal university – from pus, the administration issued a door and inscribed their demands students, including two more who jumped from 19,959 in 1969 to students have had to incessantly the increasing costs of tuition to ban on “congregating in or near on the office walls. were soon indicted by the court, 38,256 in 1972; Black students fight to salvage and uphold the the exploitation of adjunct labor buildings, creating loud or exces- On 12 May, in the largest inci- were charged with arson and ri- increased from 16,529 to 44,031; victories of the militant student – it is important to remember the sive noise, or employing, inciting, dent of police repression against oting. The students were kept on Puerto Ricans from 4,723 to struggles of the 1960s—victories last time that CUNY students said, or encouraging force or violence.” the student protestors during Riker’s Island for four days, with 13,563, and even the number of that have been eviscerated by “We’re not taking any more from But the rallies and occupations that period of ferment, 17 Black their bail set at $15,000 each till enrolled white students increased the gradual neoliberalization of the President!” continued. SDS led a mass dem- and Puerto Rican students from the courts ordered that the bail from 106,523 in 1968 to 125,804 the university these past four de- onstration of over a hundred stu- Brooklyn College were arrested, be reduced. A day after the ar- in 1972. In all, by 1975, CUNY had cades.

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The Power and Political Potentials of Images

Zehra Husain

political movement has been jurisdiction of the draconian Federal Crimes Regula- stirring in Pakistan. 26-year- tion (FCR) law, which was introduced during British old Manzoor Pashteen from colonial rule. It has recently been merged with the South Waziristan, also called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province – a historic move ‘Pakistani Che,’ leads the Pash- on part of the soon to be departed present govern- tun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), ment. which translates into English as The roots of state violence and harassment run the Pashtun Protection Move- deep in FATA’s history. In the 1920s and 30s, FATA was ment. PTM held a political rally on 13 May in the bombed by the British because the tribespeople re- country’sA commercial hub, Karachi, with thousands belled against the colonizers. The militias that rose of people in attendance. It took Pashteen almost a against the British were first empowered in the late day and a half to reach the rally from Islamabad. He 1800s to protect the borderlands from the threat of was first barred from boarding his flight from Islam- the Russian invasion. During the Cold War, militias abad to Karachi. He then tried his luck at the Lahore in FATA were trained by US and Pakistani forces to airport, where he was detained by security officials, fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. After 9/11 the tables only to be released once his flight had taken off. turned yet again, and five military operations have Driving his way to Karachi, he was stopped twice for since taken place in FATA. The latest of these was the questioning. When Pashteen finally reached the site Zarb-e-Azb, which displaced about 5 million tribes- of a dimly lit rally (government authorities had not people from the region, and the people of FATA have given PTM organizers permission to light the entire been the victims of U.S.’s unmanned drone wars for venue) in the Pashtun-dominated outskirts of Ka- the last thirteen years. One of PTM’s demands was rachi, he said to an emphatic crowd: “It took me 40 the mainstreaming of FATA into Pakistani politics, hours to get here, even if it took 40 years I would have since people of the region have traditionally been still made it.” seen as only half-citizens of the country and denied Bodies stopped from moving in space — bodies representation. More importantly, however, they ask Waziri man called Naqeebullah Mehsud, who was Karachi to find employment and support their fami- deemed so troublesome that state institutions man- for the recovery of ‘missing people’ who have been shot in a staged encounter by Karachi’s notorious lies. age their mobility by putting obstacles in their way picked up by the state under suspicion of colluding police chief Rao Iftikhar. Fake encounters are com- Authorities stated that Naqeeb was a mem- — is one of the defining facets of racism. PTM stands with militant organizations. The PTM asks for repatri- monplace in Karachi. They have employed to dispro- ber of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a against this institutional racism and routine harass- ations and the formation of a truth and reconciliation portionately target tribespeople from FATA and north claim that has been denied by his family members. ment of tribespeople from what used to be known as commission. of Pakistan, often migrants from working-class neigh- Mehsud and Waziri peoples from FATA routinely ex- Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered But what sparked the PTM? The movement itself borhoods in the outskirts of the city fleeing military perience harassment and ethnic bias, because their Tribal Areas (FATA). Until this May, FATA was under the started after the extra-judicial killing of a 27-year-old operations. Naqeeb was one of many who came to last names are often taken to index terror links, and Credit: Facebook

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Naqeebullah Mehsud was an easy target for the po- protests against military institutions in Pakistan for tain kinds of political work. As Elizabeth Edwards has In their first instance, they form the system of docu- lice. Naqeeb’s murder caused an outcry on social me- the disappearances of activists from Balochistan, noted, ID photographs are used ubiquitously in pho- mentation that renders bureaucracy and bureaucrat- dia, where the news of the fake encounter circulated Pakistan’s southwestern province, which has been to montages and albums. However, they are often ic subjects legible. However, when repurposed in the alongside Naqeeb’s images. Naqeeb’s photographs demanding independence for two decades. In 2013, remediated into serving different social and political form of enlarged portraits in political protests, these showed him in his full glory: sporting a sharp hair-do families of the missing Baloch embarked on a long uses: from memorializing the death of a loved one at ID photographs are given a dual meaning. In their re- and wayfarers, holding a fancy smartphone. Some mediated forms, these images are haunted by the ab- people insisted upon his innocence by saying that sence of individuals who were once given recognition he was an aspiring model. Others said he was look- by the state as its legal subjects and citizens. Now the ing into establishing a business in Karachi in order images are used for making claims on the state to re- to provide for his family. The circulation of Naqeeb’s cover these missing peoples who have been illegally images both on social media as well as in the main- rendered neither dead nor alive. stream media showed the kind of person that would Naqeeb’s images did similar kinds of political could only be seen as the opposite of a terrorist. work: making claims on the state against its violent Photographs are troubling objects. On the one and corrupt policing of Waziris and Pashtuns. How- hand, visual signs have historically been the most ever, they were more potent as standing evidence to effective means of typifying people, especially crimi- Naqeeb’s innocence, because they were a genre of nals, by means of physiognomy and phenotype. On images different from ID photographs. There was an the other hand, photographs, especially portraits, excess of signs in Naqeeb’s images that humanized grant dignity to their subjects. Allan Sekula famously him – in ways that one could say mimed class mobil- defines this paradox of photography as its “repres- ity for an economic migrant rather than just being a sive” and “honorific” function, respectively. In the testament to his citizenship. Sitting on a Yamaha mo- case of Naqeeb’s murder, the police force had no vi- torcycle against the rugged landscape of mountains, sual signs to typify him as a criminal. His alleged ter- wearing a teal shalwar kameez, the brown in his hair ror links were based on his last name, the fact that he accentuated by photo re-edits, Naqeeb performs a was a native of Makin, once a heartland of Taliban, masculinity that is the opposite of what urban Paki- and that he travelled between South Waziristan and stanis confer to people from the ‘religiously ortho- Karachi. In the absence of visible signs, non-visual dox’ tribal areas. Being photographed with commod- markers of lineage were used to typify him as a ter- ities evokes a sense of class mobility in literal terms, rorist, eventually leading to his violent murder. It is but these aspirations get entangled with a religiosity no wonder then that this void was filled by the hyper- acceptable and appealing to urban Pakistanis. In the visibility of Naqeeb’s images. “The photographs of a image where he is photographed praying next to a sharply dressed handsome aspiring young model,” motorcycle against a hilly landscape, he performs wrote Pashteen in an op-ed for an English daily, be- the trope of a good Muslim: someone who is grateful came “a testament to his innocence”. for their wealth. In other words, this photograph sug- PTM crystallized as a concerted action partly be- gests that being religious and being upwardly mobile cause of the affective investments evoked by Naqeeb’s Credit: Facebook go hand in hand. One can then read these images as images. Moreover, the outcry against police chief Rao evidence to claims of his innocence raised by his rela- Iftikhar was so strong that he was stripped off his title march from Quetta to Islamabad, carrying ID pho- funerals to carrying enlarged ID photographs to pro- tives, who assert that he wanted to open a clothing and a case was lodged against him in the anti-terror tographs of their missing relatives and demanding a test the disappearance of activists. Karen Strassler business or that he was an aspiring model. courts. The potency of images, however, is not in any fair inquiry into the matter. argues that as objects, ID photographs are unique in Most of Naqeeb’s images are inscribed with the way limited to PTM. Over the years, there have been As material objects, ID photographs perform cer- that they are ensnared within the gaze of the state. name ‘Veer’. In fact, his Facebook page, where he

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seated points to something very cars, Vespas, airplanes – in studio Naqeeb’s photographs heighten real: the poor conditions of pho- portraiture transported the rep- the prospects of popular engage- tographic studios and their di- resentational value of these ob- ment. Circulating on multiple lapidated props, which economic jects into the home by capturing media platforms, these images migrants, and other working-class them in photographs. The use of meet urban Pakistanis half-way: peoples use in order to escape the cell phones, gold watches, motor- on the screens of their phones via drudgery of everyday life. cycles and wayfarer sunglasses in social media and news websites. posted most of these photo- that stands in sharp contrast to Veer transforms Naqeeb’s identity Walter Benjamin character- Naqeeb’s images also have repre- It is then that these images can graphs was called ‘Apna Veer’ the tattered seat. A large waxing to a masculinity that is different izes “commodities-on-display” sentational value. They visualize a be remediated to argue upon his (Our own Veer). This was Naqeeb’s moon-like object stands in the from one attributed to tribespeo- for their representational value certain kind of subject – one that innocence, and spark an entire alias. Some also say it was his background of a bright blue sky, ple. The use of supernatural back- and not merely for the use or ex- aspires class mobility and is also political protest in the form of nickname. Naming is one of the emitting cloudy white light which grounds transports him into an change value in the market; they religious – that is the opposite of PTM which questions the nature devices through which identity is touches the white of Naqeeb’s otherworldly place: a fantasy in enthrall crowds even when the the racialized tribal subject. These and value of freedom in Pakistan. performed. Veer appears in the clothes. This image evokes mo- comparison to the working-class objects involved are far from their commodities do keep crowds Naqeeb’s murder is therefore a background of the photograph in bility in an almost supernatural neighborhood in Karachi and the reach. In her analysis of mate- enthralled, but in ways that are photographic event demonstrat- the mountains. In the second im- way. Seen together, the use of the war-ridden tribal areas. The im- rial culture of modernity, Karen political. In line with Benjamin’s ing the power and political poten- age, it is written on the arm rest name Veer and the utility of this age is almost comical in the hyper Strassler builds on Benjamin’s insights about the democratiz- tials of images. of a visibly torn car seat. The im- backdrop construct an endless dreamscape it evokes. And yet the formulation, adding that the use ing effects of technology’s abil- age is imposed on a background medley of identities for Naqeeb. tattered chair on which Naqeeb is of these commodities – radios, ity to infinitely reproduce images, Credit: Facebook Credit: Facebook

12 — — Spring no. 3-4 2018 Spring no. 3-4 2018 — — 13 Ethnography as Espionage: An Interview with Katherine Verdery

Nicholas Glastonbury

In my first year at the Graduate Center, I had the luck and good instinct to enroll in Katherine Verdery’s course “Anthropological Approaches to Property.” Having already heard talk of Dr. Verdery’s reputation and prowess, I decided on that very first day to try to make an impression on her. After class, I rushed up to introduce myself and to tell her about how well-suited my research interests were to hers. “Interesting,” she said uninterestedly, and left the classroom. In many ways, the rest of my time at CUNY Graduate Center has been an effort to undo the embarrassment of that moment, and I have taken four classes with her as a result. To say that Katherine Verdery looms large in the anthropology 14 — — Spring no. 3-4 2018 VERA” meets a securist.Spring Surveillance no. 3-4 photo,2018 — 1988.” p. 169. — 15 of socialism and eastern Europe would be an understatement. features features

While a student in her 2017 course on the Ethnog- me, Verdery’s work seems well-suited to the culture raphy of Eastern Europe (the fourth of four courses I of GC anthropology because it offers a model of an- took with her), my classmates and I colloquially re- thropology that is politically engaged without being ferred to the course as Verdery 101. The course offered self-aggrandizing. Her approach probes the textures a comprehensive examination of the many unexpect- of everyday life for the many crucial contradictions ed vicissitudes of socialism’s collapse, from property that get passed over in macroscale analyses. In restitution and commodity production to religious her work as well as her teaching, she uses scholar- practice and embodiment. Socialism was not merely ship produced by Eastern European scholars who a political economic structure, but a cosmology unto continue to teach and write from Eastern Europe, itself, inexorably shaping all kinds of social relations a commitment to the ways in which the lived reali- and everyday experiences. In this regard, socialism ties of postsocialism are understood by those who is best understood through ethnography and related live it. Her approach to pedagogy in the classes I’ve anthropological methods, an approach that has un- taken with her, in which she managed to involve ev- derpinned Dr. Verdery’s entire academic career. ery single student in the room, has helped shape my In 1973, Katherine Verdery was a graduate student own teaching philosophy and classroom pedagogy. embarking on her inaugural ethnographic fieldwork Verdery quips in My Life as a Spy about her distance in rural Romania. Her first book, Transylvanian Villag- and cool-headedness toward her students, but the ers, draws on this fieldwork, analyzing the transfor- generosity of her thinking is unparalleled. mations of one particular village in the peripheries Given recent allegations that philosopher Julia of European capitalism as imperial and national bor- Kristeva was a spy for the Bulgarian secret police, ders are drawn and redrawn, always with an eye to My Life as a Spy is a timely contribution that helps how local peasants identify with and relate to these appraise the legacy of Cold War espionage, to think histories. Over the next forty years, during her storied about the connections between spying and knowl- career as an anthropologist, Verdery made numerous edge production, and perhaps most importantly, to return visits, tracking not only the demise of social- interrogate the very epistemic category of espionage ism and the infamous regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu itself. My Life as a Spy is also a moving tribute to all but also the ramifications of culture, politics, and those enduring relationships that, in spite of the economy in a postsocialist world. In What was Social- duress of life under the secret police regime, made ism, and What Comes Next? she answers her titular Verdery’s ethnographic fieldwork and her career pos- questions by theorizing socialism and capitalism as sible in the first place. temporalizing market structures. In The Vanishing -- Hectare, she describes the complicated, fraught pro- Nicholas Glastonbury: What made you write this cess of privatizing Romania’s collectivized farms, as- book after you had already publishedSecrets and serting ultimately that property is person-forming. Truths, which was also about your secret police file? And in The Political Lives of Dead Bodies — my person- Katherine Verdery: I wanted to do a completely al favorite — she makes the provocative claim that different kind of book. I wanted to do something that dead bodies animate the study of politics. Her other manian friend, she visited to the Secret Police ar- sis of her book Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the was much more personal, that could be used by stu- work touches upon national sentiment and ideology, chives to see whether they had anything on her. Archive of Romania’s Secret Police, and most recently dents interested in field research or non-specialists ethnic identity, gender, and cultural politics. What emerged was a document totaling more than in May 2018, My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret who would be curious about what life was like behind From the very beginning of her fieldwork, Verdery 2,700 pages, far longer than any other scholar who Police File. the Iron Curtain and so on. Secrets and Truths was re- was extensively surveilled by the Romanian secret conducted research under the communist regime in Since joining CUNY Graduate Center in 2005, Dr. ally not intended for anything other than the usual police. In the 2000s, at the encouragement of a Ro- Romania. This mammoth document became the ba- Verdery has become a fixture of the department. To academic audience. I was asked to give a set of lec- My Securitate file. “ A photo from CNSAS Archive, which appears on Page 12 of My Life as a Spy

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tures in honor of somebody and KV: The ending is the same. KV: I might have caught up by they all have different problems me to use the first person for the NG: I found your description I couldn’t say no, but I couldn’t But I did manage to say that I was now! that they’re interested in. So my author of today and set Kathy off of fieldwork and how frustrating give my memoir as a way of hon- condemning the secret police or- NG: Congratulations on that, attempt to get at what my friend at a distance. it is really compelling. That’s not oring that person. It was kind of ganization for what it did to peo- then! But can you talk about why Gillian Feeley-Harnik has referred NG: That makes sense. In rela- something that we ever really awkward, but that’s why I have ple, so that ought to mollify some you find it so hard to dispel these to as a “culturally specific notion tion to this question of author- learn about, it’s such a rarefied two different books. of them. doppelgangers? of spying” involved encounter- ship, I’m thinking of things we time. NG: You also discuss the immi- NG: You describe how your KV: Well, it’s easier to dispel ing my doppelgangers all the read in your theory course, the KV: That’s why I did it. nent reception of the Romanian first encounters with the file con- them if I stop reading the file. But time. And this feeling of, my God, postmodern stuff… NG: Are there specific lessons translation of My Life as a Spy as a jured up these doppelgangers if I read it, there are just so many this person, they say it’s me but KV: Reflexivity… that you want people like me and big question mark. Near the end that you couldn’t get rid of, they versions of me that different offi- it just doesn’t feel like me. It was NG: Reflexivity, and also eth- other anthropology students im- of the book, someone suggests to were haunting you and taunting cers from different cities in differ- a very unsettling feeling all the nography as text, and the many minently going to the field to take you that you should have a differ- you, in part because your secret ent times put forth, and they all way through, the way they ques- concatenations of texts you have from the book? ent ending in the Romanian edi- police file in total more pages are convinced I’m a spy. But, as I tioned my motives, and so on. in this book. There are so many KV: I think the first is that, tion. Do you think that’s going to than your entire career’s worth of say in the book, what they under- NG: It’s interesting that the different forms of authorship tak- fieldwork is really quite difficult happen? written work... stand by spying is different, and version of you that they’re con- ing place: being authored into and you shouldn’t be too hard juring in the file doesn’t feel like the file by all of these different on yourself if you’re finding it you because that also seemed informers and officers; author- difficult to do. It started getting to be the relationship you in the ing this version of yourself in the more fun once I had done it for a present have to yourself in the past; your past fieldnotes, which while, when I had a cushion of in- 1970s and 1980s. You write about you quote extensively from; let- formation and could manipulate her in the third person and you ters you wrote; and then, on top it in conversations with people. say that you don’t like her very of all that, you writing from the But it’s just a difficult way of try- much. And you draw parallels perspective of the present, try- ing to gain knowledge about between “Kathy,” as you refer to ing to make sense of all of this. something, and you have to be her, and “Vera” and all the other There’s something very post- constantly asking yourself: Am pseudonyms you’re given. How modern about that. I getting in the way? How am I did you decide to write about her KV: I hope it’s clear that I don’t getting in the way? I thought the in the third person? think of this as a postmodern book might be useful as a kind of KV: It was partly because she text in the early sense of it, but manual for students, precisely is also a doppelganger. She was without some of the work done because as you say there isn’t the person who was getting de- at that time I wouldn’t have even a lot of field training that talks scribed most of the time, and thought of doing this. As some- about this. But I also think that, so that had the effect of alienat- one who’s been critical of post- especially in the present, when ing me from her because, espe- modernism and postmodern so many governments are sus- cially at the beginning, I found I anthropology for a long time, I picious of their own people and couldn’t identify with the person nonetheless felt somewhat em- are likely to be engaged in some that was emerging from their powered by it for these purposes. kind of surveillance of them—it’s view of me. But then, I also feel And, as you see, I have a blurb not just the communists who did that I am a very different person from somebody who would never this—we should expect the pos- now from who I was then. I’d ac- have been on the back of any of sibility that the people we work tually considered writing the en- my other books, Ruth Behar. And with are going to be facing this tire book in the third person, but she was an appropriate person to kind of treatment. And if you took I decided that it worked better for ask for that. that completely seriously, you Surveillance photo of “VERA” in her hotel room, 1985.” p. 161

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wouldn’t do fieldwork at all. But already know exactly what it is might want to know that there’s parency! rather, the point is to be as cau- you’re looking for. I just know I’m a guy behind us that I suspect is NG: I was also struck by how tious as you can. My favorite thing just going to show up and throw following us. And so he proceed- the secret police is simultane- in this entire file is when they de- my hands in the air. ed to drive this enormous truck ously so exacting in its surveil- scribe how I’ve conducted myself KV: “Help!” at breakneck speed through vari- lance and then also so bumbling. with respect to some friends of NG: [laughs] ous back alleys to try to shake They misspell your name in ev- mine, and they say, “this shows KV: Well, we do have many the tail. [laughs] I’m assuming ery possible way imaginable, the care she takes with her rela- different selves that we have to he was telling me what he knew, and they also completely miss so tions with Romanians.” Which, put on in this process, because it wasn’t that I knew it, but that many things and make so many yes! Encouraging people to think indeed writing a grant proposal, he told me. It was a wonderful mistakes. For example, you men- about the possible effects that you have to sound as if you’ve al- scene. tion that they didn’t know you they might not have imagined is ready done it. But then when you NG: Sounds like a scene from had received your PhD twelve another goal. get there you present yourself— a movie, trying to go incognito in years after you actually had. Can NG: To that end, do you think and for the most part it’s a true this massive truck. you talk about how these two that naiveté is an asset in the self-presentation—as not know- KV: Right. [laughs] tendencies coalesce into the way field? Because you say that Kathy ing anything. So, it’s tricky. NG: Why did you think that that surveillance operates as a couldn’t have done her research NG: When was the first time your integrity, your faith in trans- form of statecraft? except by being this bumbling, you knew with certainty that parency, your honesty, would ex- KV: Interesting. They certainly clumsy, naive person. you were being surveilled, that it onerate you from suspicion? were exacting in their surveil- KV: I think naiveté helps, be- wasn’t just some sneaking suspi- KV: Because I had all kinds of lance. They were following me cause it gives you a reason for cion but that you knew without very ethnocentric presupposi- around and they were listen- asking people so many ques- a doubt that you were being sur- tions that I wasn’t really aware of. ing to telephone conversations tions, because you genuinely veilled? I just couldn’t believe that they and all of this kind of stuff, yes don’t know. Otherwise, you have KV: Gosh, it was a long time wouldn’t read the evidence and indeed. But partly, it’s that each experiences like what I describe ago. This might not have been say, “Okay, she’s on the up-and- branch of the service that does when I’m asking people what the first time I knew I was being up.” It didn’t occur to me that each of these things—the people can they tell me about one or an- surveilled, but it’s the first thing I their whole way of reading was who transcribe the eavesdrop- other historical figure and they can remember. I had a friend who completely different. I figured if I ping, the people who actually say, you shouldn’t be asking me was a chauffeur, a driver, for in- told the truth, they would under- follow you, the people who are that, you should be asking the tra-European travel with trucks. stand that that was the truth. It checking your correspondence schoolteacher. So, our capacity He used to give me rides some- never occurred to me that they and making sure you’re not writ- for naiveté enables us to perform times, and one time he said he might say, “Methinks the lady ing anything out or getting any- a role of knowledge seeker that was going into town and asked if doth protest too much!” [laughs] thing in that’s bad—are all differ- is in fact genuine, but gives us a I wanted to go. I said sure. He was So it was just a part of my basic ent people. The only person that way of getting past the feeling of driving this huge trailer on which immaturity and testimony to the has a prayer of actually putting “why is he or she asking me this he usually carried cranes around, fact that fieldwork training was all this together is the so-called kind of stuff?” so it’s pretty big. And he dropped very deficient in my early train- case officer, who reads all the NG: This is the sort of struggle me off at the dollar store because ing. And I didn’t know how to reports, but they had a lot of tar- that some of us are facing now, I wanted to buy some coffee for think about what I was doing. gets and they probably couldn’t trying to write grant propos- people. And then, when he came NG: Transparency really takes keep them all straight. It was one als and fellowship applications, back for me, we started driving a beating in this book. guy trying to absorb all this stuff and you have to seem as if you back to town and he said, you KV: Another blow for trans- and then use it to good effect. Surveillance photo of “VERA” loaded down with sacks, 1985.” p. 20

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But the other point that I make Police? they wouldn’t have told a Roma- towards the end, where I have KV: I don’t know exactly how nian, because they knew that I the story of the tomcat and the many the Securitate drew into represented a neutral, safe per- mouse... the net to work on me. I counted son. One example of this is this NG: The target function, it up at one point and I got sev- couple, Ralf and Anna, whom I yeah…. enty, but there could have been write about, who told me that KV: which is the most impor- other people. But I do think they were planning to defect, and tant thing about being under that they were happy to have us even their son didn’t know that. surveillance, is that they have to Americans to get more contact There are ways in which we for- maintain this activity in order to with the villages. There were a lot eigners can also become a special confirm that they’re carrying out of Americans in Romania in those kind of trusted person because of their duty to the security of the years, the 1970s and early 1980s, our position in society. And that’s state. To some extent, it’s less im- because it was the easiest coun- a positive gain. It maybe doesn’t portant what they find than that try to do fieldwork until the early justify the whole enterprise, but they are constantly looking. eighties. So yeah, in that sense, it ameliorates it. NG: That makes me think of we were the handmaidens of NG: It reminds me of a point your point that American anthro- the secret police, as far as giving you make in the book, when you pologists coming to Romania are them access to more potential in- talk about the “ambivalent po- affording the Securitate the op- formants was concerned. sition of the anthropologist: al- portunity to expand their reach NG: Where do you think that though not outsiders, we are not in rural parts of the country. You leaves you? insiders either. Our work occurs say that as their target, you’re KV: Very disturbed. [laughs] I in the space of difference that a tool for them to expand their didn’t know it at the time, but… defines us as both part of and surveillance. It’s a bit like the cri- very disturbed. And the only thing not part of the places we study” tique that Talal Asad takes up in that can counter that is thinking (262). This book is so fascinat- Anthropology and the Colonial in terms of how people who knew ing in particular because you Encounter, talking about the no- me got a better sense of America see concretely in your file, with tion that anthropologists are the and life in America. They were remarkable precision, how the “handmaidens of colonialism.” always asking me all these ques- social fabric of the places where He posits this binary that most tions like, are there drugs all over you do fieldwork is reconstituted ways of thinking about anthro- the place, this that and the other, and renegotiated because of your pology adhere to, in which an- to combat the propaganda they presence. thropologists are seen either as were getting there. And I would KV: Some time ago some per- handmaidens to colonialism or say, people use drugs, not ev- son at the archive decided to as champions of the downtrod- erybody. I wasn’t necessarily the make this documentary about den. He says we need a critique most patriotic American respon- me. We went out to the village that is not one or the other, but is dent, but they learned some- and she interviewed a bunch of more nuanced, somewhere in the thing. And I had several people people and this guy was one of middle. But do you feel like you whom I got to be pretty close to them. And she said something were a handmaiden to the Secret who would tell me things that like, “you know, what difference Katherine Verdery, 2018; all images used with permission from Duke University Press and Professor Verdery.

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did it make that she was here?” Secret Police!” She got so furi- police offices and goes through alive and well in the present day. And he said, “It was fantastic that ous! [laughs] But it just struck me the files periodically and takes He was arguing that the whole she was here because she gave that there was something very out stuff that’s old, or rebinds it, business class in his country were a wonderful example of what odd about this, how she wanted or takes stuff out that’s incrimi- either former secret police people it’s like to work hard and consci- to remain invisible, just like some nating to somebody else. That or else connected with them. And entiously.” People around here other people we knew! person is known in the secret po- I called him up some time after tended to be a little bit lacka- [laughter] lice organograms as the archivist. the conference because I wanted daisical and here was somebody KV: As for what’s happened But then, I actually worked in a li- to cite the paper, and I said, “Have who gave them a different image with the film, I haven’t a clue. She brary, that was where I spent a lot you published that paper?” He of work and the life of the schol- told me that I should circulate it of my time, that was its own kind said, “Um, no, because I was con- ar. I thought that was cool, I liked with the book, because it’s trans- of archive. I was reading stuff, I’d tacted by someone that I suspect that. lated, it has subtitles. But I didn’t ask them to bring me the papers was part of the secret police of my NG: Can you tell me a little press that on Duke or the people of so-and-so that the library hap- country and advised not to con- more about this documentary? doing the Romanian version. Be- pens to hold. And so I was read- tinue with this line of inquiry.” In KV: The point of it was to ful- cause I asked my friend who’s ing it as an archive as well as a order to write or talk about him, I fill some of the educational pur- translating the book into Roma- library. Those people were just have to make up a pseudonym for poses of the archive. Part of its nian what she thought about this, scholars like anybody. They could him and I can’t say what country mandate is to give people access and she said it would add signifi- be informers, but certainly not all he’s from. It never stops. [laughs] to their files, but also part of its cant cost to the total enterprise of them were. I hope. [laughs] NG: That’s wild! So, changing mandate is to teach younger gen- because we wouldn’t be able to NG: [laughs] tack: you organize your memoir erations about the evil that was charge the extra amount to the KV: Who knows. around the contents of the secret the secret police. And that’s their price of the book and still have it NG: You suggest such net- police file rather than necessar- business. I participated because be saleable. So she said she really works still exist in the Romanian ily around your life and fieldwork. they said they wanted to have didn’t want to do it. My friend at Intelligence Service and were The events of your fieldwork are something they could use in their the archive was very convinced inherited from the Securitate. a big part of the memoir, but it’s educational programs. We went that people were going to find When you went back to do the very much structured around the out to the village and visited peo- this useful. fieldwork around your file and for file and what the file says about ple, and then we went to the city NG: In the book, you talk a lot this book, do you think that you you. Why did you structure it ac- of Cluj and visited a couple more about the archivists at the Na- encountered anyone who pres- cording to the file itself? people. The guy who did the film- tional Council for the Study of the ently works for the Romanian In- KV: Originally, I had the chapter ing is a very well-known Roma- Securitate Archives. They make telligence Service? on the 1970s and the chapter on nian filmmaker. And then there appearances every so often, KV: I wasn’t aware of it but it’s the 1980s, and then just one chap- was a woman from the archive you refer to them as colleagues, quite possible. I heard a paper ter with some of the stuff that’s at who was interviewing me. But sometimes you ask them advice, by a guy who’s from one of the the end. And I decided that it was she was always off-camera, and and sometimes they’d offer ad- Eastern European countries and better for me to divide it up and so she was always just a voice. vice unsolicited. What is their he was at a conference that I was have this “Ruminations” thing at At one point I said to her, “Get role in relation to the files them- also at in 2009, twenty years after the very end, in which I try to step into the frame!” And she got very selves? the collapse of the regimes. This back and make sense of the whole upset because she didn’t want KV: There’s the archivist of the paper was about how the secret thing. But I couldn’t figure out an- to be. I said, “You’re just like the secret police who sits in the secret police of his home country were other way to write it that wouldn’t

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have taxed the reader too much. When I was read- ing “socio-political information,” I said to myself, ing the file myself, it was really very confusing. They you know, they really aren’t wrong about this. The would have a whole slew of documents that were line between ethnography and espionage was get- Neoliberal Fictions just correspondence that they translated from Eng- ting thinner and thinner as I thought about it. Be- lish. A whole pile of the documents were stories of cause I wasn’t in there to create a nice public image Nandini Ramachandran following me on many different dates. The file was of Romania. That’s what they wanted me to do. They not organized chronologically, so I thought it would wanted me to write a book saying, “This is the most be interesting to violate its premises by organizing wonderful country with the most wonderful people, my book chronologically. Because I thought it would be too hard to make a story out of it for readers not and great scenery, and a wonderful, enviable past.” familiar with this kind of text. It took me a long time And that’s not what I was there for. to figure out how to write this book, and I’m sure NG: Maybe we can end by talking about the con- nections you make between your surveillance by there’s decisions I could have made differently. efining neoliberalism is one of NG: I think violating the premise of the file is itself the secret police and the proliferation of new forms the most vexing conundrums interesting as a way of reclaiming it, not letting them of surveillance in the contemporary era. What kinds facing the contemporary acad- continue to have control over the terms of your life of insights do you think this book offers for under- emy. Most accounts trace neo- or your presence in Romania. standing surveillance as it works today? liberalism — whether specified KV: Right, exactly. KV: I deleted, or tried to delete, my Facebook ac- as ideology or governmental- NG: You write that surveillance is “often just a count when I started really reading this file. Because ity; process or epoch — to a form of socializing” (92). Can you explain what you your Facebook account is the most remarkable in- structural breakdown of post- mean by that? strument of surveillance ever developed, and it’s war capitalism in the North Atlantic world during KV: Some of the people that were filing reports voluntarily participated in by virtually everyone. But Dthe 1970s that led to the untethering of capital from on me would be talking with the police about the the two forms, the form I experienced and the form nation-states. This entailed shifts in both domestic coffee that we’d had, or they would have invited me and international policy making, a recalibration of to dinner and we would spend the whole evening that’s going on now, are quite different because the the scales of production, and an exploration into drinking or eating, and that would turn into the ba- form I experienced was based directly on social rela- new forms of sovereignty and subjectivity. sis for an informer’s report. So that’s what I meant. tionships. They’re creating relationships with their Scholars have emphasized different aspects of There’s a blurry boundary between when they’re informers who had relationships with me. It was this historical conjuncture. David Harvey argues being the secret service’s tool and when they’re be- what I would call labor-intensive; whereas the stuff that neoliberalism is a process of accelerating “cre- ing my friend. It’s not exactly easy to sort that out. going on in the US is mainly capital- or technology- ative destruction,” a constant deferral of the im- And it’s different from the high-tech surveillance of intensive. Although Facebook does manipulate per- our age in this country now, which is entirely done manent crises of capitalism through flexible accu- sonal relationships, it doesn’t involve manipulating mulation and a renewed assault on labor power. without face-to-face work. them in quite the same way. It makes you want to be : That also reminds me of the central premise While neoliberalism consistently fails at revitalizing NG an island. of a big part of the book which is that ethnography accumulation, Harvey notes, it has been incredibly itself is a kind of espionage. successful at entrenching inequality and restor- KV: Over and over again in my file, I encountered ing class power, undoing the achievements of both their worry that I was collecting “socio-political Katherine Verdery is Julien J. Studley Faculty Schol- union organizing and decolonizing movements. information” that I would publish, creating an un- ar and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Building on Harvey’s insights about the “scalar fix” pleasant image of Romania abroad. And they were Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her as a strategic recalibration of the geographies and really concerned with Romania’s image abroad. new book, My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Po- chronotopes of production, Neil Brenner theorizes When I saw these repeated references to my collect- lice File, is out now from Duke University Press. neoliberalism as an accumulation strategy that de- Credit: Sophia Rolph – source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/574068283725114647/ Señora Puerta

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pends on an irresolvable tension Gill in arguing that the politi- intelligence usually associated contradiction”— distinguishes Hegelian synthesis, the individ- the production not of the future between fixity and motion. If the cal efficacy of neoliberalism de- with the exercise of bureaucratic his approach from that of Ray- ual, and the resulting phenom- as such, but of the very next in- postwar era was characterized pends on identifying “sovereign agency. Baked into such “adho- mond Williams, who suggests enological gap is increasingly stant. His intervention, however, by the entrenchment of the na- exceptions” to a rule of law that cratic” models are justifications that “heuristic” and “systemat- bridged by “sheer standardiza- isn’t about the empirical reality tion-state as a nested federation, is conceived on an abstract plane that invoke immediacy and inse- ic” utopias are distinct strategies tion, the production of entities of of neoliberalism as much as of its Brenner explains, the neoliberal of human interchangeability and curity, and the steady encroach- of extrapolation. (David Harvey equal value that no longer have dystopian dream: this is the mar- era disarticulated the nation on the formal equality of nation- ment of such crisis discourse into makes a similar, if orthogonal, anything distinctive or particular ket standard it seeks to impose, two levels: a ceding of regulatory states, even as it is enacted upon daily life produces and stabilizes distinction between “utopias of about them, but which also do even as the project of generating authority to the world market, on (and through) a material plane of epistemological practices that form” and “utopias of process.”) not count as unique in the sense it introduces inadvertent particu- the one hand, and “glocal” cities intensifying differentiation. Such value quantitative facts (as the Jameson argues that the power of singularities. They are thus the lars and hostile singularities. (such as New York) on the other. ethnographic interventions are “objective” basis for expert pre- of speculative thought is precise- grotesque shadows of universali- A lot of scholarship links this Legal scholars and anthro- an exploration into the institu- diction) rather than qualitative ly that it overhauls categories of ties that no longer function to or- turn to speculative standards pologists have approached the tional arrangements of neoliberal context (as the “subjective” expe- thought through the imposition ganize anything, but which are to the increasing influence of fi- deterritorialization/ reterritorial- capital, the processes that result rience for a holistic solution). of narrative discipline upon re- equally inaccessible to reason or nance capital in the global econ- ization dialectic that Brenner and in “the nested hierarchical struc- Frederic Jameson has often ceived reality. Any extrapolation sense alike: both tasteless and omy. In Capitalizing on Crisis, Gre- Harvey identify by framing neo- tures of organizations which can reminded us that speculation is thus, to make a crude distinc- unthinkable at once.” ta Krippner traces the roots of the liberalism as a question of how link the local and the particular and standardization are dialecti- tion, a feature of plot rather than Jameson goes on to argue that financialization of the US econo- these uneven geographies are with the achievement of abstract cally related; speculative thought thought. Speculation, for Jame- this “new standardization” is a my to the political unwillingness managed and sustained through labor on the world stage.” thrives by reproducing generic son, enables us to re-evaluate diagnostic shorthand for post- of successive governments to changes in global and local gov- Ong and Dunn analyze neolib- frameworks. Jameson argues causes, not effects, such that modernity, and that “it is strik- continue allocating increasingly ernance. Such scholarship often eralism as an innovation within that speculative thought pro- utopia provides a narrative tech- ingly confirmed by the evolution scarce resources. In the early de- provides a useful view of neolib- liberalism as a mode of bureau- vides “solutions without prob- nology that allows us to isolate of politics itself, whose extraordi- cades of the postwar period, she eralism from beyond the North cratic reason. They highlight lems,” by which he means that what Walter Benjamin might call nary verities throughout history explains, the state controlled the Atlantic world. Elizabeth Dunn, what Stuart Hall once called the the narrative forms of generic fic- fresh monads. seem today to have been them- supply of credit to the economy for instance, traces the “mobile “managerial marketization” im- tion allow us to reframe problems Jameson turns his attention selves reduced and standard- by imposing interest-rate ceilings sovereignty” of humanitarian posed by neoliberal governance, posed by political or social theory to dynamic recalibration of the ized on a well-nigh global scale.” on commercial banks. As infla- aid, arguing that it is often mobi- in which speculation replaces by combining the disparate “mo- territorial organization of capi- Global politics today (insofar as tion became an endemic prob- lized to discipline states, empow- planning as the preferred modal- ments” of an otherwise invisible talism in the essay “An American such a spatiotemporal totality lem within a contracting econo- ering their reach in certain are- ity for arriving at desired institu- or incommensurable totality. A Utopia,” which includes a sug- can be grasped) is, for Jameson, my, US policymakers started to nas (such as surveillance) even tional outcomes. “Triangulation space opera, for instance, recon- gestive interlude about the re- marked by this animosity to his- control the price of credit rather as it encroaches on their legiti- was its life-blood, its leading ten- ciles the “divergent streams” of lationship between speculation toricity, replacing its “extraor- than the supply of credit, assum- macy by providing the pastoral dency” Stuart Hall notes in the social temporality— lived experi- and standardization. Increasing- dinary verities” with a source of ing that the market would allo- care that once legitimated state context of New Labour politics in ence and historical time— by al- ly, he writes, the global has be- standardized, all-purpose truth: cate scarce credit more efficient- power. This enables what she England, but the observation ap- lowing readers to witness gener- come so inaccessible and yet so the world market. This suggests ly than the state could. Instead, calls “pastoral hunting,” in which plies just as well to the humani- ational time as lived experience. fundamental to lived experience to him a renewed dialectic of however, demand expanded states must persistently locate tarian aid projects that Elizabeth Jameson’s recognition of the that it is effectively “unimagina- homogeneous space and instan- even as credit grew more expen- internal enemies and threats that Dunn studied in Georgia and their “constitutive antinomies” of uto- ble,” while the local has been so taneous time, in which space sive, and foreign capital flooded they can defeat in order to justify well-intentioned “adhocracy,” pian thought— its ability to sus- particularized that it is “unthink- annihilates time by freezing it. the US market once the dollar their existence. which relied on quick fixes, ap- pend paradox rather than resolve able.” This intensifying polariza- Jameson thus theorizes the spec- standard was abandoned. Policy Aihwa Ong, in a similar vein, proximations, and temporary so- it; to restore what Wittgenstein tion between the universal and ulative standards characteristic decisions meant to more effec- follows the legal scholar Stephen lutions rather than the plodding once called the “civic status of a the unique has dissolved their of postmodernity as geared to tively regulate the distribution of

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limited credit thus produced an of the civilization so produced soning, ensures that the invisible For Hayek, as for his American economic environment of appar- was theoretically limitless. hand will weave a multiplicity of acolytes, socialist planned econ- ently limitless credit, deferring Buck-Morss notes that the lib- interested selves into a cohesive omies presented a privileged the underlying crisis by three de- eral democratic tradition rests on society. Neoclassical economists exception to free market capital- cades. This extensive reliance on a collective forged through de- would perform a similar sleight of ism that could be harnessed to expanding credit to fuel the econ- personalized exchange, and that hand a century later, when they criticize Western welfare states. omy allowed, Krippner argues, Adam Smith, like Marx after him, presumed a “growth model” for Bockman and Eyal explain that in for financialization, in which it is recognized that the motive en- the economy instead of theoriz- Hayek’s analysis, “the advantage securitization (the reification of gine of capitalism was the disci- ing one. of markets lay in the fact they risk) rather than commodifica- plining of desire. As Marx pointed For Smith, the autonomy of provided dispersed, accurate, tion (the reification of labor pow- out, production is the governing the economy is a defensive posi- real-time information, coupled er) that generates profits. moment within the totality of the tion meant to contest the total- with precisely calculated incen- A focus on financialization economy because it (re)produces izing gaze of the sovereign state; tives, in a way that allowed eco- provides an inadequate ac- the need that commodities claim the virtue of the market is that nomic actors to ‘coordinate’ their count of neoliberalism as a pro- to satisfy. Unlike Marx, Smith it provides an alternate ground decisions and actions.” Planning cess characterized by polarized failed to recognize that the logi- for ascertaining and potentially was abhorrent to this free flow economic geographies; as Marx cal circuit between production challenging the legitimacy of of information, distorting market noted, interest-bearing capital and consumption doesn’t reflect state action. As Foucault charts signals and mechanisms. Hayek depends upon industrial and ex- an equally seamless historical in The Birth of Biopolitics, later thus reiterated Adam Smith’s tractive capital to produce val- circuit; in the real world, produc- iterations of economic thought emphasis on the invisibility of the ue, if in increasingly attenuated ers and consumers were and con- have retained their faith in the market as a normative precept, ways. Krippner’s account also in- tinue to be very differently situ- invisible hand even as the com- arguing that effective coordina- dicates, however, a decisive ideo- ated people. plexity and reach of the economy tion was impossible to plan from logical entrenchment: that the While there is no theoreti- expanded dramatically. The soci- a position external to the mar- free market, defined by free com- cal “outside” to Smith’s political ologists Bockman and Eyal devel- ket. Hayek didn’t believe, how- petition, could more efficiently economy, there was an absolute op this insight, suggesting that ever, that this invisible hand was regulate the economy than the outside — the state — and it was the entrenchment of neoliberal natural; it had to be constructed, state, and that this presumed ef- only by tethering the “civiliza- dogma in the postwar world was maintained, and facilitated. De- ficiency conferred an automatic tion” produced by the market the product of a longstanding spite this constructivism, he was, legitimacy upon it. This depends, to territorial nations that Smith conversation between American like Smith, faced with the dilem- in turn, on the conception of an could make a normative claim libertarians and Soviet market ma of explaining precisely how economy as a bounded sphere of for the virtue of an invisible hand socialists— a conversation that this coordination occurs, and independent action. One incisive that steadily multiplies commod- was mediated by a translation Soviet socialism offered him an historical account of the econo- ities. strategy adapted from Hayek and excellent counterfactual to sup- my as an epistemological object The economy’s assumed im- the Austrian school. Bockman port his polemical claims: central (and the attendant invention of perviousness to interference is and Eyal trace the “hybrid and planning, he argued, resulted the science of economics) is Su- central to Smith’s argument. The dialogic origins of neoliberalism,” in widespread and large-scale san Buck-Morss’ “Envisioning economy should not be exter- to this transnational discourse, “market distortions” that were Capital,” which considers how it nally regulated because it cannot which was mobilized by both sets also introduced, in subtler ways, was that the allocation and mea- be externally regulated: it resists of participants in their respective by Keynesian state interventions. surement of scarce resources be- capture because everyone is dy- contexts: to fight for deregulation Hayek proved his absent norm, came the question for econom- namically implicated, and this is in the US and to reform Soviet so- thus, by referring to an existing ics, even as the material horizon what, in Smith’s tautological rea- cialism. exception. Charlotte Bracegirdle, New York 1932 - Acrylic on print - 11 x 15cm

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The birth of neoliberalism as a political and eco- Wendy James traces the implications of Fou- sively by comparison to market standards. Wendy Judith Butler cautions us against Callon’s “her- nomic epoch is most easily analyzed by highlighting cault’s insight about this “generalization of enter- Brown argues, further, that while Foucault notes the meneutic reading of performativity,” arguing that two related metonymic substitutions: the market prise” in Undoing the Demos, where she discusses shifting face ofhomo oeconomicus, he fails to reg- Callon assumes an automatic correspondence be- for the economy, and efficiency for justice. If the the institutional changes and transformations in ister the political and social consequences implicit tween theory and object. Theory can tend to estab- onset of liberalism as a political philosophy is char- subjectivity demanded by the pervasiveness of in this conception of people as self-investing human lish a phenomenon, she writes, but it can just as eas- acterized by an insistence on the cultivation of the market rationality and the rise of finance capital. capital, partly because of his relative lack of interest ily fail, and this possibility of “misfire” must be built economy as a natural, just, and autonomous sphere James argues that Foucault inadequately theo- in the lived reality of neoliberalism. Foucault em- into any analysis that deploys a performative ap- of exchange, neoliberalism is marked by its empha- rizes the shrinking space for politics in the neolib- phasizes changes in the “art of government” once proach. Theories, she writes, are always brokering sis on the necessary endurance of the competitive eral era— the evacuation of homo politicus by homo the state is assumed to produce for the market, but failure—such failure “is what is what necessitates its market as a site of eternal truths. oeconomicus—and criticizes his “indifference to de- what sort of market is being produced? reiterative temporality”—and she concludes her es- The curious temporal structure of endurance— a mocracy and to capital.” For Foucault, she explains, The lectures in The Birth of Biopolitics examine say by arguing that political theory and economic thing that was and must continue to be, simultane- the subjectivity implicit within both neoliberalism closely a certain origin story for neoliberalism, track- theory both operate through a certain disavowal of ously completed and continuous—suggests an in- and liberalism is homo oeconomicus, the man of ing thinkers from Smith through Hayek through one another, while the real challenge is to undo the herited, unchanging object that must be preserved interest—the schizophrenic economic subject, si- Friedman, but they have nothing to say about how conditions that allow for the “sovereign agency” of within a nurturing environment through assiduous multaneously a disciplined producer and an insa- market standards and market fictions and market either by thinking them together. effort and active intervention. The overwhelming tiable consumer, that Buck-Morss identifies in Adam subjects reproduce themselves as part of an ongo- Caitlin Zaloom, meanwhile, develops (and part- activity of endurance in the face of imminent threats Smith’s philosophy. ing collective project. The Birth of Biopolitics, I mean ly challenges) Callon’s insights ethnographically, and constant crisis supports, paradoxically, the As Foucault explains in The Birth of Biopolitics, to say, offers us no insights about how (or even why) describing the monk-like discipline that financial “politics of the next instant” that Frederic Jameson however, Adam Smith’s homo oeconomicus was sig- the market endures. traders cultivate in order to speculate in the market notes is characteristic of contemporary society. The nificantly updated by American neoliberals from The problem of endurance is especially acute rather than about the market. Speculators, Zaalom indisputable truth of the free market is the unyield- the Chicago School, who recognized that a found- in financial markets, where money and words are writes, are encouraged to swiftly react to the mar- ing precipitate of a vast and fluid array of histori- ing flaw within classical economics was its evasion brought together in circuits of accelerating velocity, ket but never to examine it (or “out-think” it), which cal and social relations, and its reality-effects are, of the labor question. They argued that labor ought and all transactions between these expressive cur- requires an almost theological submission to the in this sense, opposed to both positivist teleology to be considered, in itself, as a form of capital, in rencies accrues both risks and profits. One of the transcendental market. In Zaloom’s account, mar- (in which transformed relations produce new and which people could “invest” by educating them- features of our current juncture is an ongoing met- kets appear to work through revelation rather than necessary objects) and subjunctive speculation (in selves and marrying appropriate partners. Foucault onymic substitution of stock markets for markets as interpretation, and traders must create a “bound- which new objects yield fresh relations). marks this transition: “The characteristic feature of such, and that process of extraction demands an ex- ary around the space of the market [so as] to hone Neoliberal thought naturalizes and eternalizes the classic conception of homo oeconomicus is the tensive and unequal collaboration between market and execute purified economic logics when they are market competition, even as it dramatically trans- partner of exchange and the theory of utility based participants and market victims as well as between dealing.” One technique they deploy in this quest to forms social life and political processes to strain on a problematic of needs. In neoliberalism… homo market fictions and market standards. Markets have create the hallowed space of the market is temporal towards the unrealizable goal of a unified space of oeconomicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur to be performed to retain their ontological status, discontinuity; in order to sufficiently immerse them- speculative variation with no damaging or mitigat- of himself.” This line of argument is ironically remi- and the implications of that performativity have selves in the market, “traders must block out exter- ing “externalities.” This is a transition that Foucault niscent of Marx’s observation that a worker belongs engaged a growing field of scholars. Michel Callon nal influences, including the memory of success or captures when he argues that what distinguishes not to himself, nor even to a singular capitalist, but argues that economic discourse frames (and partly failure” and thus, she explains, the best speculative neoliberalism from liberalism as political rationality to the capitalist class, “and it his business to dispose invents) the phenomenon it claims to describe by practice resists narrative. It is this strict adherence is that “the state must govern for the market rather of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this activating institutional networks and promoting to the boundaries of the market and its delimita- than because of the market [and] the problem thus capitalist class.” what he calls “calculative agency.” This “format- tion from ordinary “emotional” life, coupled with becomes… what will be the effect on the art of the The difference, of course, is that a worker sells his ting” of economic activity enacts, in other words, an assurance about the generalized applicability government of this general principle that the mar- labor power— an abstraction that corresponds to no the boundary between politics and economics as and ineffable power of the reality so produced, that ket is what ultimately must be produced in govern- standard—while the entrepreneur sells his differen- distinct spheres of action, even as it dissolves the standardizes such speculation into science, not the ment?” tiated ability, a particularity measured almost exclu- internal and constantive coherence of the economy. arcane calculus of derivative-pricing.

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Zaloom’s ethnography sug- fragmentation and (dystopian) gests that Callon’s thesis— that salvation? markets are the ontological All utopias are unstable, and residue of vast and fragmentary one fundamental instability with- regulatory discourses— is only in neoliberal discourse is its em- partially true. Markets might be phasis on endurance— the sense produced by information, but of an ending both impending they remain, for precisely that and impossible— and the con- reason, impenetrable to knowl- comitant call to simultaneously edge, at least for those actors navigate both immediacy and who are most engaged with duration. This collapsed tem- them. Further, if financial mar- poral horizon is most obvious in kets resist both interpretation the politics of the next instant, and narrative— if they have final- in which it is the future, rather ly become, as Smith and Hayek than the past, that is conceived both so ardently desired, invis- through homogenous time and ible— how are they to be made standardized space. This insta- visible again? bility is sharply crystallized in the This essay has suggested that dilemma of how financial mar- neoliberalism is a successful uto- kets can be narratively represent- pia in the Jamesonian sense — it ed. The question thus becomes: suspends its polarities — and it what kinds of literary forms can has, like any fully realized utopia, critically represent their reality, powerfully dystopian dreams especially once standardization and effects. But it remains un- has harnessed and partly dis- clear how the stratified fictions of abled speculation? neoliberalism are to be disman- The literary scholar Leigh tled, or even questioned, which is Claire La Berge frames this quan- perhaps why the cultural produc- dary through a discussion of what tion of more provisional utopias she calls “the financial form.” has declined so sharply since Building on Jameson’s famous the 1970s. Contemporary popu- essay about postmodernism as lar culture manufactures mes- the cultural logic of late capital- siahs rather than utopias, hav- ism, she argues that his focus on ing seemingly ceded structural fragmentation and the collapse transformation to an inevitable of narrative is only half the story, capitalism and imagining only because it ignores capital’s per- superhuman transformations of sistent hegemony over lived real- agency. How does one, then, nar- ity and its ability to consistently ratively capture the neoliberal refuse alternate imaginaries. In- oscillation between (theoretical) stead, she argues, we must inves- Chien-Chi Chang -USA. New York City. 1998. A newly arrived immigrant eats noodles on a fire escape – http://pro.magnumphotos.com/Asset/-2S5RYDWJKXG6.html

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tigate the relationship between the aesthetic modes “The logic of finance” she explains “is sutured is why La Berge theorizes the financial form as “an placable… even intolerable negativity to be trained of postmodernism and realism, and the ways in between a description (which is repetitive) and a organization in which the field of representation is against… the positivist and empiricist world they which the burden of representing contemporary transaction (which is additive). A thing, or person, simultaneously indexical and value-producing— the inevitably construct.” “Capitalist realism” instanti- capitalism is distributed between them. Realism has to be described and a time period delimited indexing itself is a form of evaluation.” If one of the ates a similar critical stance. anchors the lived reality of neoliberal finance, while based on that description. It is between these two dystopian dreams of neoliberal financialization is to La Berge’s example for exemplary “capitalist postmodernism abstracts and refracts its effects. operations that a time/space matrix of finance fo- commodify all representation, as La Berge argues, realist” text is the television show The Wire, which its recursive circuits can be traced critically by en- Together, she explains, they present the financial ments.” This intimate encounter between represen- spent its first four seasons “realistically” depicting gaging moments when texts display an awareness form as a cohesive and yet incoherent totality. tation and accumulation in the “logic of finance” the failures of neoliberal social institutions and then of their own material conditions of possibility. She calls this form of criticism “capitalist realism” in an turned its critical lens upon itself in the final season earlier essay, arguing that it interrogates “the ways by introducing the sensational plot of an invented in which the ‘reality’ of production is incorporated serial killer. The structural violence of the first four into and interacts with the modes of representa- seasons is realistic, La Berge notes, because it is tion… the capitalist realist mode interrupts and dis- committed in the service of accumulation. It is tak- organizes itself, through its incorporation of other en as obvious, by the show and by its audience, that genres and through its desire to show the processes people are motivated to accumulate money, even of its own commodification.” when their pursuit of it results in murder. Violence La Berge’s call for a reinvigorated realism pro- committed in the pursuit of gratification must be ex- vides the ground upon which Jameson’s utopian plained its own right, through criminal psychology “universal army” can be imagined. I don’t intend rather than institutional critique, and with reference to engage Jameson’s (somewhat dubious) utopian projections in detail; I only want to note that his call to specific murderers rather than the structural con- for the universal army is born out of the recognition texts that made their violence possible. that what we need today are utopias premised not As La Berge puts it, “psychology disavows econ- on revolutionary ruptures but rather on revolution- omy; economy disavows interiority” and the chal- ary endurance—we need visions not of how utopias lenge of the fifth season— the speculative impulse, if are made, but of how they may be sustained. Jame- you will— was to hold both these standard assump- son uses his vision of the universal army to stage an tions in a productive tension. Like McNulty within assault on the iron law of efficiency, arguing that the show, The Wire “sells its own realism” and there- we have to displace efficiency from a foundational by, she argues, discards the nostalgia that haunts value into a strategic one, and thereby overhaul the most realisms: the dream of a return to a simpler crippling complex of ideologies that bolster neolib- past of the welfare state, community policing, lov- eral technocracy: progress, growth, expertise. Yet ing marriages, and clean cities. The nostalgia of re- Jameson warns us against a reactionary loathing for modernity that renounces “everything for which turn valorizes the imagination of a decaying present today we have a grateful and complicit enthusiasm” and a bleak future; a refusal of that return, as Jame- as well as the bland functionalism and uniformity son reminds us, revitalizes the political possibilities suggested by his advocacy of the universal army. implicit in Raymond Williams’ famous observation His “cultural revolution” against efficiency also de- that actually achieved socialism will be vastly more mands the cultivation of a deep reflexivity— “an im- complex than capitalism. Fredric Jameson – source: https://www.pinterest.com/offsite/?token=960-375&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.combinedacademic. co.uk%2Fjameson-on-jameson&pin=504614333220851510&client_tracking_params=CwABAAAADDc5OTE5MTEyNjAzMwA

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Settler Marxism and the Murdered and Missing Revolutionary Actors

Sean M. Kennedy

The fucking murders are like a strike, friend, a wild fucking strike. — Roberto Bolaño, 2666

n the central narrative of the late Roberto which to think the refusal to work differently, and Bolaño’s sprawling novel 2666, a black U.S. with a greater potential for revolutionary change. sportswriter named Fate, on assignment By broadening the target from the wage relation in “Santa Teresa,” a fictional version of to all relations of exploitation, first and foremost Ciudad Juárez, learns about an epidemic those structured by gender and race, which ramify of murdered women in the border city. the brutalities of capitalism, the world to come will Breakfasting near the sports arena where have a better chance at freedom from all hierarchy a boxing match will take place, he notices and coercion. everyone talking about something and asks his fixer As Bolaño makes clear in 2666, the women af- Iabout it. The murders of women, his compañero fected by feminicide are largely Indigenous and says, “bloom”: “Every so often…they’re news again employed in the maquiladoras and industrial parks and the journalists talk about them. People also talk that sprung up in the aftermath of the North Ameri- about them again and the story grows like a snow- can Free Trade Agreement of 1994. As U.S. compa- ball until the sun comes up and the fucking ball nies lowered their labor costs by outsourcing pro- melts and everyone forgets and returns to work.” duction to Mexican workers, and narco-capitalists Fate comments on the reference to “work” and his took advantage of the liberalized economy to en- friend goes on, saying: “The fucking murders are like hance their own companies through intimidation a strike, friend, a wild fucking strike.” (My transla- and fear, Indigenous and darker-skinned women tions from the Spanish.) bore the brunt of the bio-political carnage, toiling Feminicide, as Bolaño suggests in 2666, is a po- for sub-minimum wages in subhuman conditions tent way of seeing relations of labor, violence, and when they weren’t exterminated outright. power, especially across the three settler states of The epidemic of murdered and missing women North America, the vaunted “new world” of Euro- in Juárez, like that of women who have disappeared pean empire. Moreover, following the comparison in the U.S. and Canada, is a contemporary iteration to labor striking, feminicide is a key lens through of the colonial scene of conquest, genocide, and en- Esténcil de Roberto Bolaño en Barcelona en 2012. (Barrio de Sant Antoni) – source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/ Roberto_bolaño.jpg

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slavement. In this scene, women are always dispos- These workers then became the privileged actors in and institutions.” It specifically theorizes the ways attend to this relationship in its racial, gendered, able. They can be used for sex or household service, the overthrow of capitalism and thus the historical a person’s material vulnerability to various forms of and grounded terms. Such an approach necessar- field work or procreation. They can be killed be- agents of revolution. And this mission continues to violence is mediated by administrative bodies (in- ily resets the cause-and-effect model (to borrow cause of European settlement—whether by germs be taken up by a motley collection of contemporary cluding the media, which arbitrates truth claims, al- Fregoso’s phrase) of Marxist theories of revolution or colonial militias—or through the slow violence of workers, across sectors, even as global capitalism ways with a bias for the dominant). I emphasize the that historically originated in the imperial metro- the Middle Passage and the plantation. And while continually changes the forms of labor available. word “material” above because—far from its cari- pole of Europe and that are still the baseline of so this historical configuration of forces may have been As analysts of both racial capitalism and settler co- cature as postmodern superstructural nonsense— much labor and other organizing in the world today. particular to (and particularly severe in) the Ameri- lonialism—the two intertwined foundations of mo- intersectionality theory factors in the profit motive That model, which I call settler Marxism, ignores the cas (the Américas), versions of it played out wherev- dernity and its institutions—have demonstrated, of capitalists (see, for instance, the redoubtable full material scope of the commodity in favor of a ge- er European empires vied for control, territory, and this paradigm leaves out the people most affected Combahee River Collective Statement, forty-one neric proletarian subject who recognizes the theft of profit. Indigenous women everywhere were simul- by capitalism. This includes Indigenous and racial- years young.) It also shows how institutions, from his time and labor and then uses that recognition to taneously the most and least valued in heteropatri- ized women, who are charged with the quadruple national governments on down, manage the many strike and defeat the capitalist class, ushering in a archal societies: objects that could be utilized when burden of wage labor, reproductive labor, racism, violences of capitalism on behalf of its beneficiaries. socialist-cum-communist society. needed and discarded when not. Feminicide thus and sexism, as well as Indigenous and racialized And, like any good agent, these institutions get a cut Settler Marxism has three crucial faults. First, in presents an opportunity to think beyond the nar- trans and non-binary people, who resist the gen- of the blood money. failing to account for all the people who don’t fit this row confines of labor as defined by orthodox Marx- der norms central to propagating heteropatriarchal The original colonial scene of the Americas is proletarian form, settler Marxism doesn’t address ists, unions, and single-issue activists to query value global society. instructive. As Hortense J. Spillers showed in her the largest possible bloc of revolutionary actors. more generally. Indeed, feminicide, derived from the Spanish fe- landmark essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An Where in this model, for example, are the people Fate, in 2666, finds the parallel between femini- minicidio, describes more than just the murder of American Grammar Book,” the commodity is al- who aren’t employed and the people who are struc- cide and labor striking “odd,” and, indeed, it may women, one of the reasons it’s preferred over the ways already both raced and gendered: the value turally unemployed? Where are incarcerated peo- seem so to many readers. What, after all, is the con- more common English-language term femicide. of enslaved people came directly from “the loss of ple? Land-based communities? The shelter-less? All nection between the systematic murder of women As Rosa-Linda Fregoso, a leading scholar-activist the[ir] indigenous name/land.” This dispossession those whose cosmologies don’t recognize the wage and the refusal to work? On first glance they appear on the issue, has written, the additional syllable of of identity and home was nowhere clearer than in relation or the settler state? Where are the women, to be starkly different issues, especially given the “in” “functions metaphorically as a register for the the “accounts and ledgers” of the industry, in which non-men, and queer people? The so-called “bread- one-dimensional nature of most labor strikes that relationship between violence in the private and “the names of ships and the private traders” were and-butter” dispensation of most unions, in which focus only on wages and working conditions, as re- public sphere, between individuals and institu- dutifully recorded but the “goods” were simply de- wages and working conditions are the sole priori- cent strikes across the U.S. and related fervor at the tions, between the deadly sexism of persons who scribed as “No. Negroes” and “Sum sold per head.” ties, assumes that the aforementioned humans and Graduate Center indicate. Rooted in a metropolitan murder women and governments who condone this And while this process made all enslaved African their needs don’t count. Marxism that assumes “primitive accumulation” violence.” Further, “The extra ‘IN’ inextricably links peoples commodities, the master’s need to control Two, the site of struggle—labor—is misplaced, was a precondition of capitalism and not its ongo- INdividual and INstitutional forms of violence, sym- the enslaved woman’s body and upend mother- since the violence of commodification exceeds the ing engine (think accumulation by dispossession, bolically representing how we conceptualize vio- child relations “mark[ed] the flesh as a prime com- violence of wage labor. Wage slavery is not chattel only starting in the 1490s rather than the 1970s), the lence structurally and beyond a singular cause-and- modity of exchange.” slavery, as Marx averred, but why do we organize strike can occlude the multiple violences that strike effect model” (her capitalization). Before labor, there is the commodity: people around the wage relation rather than the chattel workers outside the purview of such continental- Fregoso’s formulation of violence here is an reduced to things by the violence of enslavement. relation: that is, the hierarchy of human value? As ism. example of intersectional theory, that much be- That this commodification of Indigenous peoples Denise Ferreira da Silva has precisely and rigorously I call this proletarian-centered approach settler nighted school of thought strategically vulgarized, (of the African continent) took place on Indigenous theorized, the “whole field of modern representa- Marxism for the disappearing of revolutionary ac- by both the alt-right and the alt-left, as “identity ground (of the Americas), cleared of Indigenous tion” inaugurated by Enlightenment thought to tors that don’t fit its imperial teleology: the narra- politics.” But as Fregoso explains—and as Kimberlé peoples, underscores the indivisibility of indigeneity rationalize European imperialism is predicated on tive in which Euro-U.S. industry, stealing or exploit- Crenshaw, who gave the concept a name, readily as- and capital—and the imperative to address both to- a universal Subject (akin to Sylvia Wynter’s “Bread- ing the resources of colonies and quasi-colonies, serts—intersectionality is not about identity claims gether. Furthermore, following Spillers (and numer- winner/Investor subject of the nation-state”) who in turn stole the time and labor of factory workers. per se but, rather, the relationality of “individuals ous other thinkers, I should add), we must always seeks self-determination through the elimination

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of objects: the unhuman others of racial capitalism ter the settler-Marxist revolution, we may have com- state. In this I follow Cedric Robinson’s analysis in Picking up this theme through Fanon, Coulthard and settler colonialism. In 2666, Bolaño effectively mon ownership of the means of production (and Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tra- observes that “the theory and practice of Indig- investigates this relationship between canonical thus an end to capitalism), but settlement, white dition and Glen Sean Coulthard’s thoughts about enous anti-colonialism, including Indigenous anti- modern thought and the mortality of its others by supremacy, and heteropatriarchy will still be pres- “red Marxism,” both of which assert the importance capitalism, is best understood as a struggle primar- connecting, in circuitous fashion, European philoso- ent and accounted for, as will institutionality and, of land-based communities over the proletariat in ily inspired by and oriented around the question of phy and its contemporary scholars to the murdered arguably, nationalism and imperialism. So, too, will revolutionary action. land—a struggle not only for land in the material and missing women in former New Spain. be the psychic economy that Silva adduces, and the From the U.S. Civil War, Robinson writes, when sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as What would happen if we organized around this hierarchy of human value overall. None of these is- “one hundred thousand poor whites had deserted system of reciprocal relations and obligations can violence of life and death—of self-determination sues simply “disappear” in the settler Marxist future, the Confederate armies and perhaps a half million teach us about living our lives in relation to one an- and extermination—rather than the abstract vio- as anyone who’s been in a room with self-identified Black workers had abandoned the plantations,” to other and the natural world in non-dominating and lence of the wage (which, after all, is a copy of the leftists can attest. Or look at the rise of the alt-left the “Indian Mutiny, the Boxer Rebellion, the nation- non-exploitative terms—and less around our emer- former)? What if we put murdered and missing In- (exemplified by Chapo Trap House and works like alist struggles,” to “the Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, So- digenous women (and their descendants) at the Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies and Mark Lilla’s The malia, Abyssinia, West and southern Africa, and… gent status as ‘rightless proletarians.’” If we are to center of our collective efforts for transformation? Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics) and the ‘people’s wars’” of Mexico and China, “in every truly end domination and exploitation, the wage re- Wouldn’t ending violence in all its forms mean the its inability to account for (its) whiteness, let alone instance peasants and agrarian workers had been lation and the chattel relation, then perhaps a gen- end of the wage relation too? hierarchy altogether. the primary social bases of rebellion. Nowhere, not eral strike, for and with the people who are other- The third problem with settler Marxism is that Returning to Bolaño’s invocation of the strike vis- even in Russia, where a rebellious urban proletariat wise disappeared—the murdered and missing, the if we maintain the wage relation as the horizon of à-vis the murder of women in Juárez, how might we was a fraction of the mobilized working classes, had ignored and the unthought—might finally succeed change, all the other violences of settler colonialism address the latter through the former? My specula- a bourgeois social order formed a precondition for in overthrowing the state: the settler state, shot and racial capitalism will remain. That is to say, af- tion: by mounting a general strike against the settler revolutionary struggle.” through with violence.

Crosses erected as a monument to victims of the Juárez feminicide – source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Utah_University_pink_crosses_protest_for_Juarez.jpg

42 — — Spring no. 3-4 2018 Spring no. 3-4 2018 — — 43 technology and politics technology and politics

Unmasking Musk: Envisioning HyperCapitalist Futures

Hillary Donnell

here’s something fascinating ing the low hanging fruit, Paypal, of one of Musk’s about the scintillating mythos first successful companies. I was arguing that while that American society has cre- Paypal and now Venmo, which Paypal acquired ated of the man behind PayPal, in 2016, has definitely made it easier to pay your SpaceX, The Boring Company roommate your share of the rent, they have done and Tesla. His rise to promi- nothing significant to address modernity’s most nence as America’s innovator- pressing social problems, wage-inequality, gun vio- in-chief has been exalted by lence, racial segregation, to name a few juggernauts the growing cult of personality that surrounds him. exacerbated by persistent state disinvestment and TThere are YouTube channels devoted to figuring neglect. A bystander unimpressed by my pontificat- out the source of his genius, tracking his eating and ing exclaimed, “But you have to admit that he has sleeping habits, while devotees excitedly retweet some really good ideas!” Clearly irritated that I was clips of each fiery SpaceX launch and fawn over his missing the point of entrepreneurial activity, they jeans-wearing, billionaire next door persona. But for continued, “And the thing is, he just goes for it. He all the Musk fans, there is a growing cadre of Musk actually makes them happen.” skeptics who are uncertain about the future that Given the urgency and emotion in this person’s Musk wants to sell us. Perhaps, though, it is those tone, I backed off, sensing that just one more stab millions who hold Musk up as an idol, a harbinger at Silicon Valley’s savant might spoil the celebra- of hope for the future, whose obsession tells us the tory mood. Later I considered how this person’s re- most about ourselves as Americans. Musk-lovers re- action betrayed just how much of ourselves we see veal what we revere: entrepreneurship, innovation, in Elon. My interlocutor seemed upset not only be- rule-breaking, conquering new frontiers. But there’s cause I was criticizing Musk, but because I was tak- plenty about Musk’s millennial charm and the future ing shots at the eroticized spirit of entrepreneurship kind of guy people admire, if only for the boldness wild, dream something up, and make happen with he promises that merits closer scrutiny. that he embodies. This is the entrepreneurship that he demonstrates in dreaming up an idea and seeing nothing but our wit, a shoestring, and some tape. Last year at a Halloween house party in Brooklyn the American collective conscious associates with it come to life. And while a twinge of his South Af- He’s our John Wayne, Buzz Aldrin, Steve Jobs, our I was making casual conversation about Musk with Manifest Destiny, cowboys, the space race, and a rican accent remains, we’ve been more than happy Tony Stark, all rolled into one. anyone who would listen. I was decrying the sup- few centuries of American folklore. It’s what we be- to adopt him, thanks to his uncanny encapsulation But what have we missed while gazing at Musk posed achievements of Musk’s companies, attack- lieve makes us truly American and Elon Musk is the of the American spirit. He’s telling us to go into the with our rose-tinted glasses? What makes his ideas Elon Musk in Los Angeles – source: https://www.gentleman.elconfidencial.com/personajes/2016-11-10/tesla-motors-elon-musk-silicon- valley-marte_1287547/

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especially attractive to modern tainably sourced worker-owned tion craze is a pervasive marketing ing suit. They insist that by being ing around 35,000 jobs altogether, crets, prevents them from union- consumers, I would argue, is the coffee plantations, the advertise- technique, ensuring that all kinds loyal to the brand one is by exten- and since many of these are clas- izing for a fair wage. The same subtle appeal to the “common ment for a pair of shoes that goes of goods and services must make sion promoting the social good. sified as “green jobs,” his compa- has been said of the contract at good” embedded in the market- to the nameless child in need for some mention that their products “Buy a Tesla, save the environ- nies have garnered about $4.9 bil- SolarCity, his solar energy com- ing of his products. Which would every pair you buy, the app that are doing their part to chip away ment.” But how true is it? lion in government subsidies. But pany that is a subsidiary of Tesla. be fine, if that’s what his products tells you exactly who was harmed at a social problem. By tweaking At a Tesla factory in Fremont, what’s green about a job where A unionized oil refinery worker were actually providing. Rather, and where in the making of that the business model to incorporate CA, one of the most expensive workers can’t afford to live near can’t be expected to leave their “doing good” has become a veri- H&M hoodie. In each of these and assuage consumer discom- places to live in the Golden State, the factory and have to commute six figure yearly salary in a “dirty table dog-whistle for those seek- models the conscious-consumer fort, globalized production pro- workers are paid between $17 and for hours in, you guessed it, regu- job” to take up a non-unionized ing some absolution with their is assuaged by a degree of control cesses transform the very act of $21 hourly, well below the $30 na- lar fossil-fuel powered cars? Work- work installing solar panels. Some consumption. This appeal is what that they are given over the harm purchasing into the promotion of tional average for autoworkers. ers at Tesla have complained that options present themselves: enabled Musk’s companies to gar- that they cause through their con- social welfare. Estimates say that Musk’s com- language in their contract, osten- liquidate all the unions and let ner billions in public funds and sumption. The ethical consump- Musk’s businesses are follow- panies are responsible for creat- sibly written to protect trade se- the market determine the wage become models for how we con- across sectors, or unionize the so- ceive of sustainable futures. called “green jobs”. One of those As the modern consumer has two futures seems decidedly discovered, living with worlds of more sustainable, but that is not consumption at one’s fingertips the future that Musk and the state does not come without a dark are interested in funding. side. The globalization of pro- The same goes for Musk’s Hy- duction processes along with the perloop proposal, his plan for a rise of communication technolo- honeycomb of underground tun- gies means we have more insight nels that would connect large than ever about the horrors that cities and solve the problem of characterize the assembly of our lengthy, congested commutes. iPhones. Abysmal wages, unsafe Again, far from eliminating the working conditions, enormous problem of congested cities environmental costs. A natural caused by millions of cars, the Hy- consequence is that consum- perloop would merely pack some ers begin to have an emotional of them into a high-speed tun- response to the fact that their nel. Musk maintains that his tun- consumption is tied, however re- nels will be equitable, by which motely, to the extreme violence he means that they will be open of globalized production. Capi- to everyone. His claim begs some talism’s countermove? Commod- questions: Does everyone have a ify that response. The marketing car in the future? Are all the cars strategies of SpaceX, Starbucks’, electric? Can everyone’s car fit Tom’s and countless other busi- into this tunnel? As Paris Marx nesses have been tweaked to tap noted in Jacobin Magazine, the the market created by our guilty Boring Company (Musk’s corpo- conscience. Consider seals of ap- ration digging the tunnels for the proval vouching for far-off sus- Hyperloop) claims to be making Aerial image of the lithium-ion battery gigafactory that Tesla is building in Nevada and that plans to begin production next year – source: https://www.gentleman.elconfidencial.com/ personajes/2016-11-10/tesla-motors-elon-musk-silicon-valley-marte_1287547/

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don’t know one another interact, and some of us read into her mu- It may go without saying that what we used to call public spac- sic and her style a radical political in a nation confronted by cata- es, are necessarily grotesque and stance that perhaps was never strophic Trumpian policies on cli- should, if possible, be avoided is there. We have mistaken her devi- mate change, foreign affairs and the opinion that has eroded in- ant futurist aesthetic as implying domestic regulation, we should vestment in public parks, librar- that she held radical earthly poli- be keeping our eyes on the work- ies, schools and more. It’s also the tics. The reality is that we see what ings of the state. But we should opinion that Musk seems to hold. we want to see in public figures not forget that as state regulatory Better to own your own luxury we admire, just as those of us who electric car than to have to inter- want to see Musk as a genius in apparatuses collapse and collude act with a stranger on what could jeans are willing to overlook more with private interests to undo any be affordable, reliable, and rapid unsavory aspects of his work. And grounds for social cohesion, it is public transit. while Grimes never claimed that imperative to also be critical of Sil- Viewed from this angle, the she was out to promote the so- icon Valley billionaires like Musk. world that we’re allowing Musk cial good with her music or her It’s not AI we have to fear, as Musk to envision for us does not ap- life choices, Musk certainly does. implores us to believe, but rather pear vastly different from the one Their union then, is perhaps not the entirety of a hyper-capitalist we inhabit today—plagued with so bizarre. world where innovations only ex- starkly segregated cities in terms The Boring Company just acerbate the difficult realities we of wealth and presumably still launched a new product, The already face. Changing the most race, decrepit public transport (not) a Flamethrower. The “(not)” disgusting realities of our current and rising wage inequality— a fu- part was inserted as a media gim- ture backed by billions of dollars mick poking fun at the attempted world will take more than one of taxpayer funds. regulations by the California leg- man’s vision. I would be remiss if I didn’t islature, which sought to place It is admirable that Elon Musk mention Elon’s romantic partner some limits on who could get counts mitigating the effects of at the moment, synth-wave art- access to this $600 fire-gun. In global warming and moving us ist Grimes. She recently defended California where droughts and away from fossil fuel technolo- Musk against claims that he has wildfires have been running ram- gies as some of his primary goals quantum leaps into the future of 3,650 as compared to 12,000 per guage he uses to describe the supported union-busting surveil- pant in the past year, and in an alongside profit-making. But if we underground transport, but proj- hour. Musk believes that the Hy- public sphere and the fact the lance and harassment tactics country where assault weapons are willing to give him this much at Tesla. I’ve heard grumblings are responsible for thousands of ects in Madrid, Seoul and Stock- perloop is absolutely necessary, Boring Company’s first test tunnel adulation, this much airtime, amongst old-guard Grimes fans deaths per year, some regulation holm have already achieved sub- though, because it offers some- connects Musk’s home to SpaceX and this much public funding, we not pleased with her decision to seems necessary. And yet the bill owe it to ourselves to hold him to way tunnel boring at costs similar thing that public transit projects headquarters in Hawthorne, CA. team up with Musk. Grimes is an regulating the Flamethrowers to those that Musk once claimed do not: exclusivity and indepen- His commentary reinforces an artist who self-released her Dune- died in committee, and 20,000 of higher standard because, despite only the Boring Company could dence. Musk argues we need the opinion that the political right inspired concept album, Geidi them have been sold on preor- what you may have heard, we are achieve. Worse, the Hyperloop Hyperloop because, “Don’t we has spent years peddling, and has Primes, in 2010. Her aesthetic der. Government regulation is no capable of designing abundant proposal can carry less than a all agree [that] public buses are spent much energy on divestment painted pictures of worlds where match for the appeal of an gadget futures in which equity is not the third the passenger load of com- disgusting”. The exclusivity of his to ensure its resonance. The opin- freaks might be embraced instead that portends the kind of dystopia handmaiden of profit, but the parable high-speed rail projects: ventures is betrayed in the lan- ion that spaces where people who of ostracized for their deviance, we’re headed for. other way around. Image of Falcon 9, the rocket built by SpaceX, whose main innovation is the reuse of the launch vehicle after each mission – source: https://www.gentleman.elconfidencial.com/personajes/2016-11-10/tesla-motors-elon-musk-silicon-valley-marte_1287547/

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have not been used since 1945. To the contrary, they for the decimation of populations of smaller allies have been used hundreds of times by several nations without causing annihilation of the primary combat- Salami Tacticals to intimidate other nations. In August 2017, when ants. The long years of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia Donald Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” claimed the lives of an estimated three to four mil- Little Nukes — No Big Deal? against North Korea, that was but one in a long string lion men, women, and children, none of them killed of uses to which the most potent of the world’s ther- outright by nuclear weapons. monuclear arsenals has been put. During several decades of Cold War, the U.S. and Clifford D. Conner Restoring the Nuclear Option Soviet nuclear arsenals were used to provide cover for a number of proxy wars between the two super- The horror of the instantaneous incineration of powers. The nuclear “balance of terror” allowed two Japanese cities and tens of thousands of civilian lives made a lasting impression on public conscious- ness that has thus far sufficed to deter a recurrence. But ever since the end of World War II there have been unrelenting calls to restore the nuclear option to routine warfare. alami tactics are how devious politicians Among the most persistent advocates was Gen- attempt to achieve major policy goals eral Curtis LeMay, who had directed the March 1945 that they don’t dare pursue openly firebombing of Tokyo. LeMay boasted, with charac- and directly. Knowing that they can’t have the whole salami all at once, they teristic callousness, that his forces had “scorched lop off one small sliver at a time. If suc- and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo cessful, they eventually attain their on that night of March 9–10 than went up in vapor at objective by a series of incremental, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” irreversible steps. SOne policy goal that some American military strat- U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay egists would like to achieve is the use of nuclear Later, in the early stages of the Cold War era, weapons in combat. As Barack Obama acknowledged General LeMay headed the Strategic Air Command, in 2009, the United States is “the only nuclear power which put him in charge of the U.S. nuclear strike to have used a nuclear weapon.” But since the atomic forces. Typifying the kill-it-in-the-cradle instincts of bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the military mind, he lobbied for massive preemptive August 1945, nuclear weapons have, by the greatest nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union, despite the of good fortune, remained on the shelf. Strategic Air Command’s own estimates that it would A Brookings Institution audit estimated that the annihilate more than 77 million people in 188 tar- United States spent more than nine trillion dollars on geted cities. Fortunately, President Eisenhower over- nuclear weapons between 1940 and 1996. We must ruled him and disallowed preemptive strikes. All of be thankful that the fruits of those trillions were, met- that was prelude to what was probably LeMay’s most aphorically speaking, flushed down the toilet rather notorious utterance when, as the Vietnam War was than used on the battlefield. escalating, he announced his desire “to bomb them That is not to say, however, that nuclear weapons into the Stone Age.”

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Strategic versus Tactical Nukes From Davy Crockett to Dial-a-Yield Nukes The central ploy in the salami campaign to un- The pioneer of tactical nukes appeared in 1961, dermine antinuclear resistance aims at convincing bearing the name of an American frontier hero with the public that smaller “tactical” bombs—as distinct pop culture name recognition, Davy Crockett. The from larger “strategic” ones—are no big deal. Pro- Davy Crockett was a portable bazooka that featured ponents of tactical nukes claim that they could be the smallest-yield nuclear warhead the Pentagon has safely deployed in “regional wars” without triggering ever created. Though tactical nukes pack a smaller a massive, planet-engulfing nuclear Armageddon. punch than their strategic cousins, their destructive Downplaying the dangers of tactical nuclear power is small only in a relative sense. The 51-pound weapon use is designed to set a precedent—to get Davy Crockett could produce a blast equivalent to 10 the camel’s nose under the tent, so to speak. As of to 20 tons of TNT. While that was only about one per- this writing, the effort has not yet succeeded in bring- cent of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, it matches ing about the direct use of such weapons, but the the explosive power of the largest of the conventional campaign to legitimize them continues and the pres- bombs in the U.S. arsenal. But measures of explosive sure is mounting. Tactical weapons are supposedly power in TNT equivalents don’t tell the whole story of intended for smaller tasks than their strategic coun- the nukes’ lethality. Their killing capability is not only terparts, such as knocking out bridges rather than, a function of the power of their blast but also of the say, flattening major cities. The distinction between long-term environmental poison they leave in their strategic and tactical, however, is arbitrary, to say the wake in the form of lethal radiation. In Hiroshima and least. A leading proponent of combat nukes, Defense Nagasaki, tens of thousands of people died from ra- Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis, proclaimed there diation poisoning in the months and years after the is “no such thing” as a tactical nuclear weapon. “Any atomic bombs were dropped. nuclear weapon used anytime is a strategic game A small squad of soldiers could tote the Davy changer,” he acknowledged at a February 2018 Con- Crockett around in the field, set it up on its tripod, gressional hearing. and fire off its nuclear “cannonball” at will. Historian Although the drive to normalize battlefield nuke of science Alex Wellerstein summarized the device’s use has recently reached new and alarming heights, career in a blog post several years ago: “The Davy it is not a new development. The promotion of tac- Crockett system was actively deployed from 1961 tical nukes had already reached fever pitch in the through 1971. The redoubtable Atomic Audit reports 1960s. Herman Kahn, doyen of the military-industrial that they were found to be highly inaccurate and complex’s favorite think tank, the RAND Corporation, were not effectively integrated into actual war plans. was the model for Stanley Kubrick’s wickedly satirical Nonetheless, according to the same source, some Dr. Strangelove, urging the public to “stop worrying 2,100 warheads for the Davy Crockett system were and love the bomb.” produced, at a cost of about half a billion (1998) tax- Kahn hailed the usefulness of smaller nukes in his payer dollars.” seminal On Escalation, which argued that they were Although the Davy Crocketts no longer exist, there necessary to create “gradations” in responses to are still tactical nukes aplenty, and the Pentagon con- threats from enemies. They would, Kahn contended, tinues to include them in their plans. The distinction allow the generals to escalate wars while maintain- between large strategic and small tactical weapons ing “escalation control.” is further blurred by the fact that the same device— U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay

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most notably, the B61 bomb—can serve as both. armament would be a central goal of his administra- The B61 is the primary thermonuclear gravity bomb tion. In April 2009, the newly-elected Chief Executive in the U.S. arsenal. It is a variable-strength (“Dial-a- publicly vowed, “I state clearly and with conviction Yield”) bomb that can be set to yield anywhere from America’s commitment to seek the peace and secu- 0.3 to 340 kilotons, or from about twice the potency rity of a world without nuclear weapons.” Those were of the Davy Crockett to about 22 times that of the Hi- fine words, for which six months later, in October, he roshima bomb. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But before the month of October had ended, the new Nobel laure- Loading a B61 thermonuclear bomb onto an F-16 ate had signed into law the act initiating the trillion- fighter-bomber dollar-plus expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. There was no admission of a flip-flop. Obama said A variant of the B61, the W80 warhead modified for he continued to seek disarmament, but was obliged use with air-launched cruise missiles and Tomahawk to negotiate from a position of strength, which re- missiles fired from ships and submarines, also had quired a reliable, modernized U.S. arsenal. Obama’s Dial-a-Yield capability. It can explode with TNT equiv- disarmament legacy was to turn over authorization alence of from 5 to 150 kilotons. The Navy’s tactical for unprecedented expenditures on nuclear weapons nukes were “retired” in 2010, but their advocates, to the warhawks of the Trump administration, who with encouragement from the Trump administration, swiftly dispensed with the pretense that the upgrade continue to lobby for their return. was actually in the interests of disarmament. Secre- tary of Defense Mattis declared that “recapitalizing The 21,600-pound Mother Of All Bombs the nuclear weapons complex of laboratories and In April 2017, MOAB, the famous “Mother Of All plants” was “long overdue.” Bombs,” was dropped in a rural district of Afghani- As of February 2018, the U.S. arsenal contained stan—the first combat use of the largest non-nu- about 500 tactical nukes, 200 of which were de- clear bomb in the U.S. arsenal. It was an especially ployed with aircrafts in Europe and the rest in the ominous event because the decision to experiment United States. The Obama-Trump upgrade calls for with the explosive power of the mega-bomb was creating two new types of tactical nukes: a warhead taken unilaterally by General John Nicholson, the for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and a sea- commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. launched cruise missile. An analysis of the Trump ad- In praising that decision, President Trump declared ministration’s Nuclear Posture Review reports that it that he had given “total authorization” to the U.S. “bristles with plans for new low-yield nuclear weap- military to conduct whatever missions they wanted, ons.” Moreover, as a recent article by David Sanger anywhere in the world. That declaration seemed to and William Brand in the New York Times notes, “crit- issue an open invitation for field commanders to fire Dr Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick ics of the low-yield weapons say they blur the line off a tactical nuclear warhead. Will that be the next between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, making their use more likely,” and “the Trump policy explic- slice of the combat experimentation salami? the nuclear weapons complex,” a commitment to and 400 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to de- itly threatens to launch nuclear strikes in response to spending some $300 billion over the following ten liver them. The $300 billion was just the initial esti- ” The Obama-Trump Nuclear Modernization acts of terrorism and to cyberattacks. years to upgrade and expand the American nuclear mate; the 30-year cost of the upgrade was projected Normalizing the use of smaller nukes would pro- Program arsenal. In addition to replenishing the stockpile of to be well over a trillion dollars. This major escala- vide the generals with political cover for their entire In October 2009, President Barack Obama signed nuclear warheads per se, the plan called for 12 new tion of the arms race was carried out by a president stockpile of nuclear weapons, small and large alike. a National Defense Authorization Act to “modernize nuclear-capable submarines, 100 new bombers, who had won office after promising that nuclear dis- To buttress his contention that “a low-yield nucle-

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ar weapon is a must-have, not a luxury,” Albert Mauroni, an Air Force think tank director, argues that “eliminating tactical nuclear weapons could result in the U.S. government self-deterring itself from using larger nuclear weap- ons in a future crisis against an- other nuclear-weapons state.” “Given,” he continues, “that the U.S. military is increasingly involved in numerous conflicts all over the globe, can it afford to not invest in low-yield nuclear weap- ons and delivery systems?” The more urgent question is: Given the existential threat thermonuclear war represents, can humanity af- ford a nuclear-armed U.S. military aggressively pursuing conflicts all over the globe? In October 2017, more than 240,000 troops in at least 172 countries and territories were waging “America’s Forever Wars,” the New York Times reported. U.S. forces were “actively engaged” not only in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ye- men, and Syria, but also in Niger, Somalia, Jordan, Thailand, and elsewhere. “An additional 37,813 troops serve on presumably se- cret assignment in places listed simply as ‘unknown.’ The Penta- gon provided no further explana- tion.” Congressional oversight of these activities no longer merits even lip service. Opportunities for field commanders to launch a salami slicers’ denials, even the to mobilize massive opposition to Science for the People, a leading radical science ning later in 2018. For more information on Science tactical nuclear warhead are thus smallest thermonuclear exchange the irreversible step of exploding magazine, was originally published from 1970-1989. for the People’s activities and archives, please visit proliferating. The danger to hu- is rife with doomsday potential. a tactical nuke on an active battle- Activists are planning a relaunch of the magazine, in- their website (scienceforthepeople.org/index.php/ manity is incalculable. Despite the It is incumbent upon civil society field. cluding republication of its complete archives, begin- publishing). The 21,600-pound Mother Of All Bombs

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The Campaign for of the union, I have been organizing for parity for ad- tal energy allocated just to obtain work and juggle juncts, including a livable wage of $7,000 per course. multiple jobs rather than focused progress within our The two-tiered funding system at the Graduate Cen- doctoral programs. I was on my department’s admis- Full and Fair Funding of ter is generally kept under the radar, the unnoticed sions committee and could observe how competitive elephant in the room, leading to our decision at the the ranking process is, which can negatively impact Adjunct Project to make this an organizing priority as admissions and funding prospects for non-traditional all GC Doctoral Students well. and working-class students. I am convinced that there is no justification for this inequity based upon merit. The Adjunct Project Personally, it took a while for it to sink in how stark the inequality was and the outsized obstacles this This spring, I co-signed a FOIL request submitted by presented for me and other underfunded doctoral the GC PSC chapter and the Adjunct Project to obtain students. Each semester entailed an exorbitant effort information linking levels of funding to demographic to reconstitute an income and health insurance from information as well as timely progress towards degree contingent adjunct and research jobs — time and men- and successful outcomes. Our FOIL request and subse- n Friday, 27 April, the Doctoral nent fix for this urgent issue — for the sake of all GC and Graduate Students’ Council doctoral students, whether they receive full funding of the Graduate Center passed a through a Graduate Center Fellowship or not. The is- resolution calling for the full and sue of funding binds us together as GC doctoral stu- fair funding of all GC doctoral dents, from the admissions process through to the students (please see the text of attainment of the Ph.D. the resolution at the end of the To maximize feedback and collaboration, the AP article). Created by the Adjunct created a working group on the issue comprising sev- Project (AP) in close collaboration with several GC eral GC doctoral students, who started the campaign Odoctoral students, the resolution details the problem for full and fair funding along with the AP coordina- of underfunding at the GC and offers steps for rem- tors, eventually leading to the DSC resolution. We’ve edying this inequity. also produced stickers highlighting the campaign, Although the funding inequities at the GC have are starting to collect student testimonials, and will been an issue of the AP going back many years, they be releasing a survey to collect the funding data the became a primary initiative of the AP this past spring GC has so far denied us (see Turner’s testimonial be- semester, thanks largely to the experiences and low for more details). Indeed, we’re excited to take commitment of AP co-coordinator Lynne Turner, a this campaign to the next level in the fall! sociology Ph.D. student going into her fifth year at To that end, the following testimonials from Turn- the GC. Entering the program with only a five-year er and Merrit Corrigan, Thayer Hastings, and James tuition fellowship, supplemented by occasional tem- Tolleson — all members of the campaign working porary Graduate Assistantship D lines, Turner, like group — amplify how the lack of full and fair fund- many GC doctoral students, lived with ongoing un- ing affects them — and, by extension, all GC doctoral certainty about her livelihood and her path toward a students. degree. Though she now has a Mellon Humanities Al- I had been a union and community organizer for liance fellowship beginning this fall, Turner’s difficul- many years prior to entering the doctoral program ties prompted the AP coordinators to seek a perma- and, through the Adjunct Project and as a member Source – https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/Images/Commencement/Comm2013Images/Rotator/CUNY- GC-Commencement-2013-125.jpg?width=460&height=306&ext=.jpg

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quent appeal were denied based mitment to diversity and inclusion but from my view, in a $10.50-per- work nor pay is guaranteed. This larger learning community, will for the structural failings of the upon the claim that since the GC with concrete measures to provide hour service job, I couldn’t pass semester one of my discussion continue to hang over the GC until Graduate Center to provide full doesn’t collect this information it the support necessary to engender up the opportunity. My partner sections was dropped, and my we have full and fair funding for all and equal funding for all of us would require substantial comput- success. agreed that we could take on the pay was cut nearly in half, due students. studying here. I have had to take er programming to obtain it. It’s financial burden together. Al- to low student enrollment. I also on teaching an extra class as an — Lynne Turner — Merrit Corrigan mind-boggling that the GC doesn’t though we’re “making it,” I’m con- spend significant amounts of time adjunct for a total of three, in addi- consider it within their purview to vinced that the two-tiered system searching, applying, interviewing, tion to a consulting gig, and work- I was thrilled when I got the It is hard enough living in New examine how institutional fund- significantly harms the GC’s ability and waiting for other potential ing as one of the co-coordinators ing, or lack thereof, aids or hinders news that I was off the waiting list to create a space for doctoral stu- sources of income, which leaves York City on the full Graduate Cen- at the Adjunct Project in order to student progress and successful and in reach of a tuition-only fel- dents to thrive. me in a state of uncertainty about ter fellowship. Members of my co- save money in NYC to do my field outcomes, raising concerns about lowship. I consulted with current Every semester I seek out ad- funding for next year, not to men- hort without stipends are put in a work in an international setting. both transparency and political students and considered waiting junct teaching positions to help tion the next 3, 4, 5 years of my near impossible situation and are will to back up the GC’s stated com- to re-apply for the following year, support myself, but neither steady program. Applying for disserta- forced to devote large amounts I love teaching and working tion and “write-up” grants will be of their time to additional teach- with my students, but it is sad that hard enough! We need full and ing, working outside jobs, and the lack of a transparent and just fair funding to eliminate this ad- applying for internal and external funding structure by the GC makes ditional stress and make the GC a grants. Even only in the first year us choose one or the other in this top-notch setting for all doctoral of my program, underfunding has imposed zero-sum equation. This students. taken its toll. The students without is clearly an issue of how class, full funding are clearly carrying a gender, race, and sexuality op- — James Tolleson heavier burden than the rest of us pression put many of us even fur- and that affects their ability to pre- ther behind in creating an even I entered the Graduate Cen- pare for classes and participate playing field or successful efforts ter with a tuition-only fellowship more broadly. This is a loss for my to value its students’ diversity by nervous and unsure how I would cohort and the GC community as the GC. pay rent, access health insurance a whole. The difference between when I turned 26, or feel as though “full” and partial funding is in de- — Rafael A. Mutis I belonged in the stratified doc- grees of precarity. toral community. Tuition-only fel- If you’d like to get involved lowships make for a precarious — Thayer Hastings in the campaign for full and fair doctoral student experience. Each funding, whether by sending us semester the relief I felt progress- Not having funding to complete ing in study was clouded by the my dissertation has been a heavy a testimonial or contributing in worry that it may no longer be pos- burden, as it has put me back at another way, email the AP at the- sible financially to continue on in a least a year as I try to cobble to- [email protected]. And few months. Although I now have gether the money to pay tuition make sure to check out the section three years of funding through a and fees and to complete my re- of our website dedicated to this is- GC Digital Initiatives fellowship, search. My advisor has been a sue at http://cunyadjunctproject. this veil of uncertainty, impact- great help in getting me funding, org/funding/. We’ll be updating it ing individual scholarship and our but those efforts do not make up throughout the campaign. Graduate Center building in New York (5th Avenue and 34th street). Photo by Alex Irklievski – source: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2014/07/ new-cuny-center-for-digital-scholarship.html

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WHEREAS, these obstacles make it disproportionately difficult for underfunded students to achieve pro-

gram goals, to dedicate time to publishing and other requirements for future success, and to generally prioritize

on- time program completion and successful outcomes;

WHEREAS, the Graduate Center, its academic departments, and all of its students benefit from the pres-

ence of students who are currently underfunded, since larger cohorts result in expanded choice and number of DSC RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF FULL AND FAIR FUNDING FOR CUNY GRADUATE CENTER PHD STUDENTS classes and greater prospects for state funding; WHEREAS, academic departments are currently told that they cannot transfer vacated Graduate Center Fel- Submitted by Adjunct Project working group for full and fair funding Adopted by the DSC during Plenary on April 27, 2018 lowships to underfunded doctoral students in their departments; and

WHEREAS, the Graduate Center administration has denied requests for demographic and completion data

in relation to student funding, and provides no clear indication of the process by which fellowships and other WHEREAS, CUNY was founded as a public academy “to educate the whole people” and the Graduate Center funding sources are distributed; represents CUNY’s important endeavor to offer doctoral education to “the whole people”; Be it RESOLVED that the DSC supports and advocates: WHEREAS, many current and incoming doctoral students at the CUNY Graduate Center, as much as 50% of Full and fair funding, including access to quality health insurance, for all current and incoming Graduate some new cohorts, receive no funding at all beyond five-year tuition waivers; Center students; WHEREAS, this lack of financial support forces underfunded students to: Transparency in the allocation of fellowships across departments through the release of relevant informa- Expend time and energy cobbling together a living each semester through highly contingent fellowships, tion, including about the demographics of underfunded students and the impact of underfunding on students’ temporary graduate assistantships, and adjunct positions; trajectories through their programs; and Vigorous efforts by the Graduate Center administration, department Take on multiple adjunct positions paying less than $3,500 per course in order to qualify for NYSHIP health insurance and survive economically; chairs and academic advisors to obtain the full and fair funding necessary to ensure the success of all students,

Scramble to teach whatever courses are available, requiring more preparation time and making it more dif- especially those from underrepresented and socially and economically disadvantaged groups, while maintain- ficult to specialize in certain courses; ing or expanding cohort size in all departments.

WHEREAS, underfunded doctoral students are virtually excluded from some fellowships – like the Writing Be it STILL FURTHER RESOLVED that while these issues pertain specifically to unfunded and underfunded Across the Curriculum (WAC) fellowship – and this exclusion makes underfunded students less desirable candi- doctoral students at the GC, we are also in solidarity with master’s students here, so be it resolved that we do dates for highly competitive fellowships and academic positions; not support any fee hikes on master’s students at the Graduate Center to fund their programs nor as a way to-

WHEREAS, underfunded students, being forced to rely on less stable employment, are not guaranteed con- fund the doctoral programs.

sistent union representation by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC);

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I’ve long been an advocate of ing our inclusivity muscles, why, seen them all take to an assign- fanfiction as a form of potential then, should it not be practiced in ment with such fervor (and my Fan Fiction as Emotionally community building. It can be a our writing classrooms? A labor of students have made me comic radical reclaiming of who gets to love —unpaid, ungraded, too of- books before, so that’s saying create the narratives we tell of ten even unrecognized as “real” something) and it was absolutely Inclusive, Anti-Ableist Praxis ourselves. Emotions — the grief writing—fan fiction is a far cry amazing. Letting them analyze of straight, cis, white, able-body- from the stale essays we generally the poem and engage deeply with minded men writing everyone require our students to write, the Giovanni’s text and subtext while Jenn Polish else’s stories, as well as the sheer ones that tell them not to use “I” being able to craft their own origi- joy of recognizing ourselves on statements and emphasize num- nal stories has been an absolute the backs of dragons — drive fan- ber of paragraphs over literary revelation. fiction. So, too, does a deeply-felt passion and the skills that can be Their work was of spectacular sense of social justice and the honed through precisely that pas- quality; their peer reviews were thirst to be included that margin- sion. insightful and supportive and alized creators feel in our bones. So, this past term at LaGuar- helpful; the depth and range of And if fanfiction is about joy, dia, I had my composition stu- creativity and narrative as well as about community, about justice dents write fanfiction about Nikki rhetorical skills they brought to henever I tell some- canons, providing details and highlighting nuances. and representation and improv- Giovanni’s poem “Poem for a Lady the assignment were out of this one that my students At its finest, fanfiction can be a form of protest, an in- ing our writing skills while flex- Whose Voice I Like.” I have never world. Beyond that infusion of at LaGuardia Commu- tricate close reading that challenges out-of-character nity College write fan- writing, racist writing, cissexist writing — writing that fiction for their first erases queer realities and destroys queer characters assignment in Com- for the development of cishet characters; writing that position 2, I either get murders characters of color for the development of major skepticism or white characters. When we write the stories so that major excitement. Never ambivalence. There’s some- the lesbians live, get the girl, and actually get their thingW about fanfiction that evokes either end of the traumas addressed and cared for (not calling out the emotional spectrum but nothing in between. CW’s Supergirl, but I’m calling out the CW’s Supergirl), For the uninitiated, fanfiction is when fans write when we rewrite season 3 of CW’s The Flash so it’s not stories that use characters and worlds originally torture porn in which a powerful Black woman is re- published by other authors. They can be short one- duced to a helpless side character whom we watch offs or novels or even independent series in them- die over, and over, and over again — when we rewrite selves. For example: if you didn’t like the ending of these things, we are protesting them. Marvel’s Infinity War, you can write your own and call We are protesting, and we are analyzing. Good it fanfiction. Did you think that Regina and Emma fanfiction provides closer close readings than any- from ABC’s Once Upon a Time belong together, and it thing I’ve ever read in even the best research papers was only heteronormative television that kept them or academic essays. The form demands it. The form apart? Literally everyone agrees with you and would rewards it. The form thrives on it. Without analysis of love to read your version in which the Savior and the canon, fanfiction could not exist. Without the need Evil Queen do, in fact, live happily ever after with to write ourselves into the canon that we are often their son. denied, fan fiction would not be such a powerful art Fanfiction can be a form of looking deeper into form. https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OsXvnk2ZszU/V9nzIUqsJKI/AAAAAAAAPJM/BFwyoFg-5DkFEN7RvQiDjdfznVNvh4JmwCPcB/s1600/Once.jpg

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and learning styles, all while presenting a rigorous thereof. Bringing this form into the classroom as a intellectual challenge. valid, important kind of writing not only sharpens So, why am I including this kind of assignment as students’ analytical skills and close reading tech- an example of an anti-ableist, inclusive practice? niques, it also serves as key emotional and intel- Because emotional inclusivity and emotional ac- lectual validation to those students whose skills, in- cess to classrooms is, I believe, just as necessary as terests, and identities are far too often sidelined by any other form of access. Yet they are perhaps the canonized academic texts and canonized academic ones we talk about least. Are all my students fanfic assignment structures. readers and writers? Nope. Have each and every one If you’re scratching your head and wondering how of them expressed excitement about the idea that the heck one would even scaffold an assignment like they’re allowed to craft their own tales as a valid way this, that’s understandable! To start, I suggest doing to analyze literature? Have all of them found that all of the following activities yourself and then hav- their chosen forms of expression — and their chosen ing students do the same: forms of learning — are sanctioned and encouraged and rewarded in the classroom? Yep. Yep, they have. That, to me, is every bit as anti-ableist as it can • Read and extensively discuss Kimberly Kara- come, especially when we consider the sheer num- lius’ “Fan Fiction in the Composition Class- ber of depressed and anxious young people who find room”; fanfic an engaging experience outside of the class- • Read some stories about their favorite books, room. Fanfiction is a refuge for people with many TV shows, comics, and/or movies on fan fic- kinds of marginalized identities, especially to those of us who also live with depression, anxiety, and oth- tion sites like Archive of Our Own, Wattpad, joy, though, this assignment was by far the best I’ve their teeth into the double entendres and imagined er dis/abilities that impact our feelings of self-worth, and/or fanfiction.net; and ever given even by the standards of academic writ- facial expressions and vocal tones and surrounding of energy, or the very ability to get out of bed (which, • Think of something—anything, whether it’s a ing, which demands close engagement with texts context; they had to leave no proverbial stone un- too, are issues that affect most of us when we’re in movie ending, a romance, a piece of charac- and original analysis. Because it’s often the assign- turned in the original text, in order to use it as a base school, not just those of us with dis/abilities). Bring- ment, rather than the students themselves, that de- for their own explorations of the two people present- ing fan fiction into the classroom validates the quiet ter development, a plot point, a missing scene termines the quality of analysis they will produce. ed in the poem itself. nerds whose social anxiety keeps them more on the to expand on—in one of your favorite pieces That is not to say that students don’t have agency The results were spectacular. internet than out of it, the depressed kids who need of fictional media that you’d like to change. when writing, of course they do. But we must also By now, I definitely convinced you of one thing, to scroll through fanfiction to keep ourselves calm, Draft your own version (or outline of what you take responsibility for poorly-designed assignments and hopefully, might have started to sway you about comforted, and feeling seen, the queer kids who just would want to see/read) and share with your that validate only certain kinds of thinking and writ- a second thing. The first is that I’m an irredeemable want to see ourselves, finally, being happy and safe classmates. ing, inadvertently excluding many students from the nerd. We know this. It is, one might say, canon. The and real in fiction, and the kids of color who get to process, and strive instead to make multiple forms of second— the hopeful thing—is that I’ve opened the explore the intricate lives of characters whose im- That last one? It sparked an absurd amount of complex analysis central to the creation process. possibility to you (if it wasn’t already) that fanfiction portance is otherwise sidelined, if not entirely ab- unsolicited discussion, diagramming, laughing, and To write these fics, the students had to close read can be a profound form of close reading, of protest, sent. yelling about how Jack could totally have fit on that the text in ways that simply don’t compute with most of José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentification at work, Fanfiction has long been a form in which people plank with Rose at the end of Titanic. All that pas- traditional research or argumentative essay assign- of teaching quality thinking and writing. But my title whose first language is not English practice their sion, and that too during an 8:00am class for which ments. Students had to get inside the characters and promised you something else; something about fan writing skills, and it’s long been a form in which many students were coming right from the night bring them to life, rather than examine them in the fiction as anti-ableist praxis, as an inclusive peda- people of all language backgrounds find their first shift! Fanfiction really is magic, for welcoming the disembodied way we too often promote in teaching gogical practice that emphasizes access to students writing community, their first dis/abled community, full bodies and hearts of our most marginalized stu- essay-writing. They had to examine every word, sink with different language backgrounds, dis/abilities, their first queer community, or some combination dents into the classroom. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-07/10/10/campaign_images/webdr01/your-basic-guide-to-the-world-of- fanfiction-2-12350-1436540295-7_dblbig.jpg

66 — — Spring no. 3-4 2018 Spring no. 3-4 2018 — — 67 cuny life cuny life In Conversation with Harry Belafonte

Christopher M. Morrow

n 5 May, the legendary perform- sic after he had already engaged in social activism. er and activist Harry Belafonte He used music as a platform to continue his activism, visited Hostos Community Col- elevating him to a level of prestige both amongst lege for a conversation with musicians and with activist leaders such as Dr. Mar- Kimberly Drew, a curator at the tin Luther King Jr. But his life story was not one of Metropolitan Museum of Art. unhindered successes. Belafonte discussed how his Drew introduced Belafonte to activism cost him his livelihood, such as when many a standing ovation, to which he venues blacklisted him for the political content of his responded by waving in a humble exchange. Hostos music. It also positioned him as a respected figure OCommunity College was an appropriate venue for the amongst civil rights leaders. “Being an activist a lot Harry Belafonte conversation. As an activist and art- of people sought my services. Most notably Martin ist, Belafonte had made it his life’s mission to advo- Luther King Jr., Paul Robeson and Malcolm X,” he cate for the poor and the disenfranchised. From the said. onset of the evening, he spoke of his early commit- Belafonte spoke extensively about MLK, who was ment to resisting oppression for the Black commu- only 24 when they first met at the Abyssinian church nity and highlighted the persistent problem of pov- in Harlem. He left a lifelong impression on Belafonte, erty in communities of color. Belafonte credited his who was only two years younger. Belafonte said he working-class Jamaican mother for his value system immediately committed to the civil rights movement and as inspiration for the development of his activist after that first long conversation, and also recounted ideals. His commitment to social justice issues was a nervous tic that had plagued MLK in his early years, born out of a lived experience in working-class com- which disappeared in time. “What happened to the munities in Jamaica and in the United States. “I have tic, man?” Belafonte asked him during one of their never understood the cruelty of the system,” he said many conversations to unfold over the years — to “why people have to be poor.” which MLK responded that it disappeared once he Belafonte identified first and foremost as an activ- overcame his fear of death. This was a significant mo- ist, and claimed to have stumbled upon art and mu- ment for Belafonte; it shifted his perspective on the Harry Belafonte, credit: Jill Newman

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interplay between life and death. be on display at MOMA beginning as they clapped and hummed in Drew prompted Belafonte October 2018. unison. “Donald Trump is not in to speak to the relationship be- As the conversation transi- my history. Not in my DNA” said tween his activism and art, spe- tioned to President Trump, Be- Belafonte. cifically focusing on his collabo- lafonte’s tone became more The evening concluded with a rations with Charles White. White somber. Following his life’s en- Q&A which drew two snaking lines was an African American Social gagement with activism and on either side of the auditorium. Realist artist and a peer of Bela- art, Trump’s politics manifested Attendees included students, ed- fonte. Belafonte praised White in the most problematic aspects ucators, artists, curators and fans professional and personal terms of American history. His con- of Belafonte. A music student and and described him as “an enor- cern was not that Trump exists, folk singer visiting from Califor- mous force in our community.” He he said, but the level of support nia asked about what attracted encouraged the audience to visit that elected him into office. The him to the folk form and song. White’s retrospective, which will audience echoed his statement “To me folk song carried informa-

tion. Carried history.” Belafonte Lehman College. Mercedes is one lafonte, and their implications on responded. He went on to sing a of many who attended the talk as current events. few bars from his classic, “Day O.” a part of a Lehman College class All proceeds from the event on the African American Family. were directed to SANKOFA, a so- Work all night on a drink of rum The students were accompanied cial action organization founded Daylight come and me wan’ go by their professor, Dr. Mary Phil- by Belafonte to match “high pro- home lips, who enthusiastically ad- file artists” with communities in Stack banana till de morning vocated for students and youth activist and artistic collabora- come learning from activists of previous tions. The term Sankofa is derived Daylight come and me wan’ go eras. “Harry Belafonte is a living from West African mythology, home archive” said Dr. Phillips. When explained Belafonte, and it is a Come, Mister tally man, tally me asked about the link between her banana course and the evening’s conver- metaphorical symbol used by the Daylight come and me wan’ go sation, she said that “whenever Akan people of Ghana – generally home we are talking about civil rights depicted as a bird with its head or poverty or mass incarceration, turned backward as if taking an “Hearing him talk about his ex- we are talking about families.” Dr. egg from its back. It expresses the perience with Malcolm X and Mar- Phillips emphasized the impor- importance of reaching back to tin Luther King, it was very inspir- tance of her students to be able knowledge gained in the past and ing” said Yarlyn Mercedes, African to get a first-hand accounting of bringing it into the present in or- American studies major from social historical events from Be- der to make positive progress. Kimberly Drew and Harry Belafonte at Hostos Kimberly Drew and Harry Belafonte at Hostos

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principles that have been outmoded within their own for our purposes is the emphasis placed on framing fields? Even in 1959, when Theodore Adorno gave his Kant’s Critique in terms of his ‘expressions.’ The ex- Some Theses on Stupidity lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Adorno ad- pressions of philosophical ideas are the precipitates dressed what he perceived as a suspicion of his stu- of an entire atmosphere, or what Adorno will describe dents that Kant is only still taught because of the long in terms of philosophy as a “force field” or “constel- Milo Ward enduring “habit” of professors to do so. Acknowledg- lation” of truth, which can only be perceived through ing the legitimacy of this concern, he notes that most “extrapolation.” students, Our seminar’s method of approaching Kant ran …will probably have an idea that the Critique of parallel to this effort. Before fully developing how Pure Reason is concerned on the one hand with par- we approached Kant’s expressions, it is important ticular questions of scientific theory and that it is to understand that what makes Kant so inspiring to filled with discourses pertaining to the individual Adorno is that the force field Adorno envisions looks orgive the absurd title, but if we are who cannot conceive of anything that isn’t ground- sciences, discourses that for the most part have now something like a clamorous playground of thought obliged to take Kant seriously, then ed in some way in material experience, Kant never been superseded. For example, you will all have where contradictions “express the life of truth.” Ador- we can be forgiven for not burdening is able to describe any transcendental realm of pure heard something to the effect that the Kantian the- no finds in Kant a thinker that preserves such contra- ourselves with a similar sobriety. Be- reason without relying on metaphors and examples ory of the a priori nature of time and space has been dictions. Kant anticipates that by dividing his argu- sides, it is Kant himself that enables from experience to explain what makes transcenden- undermined by relativity theory, or that the Kantian this stupid reading. For Kant, the tal reason and transcendental aesthetics possible as theory of causality as an a priori category has been power of judgment is the ability to categories. Therefore, a stupid reading will be one refuted by quantum mechanics. distinguish when something is sub- that takes these metaphors and examples to be as What we did, following Adorno, was bypass such sumed by or falls under a rule or concept. Those who important as the concepts they purport to specify. An questions of validity by approaching the Critique in a Fhave difficulty performing this operation are stupid, even more stupid reading will argue that the Critique way that did not attempt to treat philosophy as de- he says, and will be in constant need of examples to of Pure Reason requires a stupid reading on its own pendent on the determinacy of the grounds on which successfully exercise this faculty. “This is also the sole terms, and it is not entirely clear which of the two you it is bases its claims. By doing so, neither Adorno nor and great utility of examples,” Kant writes, “which he are about to read. we sidestepped the declining authority of Kant in or- who lacks the natural talent for judgment can never In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant set himself to der to reinsert his position within the history of phi- do without.” the task of establishing “‘What and how much can losophy as belonging to an intellectual history and He goes on to say that overreliance on examples understanding and reason cognize free of all experi- therefore beyond reproach. Adorno engages the is- actually does “damage” to the concept, because con- ence.’” In Susan Buck-Morss’s seminar on Critical Rea- sues Kant raises in the Critique as an “essential part crete examples only ever partially satisfy the univer- son this spring, we began our study of Kant’s Critique of the history of philosophy,” in order to “rehearse sal rules of concepts. Kant wants reason to lead in its by asking ourselves why it was relevant to study this the experiences that underlie this work as objective exchange with experience; for him reason must act text once the only comprehensible examples Kant realities.” What Adorno means here is that he does like a “judge,” not as a “pupil” if it is to be instructed ever supplied of elements belonging to the realm of not want to provide a clean account of what Kant ar- by nature. “Thus,” he says, “examples are the lead- pure reason had been thrown into question. If Kant gued, nor what Kant intended to say, nor locate Kant ing-strings of the power of judgment.” He intends this bases his ideas of reason, particularly his division be- in his proper place within a philosophic tradition, but metaphor to be dismissive. Leading-strings are the tween the empirical and the a priori, on the scienc- instead to address “whatever Kant’s philosophy con- tethers that help teach a child to walk, but simulta- es in the first case and mathematics in the second, tains that is over and above the immediate meaning neously restrict its capacity to go very far. how meaningful are his conclusions after the very of the text.” As philosophy is principally concerned This dismissal of examples is consistent with footing on which he grounds them has been over- with truth, what Adorno is really after is how “Kant Kant’s insistence that pure reason must be strictly turned? In other words, does it matter that the way reveals to us the movement of mind itself, of what we segregated from the sort of reason that is embedded Kant resolves the very possibility of making synthetic might term the internal history of truth, as this has in experience. Luckily for us innately stupid people, a priori judgments is contingent upon the validity of been expressed on the sundial of truth itself.” Crucial Immaunuel Kant, 18th-century portrait – source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant#/media/File:Immanuel_Kant_(painted_ portrait).jpg

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ment about autonomous reason into subjective and Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions with- as doing can really be grasped in an immanent and as it becomes clear that experience will never cease objective deductions. Kant says that some might view out concepts are blind. It is thus just as necessary to historically sensible way. to present challenges for reason to overcome, reason him to be “expressing an opinion” because he begins make the mind’s concepts sensible (i.e., to add an In our seminar, we justified reading the Critique produces principles that seem to be in harmony with his analysis with the assumption that there is an un- object to them in intuition) as it is to make intuitions of Pure Reason in its entirety solely on the basis that existent experience and yet exceed the domain of derstanding that exists outside of experience, with- understandable (i.e., to bring them under concepts). without it we would miss Kant’s “doves.” We were experience. Once that grounding is gone, reason has out ever proving “‘how the faculty of thinking itself is Further, these two faculties or capacities cannot ex- reading Kant because there is something essential entered a problem space where all sorts of errors and possible.’” If his “subjective deductions” evincing the change their functions. The understanding is not to the Critique that is impossible to get from a sum- contradictions can arise that have no clear resolve possibility of pure reason prove unsatisfactory, then, capable of intuiting anything and the senses are not mary of the logical conclusions alone. It is one thing because they have left behind the only basis upon he argues, his objective ones will suffice. This is to say capable of thinking anything. to understand that Kant lashes pure thought to expe- which truth can be oriented. This is what Kant de- that when he demonstrates how pure concepts can The modifiers ‘empty’ and ‘blind’ do something rience, it is another to become familiar with examples scribes as the “battlefield of…endless controversies” be intelligible by giving us mathematics as evidence, here. They make the problem that Kant is circling fa- he gives. Here are the doves: properly known as metaphysics. Like real battlefields, this is in fact his subjective way of showing an analog miliar and available to the reader in an intimate way. Mathematics gives us a splendid example of how Kant describes how from the beginning its violence is to pure reason, and in the form of example, it is liable The passage suggest that these things are necessarily far we can go with a priori cognition independently uncontained and threatens always to spill out in all to error as an outcome of subjective act of judgment. intertwined — empty thoughts and blind experience of experience. Now it is occupied, to be sure, with directions. The two extreme poles of this battle are, The objective conditions for the possibility of all a are somehow familiar, and their alienation from one objects and cognitions only so far as these can be on one end, the despotism and dogmatism of objec- priori concepts are then maddeningly derived from another carries historical analogs. It is important for exhibited in intuitions. This circumstance, however, tive truth and, on the other, the anarchic indifference the fact that they are necessary to “supply the objec- Adorno that everything that he reads into and em- is easily overlooked, since the intuition in question of an entirely subjectively fashioned world. Neither, tive ground of the possibility of experience.” Kant ex- phasizes in Kant is something that can be firmly lo- can itself be given a priori, and thus can hardly be Kant says, have ever “gained the least bit of ground” plains that through experience we are not only given cated in the text itself. This particular explication is distinguished from a mere pure concept. Captivated nor held any lasting advantage in this battle. sensations, but that even in a state of total passivity quite nice for Adorno’s purposes, because it becomes by such a proof of the power of reason, the drive for Kant’s intervention is intended to impose order every sensation will always appear as “a concept of a principle that has ripples throughout Kant’s entire expansion sees no bounds. The light dove, in free onto the battlefield of reason. What is needed, he an object in general.” These a priori cognitions, al- argument, by establishing that the purely subjective flight cutting through the air the resistance of which says, is a “court of justice” to govern over reason us- though not derived through the experiences in which and the purely objective are eternally wed to one an- it feels, could get the idea it could do even better in ing reason’s own native “eternal and unchangeable they make their appearance, have no content, noth- other, even as their roles cannot simply collapse into airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world laws.” Adorno points out that Kant is essentially call- ing to grasp onto without experience. This contradic- one another. This space where they cannot collapse of the senses because it set such narrow limits for ing for a “tribunal” where “the judge, the prosecu- tion is constantly rearticulated—the logical tumult is in Kant’s delineation of a restricted but nonetheless the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the tor, and the accused are actually one and the same of which Adorno revels in—because Kant persists in boundless field known as the transcendental realm. wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure under- person” such that reason is forced to establish rea- insisting that these objects have no basis in experi- Adorno sees the space carved out for the transcen- standing. He did not notice that he made no headway son’s own autonomy. Hidden in Kant’s conception of ence even as he fails to provide a convincing (at least dental as a “torturous process” of borrowing from by his efforts, for he had no resistance, no support, autonomy, Adorno spies the bourgeois experience of for Adorno) measure of what they could possibly be various other realms, but most importantly from as it were, by which he could stiffen himself, and to society, where freedom is equated with the autonomy without drawing from material reality. metaphysics, from which it derives its claim to the which he could apply his powers in order to put his of self-government or individual sovereignty. Accord- As Adorno demonstrates, if one attempts to con- “absolute validity” of thought that “creates and gen- understanding into motion. ing to Adorno, this equation is the key to recognizing ceive of space and time devoid of any empirical con- erates everything else.” Adorno views the production We have already seen how helpful Kant’s meta- the “very dark secret of bourgeois society,” which is tent, even if these concepts provide a conceptual of the transcendental as actually taking Kant all the phorical language is when he gave the description that “freedom manifests itself as a function of law.” template without which experience is impossible, way to the Hegelian idea of the “identity of logic and of blind intuition and empty concepts. The exam- Adorno adds: “This idea, that freedom and obedience it is still futile to try to imagine them without using metaphysics,” even if this is not something that Kant ple of the impulsive dove helps us understand that to the law are one and the same thing, means that material from experience as a guide. Although, Kant is willing to say outright. Adorno is less interested in Kant effectively compels reason to reason itself into there is indeed an end to tutelage, but that freedom is dead set on establishing the autonomous space demolishing Kant’s claims to reveal what they really quagmires. Kant prefaces the Critique by describing ends up merely as something that is determined by for pure reason, he also repeatedly emphasizes why should say than in demonstrating that even if Kant the fate of human reason, which, like the dove, is in- law.” By making reason autonomous through its own thought cannot do without experience: fails to get what he was after, there is already more nocent in the blunders that lead it into controversy. immanent juridical authority, we arrive from another Without sensibility, no object would be given to us, there. By narrowing in on the metaphorical language, First, he says reason constructs principles that are direction at the conclusion that to make the tran- and without understanding none would be thought. the figurative ‘borrowing’ that Adorno describes Kant both necessary and backed up by experience. Then, scendental realm transcend the empirical world that

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it orders, Kant secularized the for- Adorno describes the meta- eternal truths that appear without merly theological realm of meta- phor of the battlefield as “stroke any source in material reality. We physics, a secularization framed of genius,” because it reveals how can use these leading strings to Adam Robert’s The Thing Itself: in juridical terms. This is perhaps Kant’s thinking goes beyond what get us back to the origins, back hardly a surprise, because Kant he might have intended by show- to the history in truth. By look- A Book Review in Four Antinomies told us from the start that this ing that when metaphysics is on ing at the metaphorical language battlefield was formally known as its own and without supervision, in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, it is a realm of fierce antagonisms, we can create a mirror where the metaphysics, and only after law Asher Wycoff and order steps in is whole terrain or dialectics, rather than eternally historical world reappears in the divvied into disparately occupied fixed propositions. This is crucial reflections of a priori reason. Met- zones. to Adorno, who refuses to let Kant aphors escape concepts and we brush over his own failure to get can follow their return to earth. what he wants: a successfully sep- Adorno believes that the effort arate sphere for the absolute ob- to disguise and to disappear the jectivity of reason, which then pro- origins of conceptual categories vides a mediating barrier between has been uniformly practiced by the metaphysical plane and that all philosophers, “whether we of experience. It is the metaphor are talking about Plato with his I. a. The universe has a beginning and an end in that exposes this by running an- Ideas or Kant with his synthetic time and space. tithetically to Kant’s intention of a priori judgments, or rather with establishing a sanctuary for pure his notion of original appercep- b. The universe is unbounded in time and space. reason. We don’t need the doves tion, or whether we are thinking because they are so nice, but be- of Heidegger, who has made an cause they are our access to the absolute of the concept of origin n the 1990s, underground cartoonist Wil- materiality in the concept. They and turned it into a metaphysi- liam Barker published a series of black-and- are the empirical footprints cling- cal entity.” These philosophers white, single-panel stick figure drawings. ing to abstractions. And it is only look at their eternal categories The subjects of these panels populated through recognizing this that we related constitutively to society, a variety of daunting, visually distorted can even read Kant against Kant. and not “based on analogy,” and landscapes pockmarked by flying saucers Recall Kant’s dismissive com- thus we can use their analogies to and interdimensional portals. Settings parison of examples as the lead- read society back into them. Phi- ranged from the familiar (grids of cubicles, ing-strings that rein in the un- losophers are always protective of suburban neighborhoods, city streets packed with steady but willing locomotion of the autonomy of their categories children. Kant believes examples and for good reason, as Adorno Ibillboards) to the alien (extraterrestrial deserts, ab- to be more contained versions of explains: “The idea of genesis is stract geometric planes) with a seamless continuity. concepts because they can never intolerable in these philosophies Barker grouped these panels under a loose narrative stray too far. However, not stray- because the things they defend about the “Schwa Corporation,” a kind of ET Enron ing too far from the referent, from have cause to fear reflection on which systematically intervenes in human affairs for what Adorno will call origins, is their origins.” Philosophy, “like unclear but likely nefarious purposes. The political exactly what Adorno wants us to the cat burglar”, always covers its theorist Jodi Dean described Barker’s illustrations resist in a philosophy that tire- tracks. We respond by reading fo- as encapsulating the nebulous kind of paranoia that lessly tries to create absolute and rensically. permeated the US cultural landscape after the Cold Christian Daniel Rauch, (1777-1857) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Bronze 29.6 x 10.7 x 9.0 cm – source: https://inmortalis.livejournal. com/386789.html

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War. The alien resides at the core frostbitten and incapacitated in base. This constellation of ancil- that Roberts doesn’t offer a twist discussions of Kantian metaphys- gradual embrace of a grand de- of our world, structuring and con- the Antarctic tundra. lary narratives enables The Thing on. It’s unfortunate that the cen- ics actually work as intended, sign beyond empirical validation. necting every aspect of social re- Itself to put an engaging spin on tral plot saddles readers with lending the novel a satisfying the- In the acknowledgments, Rob- ality –– yet it remains a “fugitive II. a. Every substance in the the dreary, expository conver- Charles, a standard-issue male matic coherence without becom- erts describes himself as “an athe- truth,” undetectable unless you world is comprised of simple sations that frequently speckle antihero whose two defining char- ing obtrusive or distracting. Often, ist writing a novel about why you know precisely what to look for parts. science fiction. In each of these acter traits are jaded flippancy Charles’s story serves chiefly as should believe in God.” Given Rob- and how to look for it. accounts, we see the same phe- and implacable horniness. The a vehicle for ruminations on the erts’s periodic tendency to spell Adam Roberts’s The Thing Itself b. The world is irreducibly nomena (or noumena, more ap- book’s ancillary plots offer a nice structure of human cognition, things out to fault (the acknowl- recalls this placement of the ex- complex; there exists nothing propriately) through the given respite at first, until one of them the in-built limitations of spatial traterrestrial at the center of our simple. narrator’s perceptual framework. slides into a sequence of wholly and temporal categories, and the edgments also explain several of world, accessible just beyond the To the central protagonist, writing unnecessary rape scenes. Overall, existence of God. These discus- the literary and historical refer- peripheries of human sense-per- We rejoin Charles three de- in our present, the Ding an sich is the role Roberts affords to sexual- sions build, narratively and the- ences made throughout the nov- ception. The novel’s central nar- cades later, when he is ap- explicable as a discovery of arti- ity is less than inspired, revolving matically, to a sincerely affecting el, in case you didn’t get them), rative follows Charles Gardner, an proached by representatives from ficial intelligence. To Thomas Fir- chiefly around heterosexual male first-person account of religious The Thing Itself’s endorsement of involuntarily retired astrophysi- a mysterious, state-funded orga- min, a seventeenth century Eng- frustration with an occasional revelation at the novel’s climax. Kantian theology is refreshingly cist who suffered permanent dis- nization simply referred to as “the lish servant boy, the applicable detour for pedophilia. (That said, subtle. Transcendental realities figurement after a close encoun- Institute.” The Institute hopes to rubric is Gnostic demonology. To it is perhaps to Roberts’s credit IV. a. There exists an absolutely cannot be demonstrated by logi- ter at the South Pole in the 1980s. resurrect Roy’s project of access- an unnamed bohemian tourist in that one of the book’s only pleas- necessary being. cal proof, but this does not dimin- ing the thing-in-itself via artificial Charles’s research partner at the prewar Germany, H. G. Wells pro- ant sexual encounters takes place ish them as realities, still less as South Pole base, Roy Curtius, is intelligence, with the ultimate between a twenty-second cen- vides the descriptive vocabulary. b. No, there doesn’t. guides to reason and action. certain he’s solved the Fermi para- hope of manipulating it for the This fragmentation of perspective tury androgyne and a time-trav- That this lesson comes at the dox: the question of why, despite British government’s benefit. As is allows Roberts to play with the eling ghost.) While The Thing Itself Nietzsche famously mocked end of a story about aliens, artifi- the high probability of their exis- the case with most public-private rule of “show, don’t tell.” Telling largely avoids feeling derivative, the concept of the thing-in-itself. tence, alien civilizations have nev- partnerships, the Institute’s pre- becomes showing, as divergent its depictions of sex definitely Kant’s conception of an unmedi- cial intelligence, and time-travel- er made contact with Earth. The cise goals are ill-defined, obscured explanations of the same Ding lend the enterprise an aura of ated reality behind the world per- ling ghosts is not necessarily sur- answer lies in the Ding an sich, or by red tape, or both. In the course reveal the critical gaps between Vonnegut pastiche, insofar as the ceived by human beings earned prising; plenty of science-fiction thing-in-itself, Immanuel Kant’s of trying to uncover the nature of the various narrators’ social and novel’s transcendental themes him the classification of Hinter- has high philosophical ambitions. conceptualization of reality as be- the Institute’s operations, Charles historical positions. It’s a clever remain firmly rooted in the main weltler, or “backworldsman,” What is surprising is that it works. ing unmediated by the categories becomes a target of the Institute’s conceit, if applied slightly osten- characters’ sexual neuroses. alongside Plato and various Chris- In the hands of a less skilled au- of human cognition. We have not flagship AI, British intelligence tatiously These complaints aside, the tian theologians. Upon his first thor, a novel like this could very made contact with extraterrestrial services, his former research part- core mechanics of The Thing It- exposure to Kant in the Antarctic easily crumble into a confused, life because it resides in the Ding ner, and a disfigured ghost child, III. a. Spontaneous action is self work more often than not. research base, Charles echoes pretentious heap. It is a miracle an sich all of whom chase him through this dismissal. Kant’s categories , beyond our cognitive ru- a precondition of the laws of The central plot remains engag- that The Thing Itself is fun, en- brics of time and space. This plane space, time, and several extended ing throughout, Charles’s insuf- of cognition are too tidy, and the causality. gaging, and cohesive instead –– of existence remains definitionally dialogues on metaphysics. ferability notwithstanding. The concept of a world-behind-the- a modest miracle, granted, but out of reach to human beings, but This narrative is interrupted b. Causality precludes the same holds true for most of the world is speculative and absurd. precisely the kind of small favor Roy contends it can be accessed every other chapter by vignettes possibility of spontaneous novel’s ancillary plots. Roberts is The central thread of Charles’s by artificial intelligence. During a from other time periods, whose action. a remarkable prose stylist, and he character development is his de- worth thanking God for. disastrous experiment to test this subjects encounter the same weaves disparate narratives and parture from this line of criticism, conclusion, Roy unleashes an El- strange entities Charles encoun- The book does contain, how- literary genres together with ease. his growing acceptance of the lim- dritch horror and leaves Charles tered at the Antarctic research ever, a handful of worn-out tropes Most surprisingly, the periodic its to his own cognition, and his

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Congratulations to all students of the Graduate Center and CUNY for finishing up yet another semester

With the semester coming to a close, the Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council (DSC) would like to re- mind all Graduate Center students of the following information.

2017-18 DSC Participatory Budget Initiative

Students involved in submitting proposals to the participatory budget initiative were asked to reflect on the process. We were especially interested in understanding how the initiative may be used to continue identifying needs on the campus. Here are some memorable responses provided as follows:

“I think there are a number of student needs that remain unfulfilled at the Graduate Center. Some priorities that I think should be considered for future projects include a bicycle storage room, an onsite gym, and phone charging stations. This process has made me optimistic [...] in actually mak- ing a different for student life in our school. I suggest for future students who submit projects for participatory budgeting, that they seek to make a difference across disciplines and benefit every- one in the building.”

“I have a sense that the best thing about this [participatory budget initiative] is not the money it- self (which helped, and motivated us to get started) but the fact that it opens a conversation with Facilities and Building Design and IT, and allows students to address some long neglected issues.”

If you are interested in the participatory budget initiative or are considering submitting a proposal for a 2018-19 cycle and have questions, please email [email protected]. Pending budget approval, the proposals guidelines will be announced in September 2018.

Program Governance The DSC Governance Task Force is interested in working with students to address questions and concerns about the implementation of your program’s shared governance. Email [email protected] with any questions you may have.

Chartered Organizations The DSC sponsors over 40 interdisciplinary student organizations, and they are doing some amazing events and initiatives this semester. To get the funds and support they need to run these events, they need roster signatures from enrolled students every semester. Please sign their rosters here: http://cun- ydsc.org/works/chartered-organizations/list (note that you need to have a DSCWorks account to sign ros- ters). Learn about chartered orgs and their events at http://opencuny.org/charteredorgs/, or look for their events on DSC and program listservs.

See you all this fall! Until then, wishing you a pleasant and productive summer!

– The Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council (DSC)