The Revolution Should Not Be Televised Pg

VolumeVolume 29 27 Fall Spring no. 2n. 2017 2 2016 www.GCadvocate.comwww.GCadvocate.com [email protected]@cunydsc.org

Whose Community?: A Scalar Report from Graduate Center Grounds pg. 28

The Siege Comes to NY pg. 17

The Revolution Should not be Televised pg. 12 editorial The Rebel’s Time Contents Remembering Vidrohi’s Poetry of Revolution www.GCadvocate.com

[email protected] Bhargav Rani

EDITORIAL CUNY LIFE “The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot Bhargav take its poetry from the past but only from the future.” Rani The Rebel’s Time: Whose Community?: Remembering Vidrohi’s A Scalar Report from Nandini Poetry of Revolution Graduate Center Grounds his oft-quoted sentence from Marx’s production, The Seige, in New York; the first of a two- Ramachandran Bhargav Rani Angela Dunne and pg. 3 Conor Tomás Reed The Eighteenth Brumaire of Lou- part investigation of the oeuvre of the radical leftist pg. 28 is Bonaparte, was the subject of documentary filmmaker Peter Watkins; and an essay Alessandro much debate in a recent seminar on on the revolutionary underpinnings in George Or- Zammataro FEATURES “Revolution” at Columbia Univer- well’s writings. In the way of a prologue, this editorial 100 Years of the sity, whose problematics formed explores the messianic quality that infused the words The Revolutions Russian Revolution the basis of the first editorial of the of the revolutionary poet, Vidrohi. What this issue of- Should not be Televised: The Advocate this semester. The central fers is a particular “constellation” of creative produc- Oeuvre of Peter Watkins Women and the point of contention between two of the guest speak- tions in history drawn from the fields of theatre, film, Curtis Russell Russian Revolution Ters, Gayatri Spivak and Étienne Balibar, was over the literature and poetry, that we hope our readers will pg. 12 Tatiana Cozzarelli specific meaning of “poetry” in Marx’s text. While “make” meaning of by mediating it with the material pg. 38 Balibar interprets Marx’s choice of word as a meta- conditions of their own lives, conditions that inform phor for political imagination, for Spivak, “poetry” our understanding of art and revolution. The Siege comes to NY here signifies just that – poiesis, “to make,” a creative To understand the poiesis of Vidrohi’s words, we Ashley Marinaccio REVIEW production in the form of theatre, songs, dance, lit- must first understand the space that produced him pg. 17 Between Value and Valor: erature, art. Spivak argues that Marx is here shifting – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. Review of Corey Robin’s from a discussion on the “form” of revolutions to the To be a student at JNU is, in the first instance, to be actual “content” of revolutions, and to her, “poetry” a student of history: to apprehend history not in its The Reactionary Mind: Orwell’s Revolution was what Marx acutely recognized as the privileged bowdlerized continuity and as it manifests in the an- Conservatism from Edmund Harry Blain mode of infusing the concept of revolution with radi- nals of the dominant, but in the disarticulating dis- Burke to Donald Trump pg. 22 cal content. continuities experienced by the dominated. Within Asher Wycoff The present issue of the Advocate stems from this the thresholds of the university’s sprawling campus, pg. 43 tension between poetry and political imagination history breaks its imposed silences and the ghosts in the concept of revolution and its content, and ex- of the dead speak through the living. In the face of plores its resonances in artistic, cultural and literary erasure, they are made visible on the walls plastered productions. This month’s features include an inter- with political graffiti and they are given a voice in view with members of the Freedom Theatre, a Pales- the slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad!” (“Long Live the tinian theatre company that recently debuted their Revolution!”) that reverberate like a refrain. A morn-

Front Cover: Yuichi Ikehata, “Fragmented beauty”. Ikehata’s works incorporate pieces of daily life to challenge 2 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 3 “distinction between truth and reality” through deconstructed sculptures. v editorial editorial

ing walk to class is itself a lesson sity canteens. In the liminal shade in left politics. When the adminis- in history imparted not just by of the evening light, students sit tration asked him never to set foot Marx and Lenin, Ambedkar and perched on crude stone blocks on campus again, Vidrohi’s rebel- Bhagat Singh, Irom Sharmila and dissect history over chai and lion was absolute: he simply never and Che Guevara, but also by the samosas. The usual banter and left JNU. He made the campus his indentured farmer and the dis- gossip of student life easily segue home for over thirty years, breath- possessed peasant gazing down into serious interrogations of his- ing poetry into the students’ from the walls of the university tory, until the pleasant evening movement till his death. Present buildings. And an evening cup of air is pregnant with the weight of at every protest, march and dem- chai at the cafeteria is accompa- competing philosophies. Althuss- onstration, he kindled the histori- nied by cultural protests, solidar- er is invoked in the same breath cal consciousness of the students ity marches and demonstrations, as Ambedkar, just as debates on through the revolutionary force of and political-cultural groups com- local and national politics seam- his poetry. He spoke of class strug- memorating revolutionary poets lessly lead into Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s gles and emancipation of women, and writers, performing street poetry. In a space conditioned attacked capitalism and religion, plays, or singing songs of resis- by free debate and intellectual and in his poems, conflated his- tance. Subjugated histories are exchange, a new temporality is tories of oppressions and upris- resurrected, forgotten heroes re- produced. But these philosophi- ings that spanned an astounding membered, and the promise of cal excursions are but cadences of temporal breadth. Vidrohi was a revolution is kept alive in these the rhythm kept by the timekeep- lokshahir, a “people’s poet,” in the songs. er, Vidrohi. From a dark corner of true sense. If we are to go by Agamben’s Ganga dhabha, seated under the For Agamben, to be “contem- thesis that “[e]very conception of shade of a massive tree, this frail, porary” is not a social given of the history is invariably accompanied disheveled man in ragged clothes, present, but is a distinctive modal- by a certain experience of time a vagabond poet, spewed a dan- ity of apperception and existence. which is implicit in it,” it is unsur- gerous barrage of words at the It is a “singular relationship with prising that this emancipation world. At those moments that one’s own time, which adheres of history, albeit in the utopian they were not a relentless string of to it and, at the same time, keeps enclave that is JNU, fosters and vile expletives, Vidrohi’s verse put a distance from it.” To be a con- conditions a radically different history on trial. temporary is, thus, to apprehend experience of time. The tempo- Ramashankar Yadav, popularly time “through a disjunction and rality of its student life chimes in known as “Vidrohi,” literally “the an anachronism.” Vidrohi was, in tantalizing proximity to the hour rebel,” was once a student of JNU. that sense, Agamben’s “contem- of revolution. Its romance is a ro- Born in 1957 in the small town of porary.” His contemporariness mance of rebellion and resistance. Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh, the lived in his dogged resistance The rhythms of its everyday are Hindi-heartland of the country, against the temporal regimes of syncopated by dreams and po- he enrolled in the university in the the neoliberal everyday, regimes litical aspirations that transcend early eighties to pursue a Ph.D. in governed by the logic of produc- the everyday. At the core of this Hindi. He was soon expelled for tivity and deployed in the service time capsule—its heart, where his participation in a mass stu- of capital. It was a corporeal distil- its beats are most palpable—is dent movement against the ad- lation of the temporality of resis- Ganga dhaba, one of the univer- ministration and his involvement tance that the university produces Credit: Tanushree Bhasin

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in its most radical and austere its violent erasures and oppres- I think about it, to rediscover the present, Vidro- to invoke Benjamin, where this says. And it is the same story over manifestation. Vidrohi, in Agam- sive silences, and Vidrohi strives Again and again I think about it, hi begins his poem by situating historical juncture is posited in again in the “jungles of Savan- ben’s words, firmly held “his gaze to ignite an insurrection through a That why is it that on the step- this image of the “burnt corpse relationship with every other in- nah,” in the “mountains of Scyth- on his own time so as to perceive radical archeology of the past. ping stone of every ancient civi- of a woman” and the “scattered stant of institutionalized violence ia,” and the “plains of Bengal.” not its light but rather its dark- One of Vidrohi’s most famous lization, bones of human beings” in one in history even as it is mediated Those scattered bones could just ness.” The astronomical metaphor poems, “The Burnt Corpse of a One find’s the burnt corpse of a of the oldest urban civilizations by the present. The burnt corpse as easily have been of “Roman of darkness in Agamben finds its Woman,” is an intense abbre- woman, of the world, Mohenjo-Daro of of the woman on the last step by slaves” as of “weavers from Ben- material, political realization in viation of the entire history of the Indus valley. Charting a trans- the canal in Mohenjo-Daro is the gal,” they could be of “Vietnam- And the scattered bones of hu- Vidrohi, whose poems grasp at violence and exploitation into a man beings. historical trajectory of this image same one you will find in “Baby- ese,” “Palestinians,” or of “Iraqi that “light that strives to reach monadic condensation of revo- across geographies and tempo- lonia” and the scattered bones of children.” Vidrohi avows that the us but cannot.” The darkness is, lutionary potential. The question In a gallant effort at reclaiming ralities, he constructs history as a humans is what you will discover “fire of hatred” that has engulfed in essence, a darkness of history, that haunts the poet is this: the archaic, the origin, in order spatio-temporal “constellation,” in “Mesopotamia” as well, Vidrohi lands from “Asia” to “Africa” can-

Credit: Tanushree Bhasin

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not be doused because this fire is tion that concatenates histories underpinnings of Benjamin’s and Moreover, insofar as religion thologies that sanction violence the devoted wife of the sage, Ja- the fire from all the burnt corpses of oppression spanning five thou- Agamben’s philosophies wouldn’t functions as ideology in its efforts against the marginalized. With madagni. She fetches water from of women in history, it is the fire sand years of human civilization in have settled well with him. While to pass off mythology as history, this in mind, Vidrohi says that the the river every day in an unbaked from all the scattered bones of hu- a monadic abbreviation distilled this theological scaffolding does it allows Vidrohi to implicate my- first instance of femicide was per- clay pot that holds itself together man beings in history. into the image of the burnt corpse not seem to deter their crystal- thology as well in his indictment petrated by a son at the behest of only by the strength of her chaste For Agamben, messianic time, of a woman. Within the temporal lization into secular political phi- of the histories of the dominant. his father. He locates the archaic devotion to Jamadagni. One day, “the time that time takes to come parenthesis of his poem, its chro- losophies of radical potential, The monadic constellation that “origin” of the burnt corpse of Renuka is consumed by a fleeting to an end,” is “contemporariness nos, he brings into being a tempo- for Vidrohi, a steadfast material- he arrests in his poem, “The Burnt the woman, although manifest- moment of desire for a group of par excellence.” He notes that, rality of messianic force, a kairos, ist, religion itself is an institution Corpse of a Woman,” not only in- ing as far back in time as the Indus heavenly beings flying above her. “insofar as messianic time aims as a severe indictment of history: whose complicity in the perpetu- terlinks histories of oppression valley civilization, not in history The spell of her chaste devotion toward the fulfillment of time… ation of the empire must be cri- from Mohenjo-Daro to Babylo- but in the mythological tale of breaks and the clay pot dissolves An empire is an empire, it effectuates a recapitulation, a tiqued. In a Nietzschean asserta- nia, from ancient Rome to mod- Parshuram’s matricide at the urg- away in the river. When she re- Be it the Roman empire, the kind of summation of all things, in tion, he proclaims god to be dead, ern America, but also establishes ing of his father, Jamadagni. turns home, Jamadagni deduces British empire, heaven and on earth—of all that and that “No one knows where a network of linkages with my- The tale goes that Renuka is all that has happened through his Or the modern American em- has transpired from creation to God has been buried.” In another pire. the messianic “now,” meaning of poetic interlude featured in Ni- Whose only task is to ensure the past as a whole.” This echoes tin Pamnani’s documentary film that, Benjamin’s assertion that “only on him, Vidrohi recites, “He is no On mountains, on plateaus, on for a redeemed mankind has its god/ Nor is He the Son of God/ It river banks, past become citable in all its mo- is a question of Mankind [sic], only By the oceans, in the fields, ments.” The temporal condition Man will stand up/ I don’t believe It scatters the bones of human of “redemption” for Benjamin is in the coming of the Messiah any- beings. a “now-time, which, as a model way/ I just don’t believe that there Which promises to write his- of messianic time, comprises the can be anyone greater than me.” tory in three sentences – entire history of mankind in a tre- However, it would be inadequate That we have filled the land mendous abbreviation.” Thus, for to understand this interlude as with mischief both philosophers, any radical po- simply a rejection of any possi- That we have engulfed the land litical project of the emancipation bility of emancipation through in flames of the present from the oppressive religion. Rather, in the demand That we have scattered the temporal regimes of capitalism, of for historical agency implicit in land with the bones of human human “progress” premised on a his call for “Man” to “stand up” in beings. “homogenous, empty time,” must a rejection of the “coming of the entail not paralyzed anticipation It is against this grain of his- Messiah,” Vidrohi is also critiqu- of a promised future but rather ac- tory, this cursory summation of ing eschatological conceptions tive excavation of the past; to ap- violence in “three sentences,” that of futurity and time. His rejection prehend the past in a “messianic Vidrohi deploys his dynamic con- of God and his fiercely politicized arrest of happening,” and to posit stellation. While Benjamin and atheism stem from a persistent history not as a sequential chain Agamben would have no doubt disaffection with the political apa- of causality but as a “constellation recognized the messianic force thy that eschatological doctrines saturated with tensions.” of Vidrohi’s poetry, Vidrohi him- nourish in the present. In this re- Vidrohi engages in precisely self would have probably scoffed spect, Vidrohi lands in the same such an archeology of the past at such a characterization. As a political and philosophical plane when he constructs a constella- staunch atheist, the theological as Benjamin and Agamben. Credit: Tanushree Bhasin

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spiritual powers, and in a rage, commands his sons without a trace in the moment of their completion, Finally, the messianic quality of Vidrohi’s poetry and food that the proud Vidrohi nonchalantly accept- to kill their mother. Four of his sons, on refusing to to be apprehended by only those present in the mo- that marks him as a contemporary runs the risk of ed. In 2001, alumni of the university appealed to the undertake the heinous task, are turned to stone by ment of their articulation. In this sense, Vidrohi, in fetishization if appraised in isolation from its mate- various university canteens to provide free food for Jamadagni. His youngest son, Parashurama, the the tradition of the lokshahir, takes poetry back to rial conditions of production. Agamben touches only their beloved poet. Vidrohi had, with great discipline, “ever-obedient and righteous,” immediately severs its performative roots, and the temporality that he cursorily on the “courage” that contemporariness de- chalked out a life for himself outside capital. Agam- his mother’s head with an axe. Jamadagni is pleased produces through it must be understood in relation mands of the individual, and does not quite flesh out ben notes with astute precision that those contem- with his son and grants him two boons. Parashurama to the temporality that performance brings into be- the stakes involved in being contemporary. Vidrohi’s poraries who locate themselves in time through dis- then demands that his mother be brought back to life ing. The image of the past that he grasps through his rebellion against the administration’s move is not junction and anachronism are, in a sense, rendered and his brothers be turned back to flesh from stone. poetry literally stands suspended in a “moment of an easy one to explain. He lived on for thirty years in “irrelevant” to their time. Vidrohi acutely felt this bur- While the dominant interpretation of this tale is the danger.” This danger of their performative disappear- JNU where he had no room of his own. He slept under den of irrelevance. As he remarks in the film, “This is moral lesson of a son’s duty, dharma, towards his ance in the apprehension of their messianic force is the open skies on most nights and retreated to the a bastard society. It neither rewards nor punishes the father, Vidrohi, in a subversive vein, reads into it the the danger of erasure, where the histories of oppres- students’ union office on particularly cold ones. He very origins of patriarchy and declares, “This is how poet…I have made them eat the dust beneath their sion abbreviated as a revolutionary monad threaten mostly relied on the kindness of the student commu- feet through my poetry. But these bastards are such the son became the father’s and patriarchy came into to disappear in the very ephemerality of the words nity for his minimal needs. Students who knew him, that they simply ignore, they neither reward nor pun- being.” This insinuation of mythology at the origin of that realize them in the now. respected him, and cared for him bought him clothes patriarchy in his monadic constellation is revolution- ish.” This is perhaps the real danger of contemporari- ary to the extent that it not only abbreviates dispa- ness. It relegates all that exists outside the limits of rate histories and temporalities but also condenses capital into oblivion. conflicting universes and epistemologies. Vidrohi died on 8 December 2015, doing precisely Messianic time is not a time that exists outside of what he did his entire life – protesting with his fellow chronological time but is rather an integral part of it, comrades against the state’s repressive attacks on a particular disambiguation of it. That is, as Agamben its people. Looking back at the many struggles, and notes, “Kairos…does not have another time at its dis- the many defeats, that the students of JNU have en- posal; in other words, what we take hold of when we dured to defend against the relentless evisceration of seize kairos is not another time, but a contracted and the idea of the university by the neoliberal, militant abridged chronos.” Agamben clarifies the tension be- nationalist regime over the past two years, one can’t tween kairos and the eschatology of chronos implicit help but feel that Vidrohi’s death was a premonition in poetry when he asserts that a poem is “an organ- of the world to come. Vidrohi was not just a product ism or temporal machine that, from the very start, of the university. He produced the university. Vidro- strains toward its end. A kind of eschatology occurs hi’s poetry was poiesis, in its original sense. His words within the poem itself. But for the more or less brief were a radical act of creation that produced the tem- time that the poem lasts, it has a specific and unmis- takable temporality, it has its own time.” porality of resistance and liberation that defined JNU While Vidrohi invokes the messianic in his poetry, for so many years. His death thus was the death of its rootedness in chronos is brought into sharp focus an idea of the university. To summon the ghost of through his mode of delivery. Vidrohi never wrote his Vidrohi in the darkness of our times is to stoke the poems down. He always recited them from memory, “light that strives to reach us but cannot.” To invite as a relentless fusillade of rapidly succeeding words our readers to think on him from the context of our that strained towards their end with urgency. Apart lives here in New York is to incite our own collective from one collection of poems, Nayi Kheti (New Fields), desire for the poiesis of a radically new university; it is published late in his life, his poems disappeared a call for our own poetry of the future. Credit: Tanushree Bhasin

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The six-hour La Commune, which restages the school. The Free Cinema documentary group, led by rise and fall of the Paris Commune in the wake of the Lindsay Anderson, looked to contemporary Europe- The Revolution Should not be Televised: Franco-Prussian war, encapsulates all the generative an fiction film for inspiration. It’s not hard to imagine contradictions that animate Watkins’ unique body of their manifesto, as outlined in the program of their The Oeuvre of Peter Watkins work. Filmed entirely in a warehouse on the outskirts first exhibition at the British Film Institute in 1956, in- of Paris with a mostly amateur 200-member cast spiring a young Watkins. It read, in part: Curtis Russell writing and improvising their own dialogue, the mov- ie is presented as a series of news reports by “Com- As film-makers we believe that mune TV.” The anachronistic film is neither narrative No film can be too personal. Part I: “Don’t Forget to Look in the Camera” nor documentary nor reportage, but bears clear hall- The image speaks. Sound amplified and marks of all three. comments. In The Universal Clock, a documentary on the film- Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim. eter Watkins has always had a testy ing of La Commune, an actor slated to appear as a An attitude means a style. A style means an relationship with his chosen medium. commentator on “News TV Versailles,” the official attitude. His entire body of film and television state outlet, asks Watkins if he wants him to side with work, from 1964’s Culloden to 2000’s the state or the communards. “Be yourself” is Wat- Though consisting of only 12, initially little-seen La Commune (Paris, 1871), contains kins’ reply. “I don’t want you to wear a mask.” Such films, Free Cinema would have an outsized influence a sometimes implicit, sometimes advice is the mark of a self-possessed artist who, de- not only on the well-known fictional output of its ad- explicit critique of the filmic image. spite an early reluctance to shake off the veneer of herents (If…, Look Back in Anger, Saturday Night and Where Eisenstein and Vertov saw the objectivity, has spent his long career methodically Sunday Morning), but on Ealing comedies and other juxtaposing of two images through editing as the key removing his own masks. idiosyncratic postwar British genres as well. It would to cinema’s revolutionary mystique, Watkins views P Watkins’ work is a descendant of what documen- also have an impact on Watkins’ oeuvre, specifically montage as a Janus-faced betrayal of the camera’s tary historian Betsy A. McClane calls the “second line in its grainy, hand-held black-and-white images, its unique capability to root out the truth. If movies are, of British documentary” from the 1930s, a socially antipathy toward box office success and corporate in Roger Ebert’s famous axiom, “a machine that gen- conscious strain led by critic and filmmaker John Gri- sponsorship, and its inherent revolutionary bent. erates empathy,” then for Watkins every edit debili- erson. Commonly credited with inventing the term Though Watkins’ work is primarily didactic, his tates the machine, foreclosing thought and prescrib- “documentary,” Grierson was the first public relations early short films bear strong resemblance to the Free ing emotion in a dogged drive toward predetermined officer for the UK’s General Post Office, where he led Cinema, which McClane classifies as non-didactic meaning. a film unit that made more than a hundred films em- and aesthetic, crafted to appeal more to emotion Born in 1935, Watkins came of age with the televi- phasizing the Post Office’s modernity. The “second than intellect. Watkins’ 1959 Diary of an Unknown sion, and acknowledges that his early films as a young line,” however, made outside the GPO, attempted to Soldier is a first-person account, narrated by the di- producer at the BBC indulged in this stylistic system, draw attention to social problems throughout the rector (like most of his films), of the last day in the life which he dubs “the Monoform.” Yet his films have re- UK. With titles such as Housing Problems, Enough to of a British private in World War I. The soldier’s tinny sisted this structure since before he had the words to Eat?, and The Smoke Menace, these brief journalistic interior monologue is almost unbearably grating and label it, often calling attention to their constructed- films pioneered the use of direct address as a short- on-the-nose, yet the 24-year-old Watkins displays a ness with myriad Brechtian devices. Watkins’ cinema cut to authenticity. remarkable proficiency with battle scenes. The kinet- is a distinctly postmodern riposte to John Gardner’s According to McClane, the welfare state called for ic camera work, which darts between great depth of “fictive dream,” which Watkins views as narcotizing by the second line films became a reality following field and extreme close-up, bristles with the energy and deadening. He insists that the viewer never for- the devastation of World War II, which led to a strong of a young artist discovering his power. get that she is watching the product of the biases, sense of nationalism and a push toward a more po- Watkins’ battle cinematography, which would be- ideologies, and personalities of its creators and the etic cinema, heralding the common man instead of come even more refined and dynamic over the next social and economic systems in which they work. the technological advances highlighted by Grierson’s decade, would be one of the first “masks” Watkins Peter Watkins, “Le Commune (de Paris) 1871” - source: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/peter-watkins-films-1964-99/peter- watkins-la-commune-de-paris-1871

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guiltily shed as he embraced Culloden begins by introducing he terms “human rent:” ten- the battle, the British companies the 1966 Academy Award for Best England, which was the last film video in the 1970s. Culloden, each commander of the “tired, ants were allowed to farm the scour the countryside, raping, Documentary Feature, Watkins Watkins made in the UK before a however, finds him stretching his ill-administered (Jacobite) force chiefs’ land in return for fight- pillaging, and “peacemaking.” was quickly souring on the Brit- self-imposed exile that continues legs creatively and employing his of less than 5,000 men” with a ing whenever he decreed. The They dehumanize the rebels with ish film and television industries. to this day; 1969’s The Gladiators, energetic camera in far more en- quick, heroic zoom from medium men are threatened with having propaganda, deprive captured His next three films are also set in a sort of proto-Hunger Games tertaining and bruising anti-war their homes and barns burned soldiers of food and care, or kill to close, in ironic counterpoint to a dystopian near-future: 1967’s from 1969; and 1971’s Punish- story. Except for the specifically Watkins’ sardonic narration: down if they refuse to fight. “All them outright. prophetic Privilege, about a man- ment Park, which played at the British context, the film’s title de- are dependent on this one man,” Culloden is Watkins’ most scription could serve as an epi- Watkins says as his probing cam- playful film. Not only do the ufactured pop singer named Ste- Cannes Film Festival and imag- graph for Watkins’ entire career: Sir Thomas Sheridan, Jaco- era swings around a landowner’s modern trappings of the pseudo- ven Shorter who is used to sell- ines a totalitarian United States “An account of one of the most bite military secretary. Suffer- shoulder to look him directly documentary connect the events ing everything from dog food to where subversives are hunted mishandled and brutal battles ing advanced debility and loss in the face. The chief can only of the film to contemporary wars shopping centers to the Church of and killed by security forces as a ever fought in Britain. An account of memory. Former military glance guiltily out of the side of like Vietnam, the form allows of its tragic aftermath. An ac- engagement: 56 years ago. his eye. This is the introduction Watkins to re-inscribe the pas- count of the men responsible for Sir John MacDonald, Jacobite of a trademark Watkins trope. In sion, emotion, and personality it. An account of the men, wom- captain of cavalry. Aged, fre- Watkins’ work, the proletariat are that are often lost in historical re- en and children who suffered quently intoxicated, described dignified through their refusal to constructions. The humanization because of it.” The setting is the as “a man of the most limited cower before the camera’s pierc- makes the ending all the more real-life 1746 Battle of Culloden, capacities.” John William O’ ing glare. They peer directly into affecting, as the Jacobite lead- 4 ½ miles southwest of Inverness Sullivan, Jacobite quarter- it, often in full face, confident in ers escape and are given honors in the Scottish Highlands, which master general. Described as the rightness of their cause. For while the foot soldiers are left only lasted 68 minutes but “an Irishman whose vanity is Watkins, the camera, with its to starve and die. King George II claimed the lives of almost 2,000 superseded only by his lack dispassionate, relentless gaze, outlaws the tokens of Highlander Jacobite rebels, “the last battle of wisdom.” Prince Charles reveals the truth before which Scots—tartans, music, worship, to be fought in Britain, and the Edward Stuart, Jacobite com- the dishonest shrink. The venal, weaponry—and disbands the last armed attempt to overthrow mander in chief. Former mili- corrupt, and inhuman bourgeoi- clan system. The camera tracks its king.” tary experience: 10 days at a sie are only ever able to look at it along a row of bedraggled sol- Watkins employs, for the first siege at the age of 13. sideways, afraid of what it might diers’ faces as Watkins lists off the time, the pseudo-documentary discover. Though ingenuous and various ways in which the rebels form that he would continue to not particularly nuanced, it’s a were made to suffer. Blameless, use off and on throughout his This is less a critique of the Ja- subtle trope that Watkins has re- in his eyes at least, they gaze entire career up to La Commune, cobite forces, though, than a de- turned to again and again, and unblinkingly into the camera. as of this writing his last film. The nunciation of all ineffectual mili- is key to understanding his cin- The actors become icons for the form had recently gained notori- tary leadership, putting the lives ematic methodology. forgotten faces of history. “They ety with the “mondo” exploita- of soldiers on the line with no Watkins certainly spares no have created a desert,” Watkins tion films in Italy, but for Watkins, clear mandate or ability. Though love for the British army, though, intones gravely, “and have called it represented his first explicit Watkins criticizes both sides of with its similarly unfair pay struc- it peace.” engagement with televisual ma- the battle, he clearly sides with tures and ruthless treatment of Watkins’ next film, 1965’s The nipulation. An unseen Watkins the rebels. their enemies. He calls it “a fra- War Game, which imagines a interviews commanders and sol- This doesn’t prevent him, ternity where the least preten- near-future nuclear attack near diers on both sides of the battle, however, from engaging in a bru- sion to learning, to piety, or to London, was banned by the BBC positioning the film as a less jin- tal takedown of the Scottish clan common morals would endanger and not broadcast until 1985. goistic Henry V. system, which engaged in what the owner to be cashiered.” After Though the film went on to win Exhibition of Peter Watkins’ series “The Unforgetting” at Webber Gallery. It’s a highly autobiographical piece of work, showcasing photographs and sculptures produced after a long inner exploration of a traumatic loss.

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training exercise. enumerating facts, figures, and context, a carryover All three films are systemic critiques. In his self- from his 1987 anti-nuclear weapon documentary The Siege Comes to New York interview accompanying the DVD of The Gladiators, The Journey. Twenty-six minutes into the film, one Watkins gives his definition of the “system” he is cri- of these intertitles reminds the viewer yet again that tiquing: the scenes were filmed over 13 days, chronological- Ashley Marinaccio ly, mostly in 10-minute-long shots. (A)ny hierarchical structure which is used by Watkins, perhaps as much for his cantanker- one group of human beings to govern and to hold ousness as for his political intractability, has never other human beings in subservience. The structure brings with it a series of rules, conventions gained a large following. He left England because his and understandings whereby those who are films kept getting banned, soft censorship plagued ver the past few decades the governed accept the system and allow it to rule. him throughout his career. La Commune was only Palestinian voice has been Sometimes the system is maintained by a regime broadcast once on French television, late on a Fri- largely excluded from Ameri- of terror, sometimes by a regime of consumerism day night while most people slept. can cultural circles. While there and compromise. The mass media play an es- Yet The Universal Clock makes clear that La Com- have been several successful sential role in propagating acceptance of either mune is a revolutionary communal act in itself. The performances of Palestinian regime. whole cast, including the children, engaged in ex- narratives on American stages, many Palestinian-made the- haustive research and preparations for the filming. atre productions that directly address politics and Watkins’ mass media critique was still largely sub- Many became radicalized as a result. The documen- textual in these three films, where Watkins seems the Israeli occupation have been censored. It was tary shows an undocumented Algerian man strug- O more interested in oppressive organisms than in only recently, and after much controversy caused by gling to express all his rage and sorrow in the few the communication structures that sustained them. Public Theatre’s cancellation of its original May 2016 The resulting critiques themselves often come off as lines he gets in the film. It’s moving and sad and, production, that the Jenin-based Freedom Theatre diffuse and as formless as Watkins’ definition of the paired with La Commune itself, once again reminds debuted its evocative and emotional production, system, though the analysis remains pungent. us of the human stakes of the telling of history. A The Siege, at NYU’s Skirball Center. Though the pseudo-documentary La Commune different actor poses the questions that the filming The Freedom Theatre is a cultural center located bears many hallmarks of Culloden, at the opposite inspired her to ask, and which are key to the politi- in the West Bank. Its mission is to “develop a vibrant end of Watkins’ career—historical setting, anachro- cal efficacy of Watkins’ work: “What is the role of the and creative artistic community that empowers chil- nistic newsreel technique, black-and-white verité individual inside a collective?” “What freedom of dren and young adults to express themselves freely cinematography—its systemic and media critiques speech do each of us have, yet also within a group?” and equally through art while emphasizing profes- are indistinguishable from one another. The two ac- “What is it to agree on an ideology but to allow for sionalism and innovation.” The Freedom Theatre tors portraying journalists for Commune TV say as internal nuances and contradictions?” Many cast offers workshops and classes in theatre, writing, photography, filmmaking, painting and other cre- much in their opening dialogue: the film deals “not members express doubt that any sort of systemic only with the Paris Commune, but also the role of ative mediums in addition to theatre performances change is possible, but their very presence is a ges- mass media in past and present society.” Before the and a theatre school. Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director ture of hope and community. story begins, the camera follows them around the of the Public Theater says, “The Freedom Theater of set, their “workplace for the past 13 weeks.” The set Jenin was founded by Juliano Mer-Khamis as a way has been left exactly how it was after the end of the Part II, in the next issue of the Advocate, will explore of using art rather than violence to create political last scene; the text of the narration “will be added a how Peter Watkins developed the most trenchant exchange. He understood that only be seeing each few months later.” Watkins is taking steps from the pression of his revolutionary ethos in his anti-nuclear other as people, looking at seemingly intractable di- outset to ensure that the viewer never gets too emo- weapons films, culminating in his nearly 15-hour mas- lemmas from all sides, could change really come to tionally invested. He also employs regular intertitles terpiece, 1987’s The Journey. his society.” With a powerful, funny script and well Credit: The Freedom Theatre

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directed performances, The Siege ing The Siege for American, New shows audiences just how impor- York audiences is a big deal. It’s tant it is to see Palestinian bod- great in so many ways. ies unapologetically on stage, AM: What has the American telling Palestinian stories. The audience reception been? How Siege, created and directed by is it different from the Palestin- Nabil Al-Raee and Zoe Lafferty, is ian reception of the piece back based on the 39-day Israeli siege home? on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. The creative NABIL: It’s important to pres- team collected stories of the ent it in Palestine, first as a re- now exiled fighters from across minder for people to know the Gaza and Europe. It is narrated story and to know what hap- by a tour guide, who transcends pened, and especially as we time by introducing audiences present this story purely as a to the present-day church and Palestinian narrative and second because nobody knows its importance to Christians and about the deal that was made. Muslims across the world, while There was a deal to send these the main story focuses on the freedom fighters into exile – 26 relationships built between six to Gaza and 13 to Europe. The fighters held up in the church by new generation, especially the Israeli forces outside. Documen- generation that was born dur- tary footage from the events are ing and after the second Intifada, projected on the walls at various didn’t know this story or what moments throughout the perfor- happened there. They maybe mance to show the events hap- hear from their families about an pening “outside” of the church, invasion or the siege of Bethle- and provide audiences with hem, but not in detail. But every context for what the experience Palestinian knows what it means looked like in real time. The sim- to experience a siege. It’s a con- ple yet elegant set designed by cept on many levels, in prison, at Anna Gisle serves the piece beau- checkpoints, and on the ground. tifully, evoking the inside of the and the lives of the people you time: ‘the terrorists have entered pany, and that this is will allow America? What was that process It’s good, painful and hopeful. It’s church, and bringing audiences love are consistently in jeopardy. a holy place and have taken the for more Palestinian voices to be like? painful because it’s a reminder to to the heart of the conflict. heard in the New York theatre. Like all great theatre, this show priest and nuns hostage.’ It is NABIL: We were struggling to people of their pain but it’s hope- Performed with great integrity, The Siege’s humanizes a group of people who not the story of victimization but I sat down with co- come for more than two years. ful because we can take the story honesty and skill by a company of creators Nabil Al-Raee and Zoe have been silenced. The direc- one of resistance in a situation of There were difficulties we had and travel with it on the ground. six actors from across Palestine, Lafferty to speak more about the tors’ note states, “With The Siege complete power imbalance.” It to face. Actors couldn’t get visas. ZOE: In terms of the UK and The Siege helps us understand performance and their experi- We had to replace one of our ac- America we have the positive re- the split-second choices and de- we aim to tell the story behind is my hope that The Siege is the ence touring the show to America. tors. The stage manager couldn’t sponses that are fantastic and en- cisions made in the middle of ac- the western propaganda, upend- first of many international tours AM: How long have you been get in and they sent him back, so thusiastic and then we have this, tive conflict zones, when your life ing the dominant narrative of the for this important theatre com- planning to bring The Siege to we had to replace him. Present- let’s see, funny response from Credit: The Freedom Theatre

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people who have not seen the ZOE: The idea personally came different ages to express them- play but somehow know all about when we were doing another play selves and share things that it and are really upset about what and a guy in the audience stood they’ve never shared. The train- we’re saying on stage. We have up and talked about the siege of ing of theatre is a process of this in Britain as well. We always the church of the Nativity. I went buildup, a process of self-discov- say, “if you don’t like it, if you are to Ireland initially and met two ery, a process of gaining back the unsure about it, and don’t want guys who were part of the siege trust you’ve lost in so many differ- to pay money to see it, that’s fine. and they passed on more contact ent ways; it’s a process of stirring But come along, we’ll give you a details for others and we spent up the imagination that in one free ticket and you can come for about a day with each person, way or another is frozen under a free and see it and we’ll go from interviewing them. Nabil Skyped brutal reality. That training gives there.” But there’s a very aggres- people in Gaza because nobody hope because if you start to know sive response which has much can travel there. We also met who you are and what you want more to do with censoring it and people in Palestine. There was a then you start to have a respon- stopping people from having blending point where it was ev- sibility and the freedom about conversations around this story ery actor and Nabil’s personal your choices and decisions. This than it does with actual outrage story because there is a blending is when you start to relate to the over what this play is about be- between the reality of your expe- reality around you – the special cause obviously people just don’t rience, your whole life, and the political and social reality and know. people you put on stage. We then you can create change. storyboarded and chose charac- AM: How was your work re- AM: Do you have any final ters and that’s when Nabil turned thoughts you can leave us with? ceived at home? it into a script. ZOE: When we first made this I think art is hope. Culture is AM: Are all of your actors from the key for change. I really believe play in Palestine my concern is the Freedom Theatre? that we were being very critical in that. I think it’s important to of the resistance and showing NABIL: Some actors came acknowledge that sharing emo- sides of it that were not always from the Freedom Theatre and tion and anger doesn’t push me positive because, at the end of others came from different re- to repeat or go through the circle the day, our job is to put com- gions in Palestine. Some come of revenge because that is not plex human beings on stage and from Palestine 48, some from Je- the solution – the solution must when you do that it’s complicat- rusalem, Nablus, the Jenin refu- come in a more creative way. ed. Then suddenly we come here gee camp and the village near and it’s the opposite concern that Jenin. It’s the same responsibil- For more information on The we’re white-washing these awful ity that theatre has in America Freedom Theatre: people and only showing them or Britain, that you want to bring as heroes which is absolutely far people from all over together to Website: from the truth. It’s funny, these create something. www.thefreedomtheatre.org polar opposite concerns in each : Can you tell us a bit more AM Facebook: country. about the Freedom Theatre? www.facebook.com/thefreedomtheatre AM: What was the devising NABIL: The Freedom Theatre Twitter: @Freedom_Theatre process like for The Siege? proves a safe space for people of Instagram: thefreedomtheatre Credit: The Freedom Theatre

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where decency no longer mattered; the material problem of lack of money or the mental Orwell’s Revolution to cut the strings of his self-respect, torture of maintaining social “decency”? When you to submerge himself—to sink…That fall down one rung of the social ladder, who cares if was where he wished to be, down you fall down another? Down and Out in Paris and Harry Blain in the ghost-kingdom, below am- London (1933) is a personal chronicle of all these bition. It comforted him somehow questions; its harshness and brilliance is encapsu- to think of the smoke-dim slums of lated by one of its most intriguing characters. “It is South London sprawling on and on, a fatal to look hungry”, ‘Boris’ tells Orwell. “It makes huge graceless wilderness where you people want to kick you.” could lose yourself for ever. eorge Orwell’s list of enemies wasn’t one of them. Verbosity, however, was his Orwell also told us something about how imperi- is amongst the longest and biggest gripe, a crime against the English language While this is certainly blunt, it can’t be called alism felt. There was no shortage of anti-imperialist most varied in history. A par- perpetrated in equal measure by “shock-headed “matter-of-fact.” It is full of feeling. How does it feel literature on bookshelves in the 1930s (think, for tial list would include pacifists, Marxists” and “jingo-imperialists,” who were always to be just above desperate poverty? What is worse, instance, of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), but Orwell communists, fascists, capital- “chewing polysyllables” to cloak their real opin- ists, conservatives, imperial- ions and motives. Orwell set out to dismantle their ists, vegetarians, teetotalers, rhetorical trickery, and do away with what Thomas Quakers, Catholics, atheists, Paine once called “literary ornaments.” In doing so, architects, poets, academics, pamphleteers and he promoted a much wider revolution in how we Gpeople who take their tea with sugar. He died a rev- use language. olutionary and a socialist that most revolutionaries and socialists had found some reason to hate. Some have called Orwell’s literary style “plain- How could someone who was such a nuisance spoken”, “matter-of-fact” or “conversational.” Al- in life become such a saint in death? These days though they’re not wrong, they are also missing a quote from Orwell usually carries more author- something. Consider this scene from the (not very ity than the Bible, even for people who might have successful) novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), punched the man if they ever spoke to him in one of in which he describes the thoughts of the broke pro- his much-loved ‘four-ale bars.’ I plead guilty to using tagonist, who has just spent his entire pay-check in the cranky old Englishman in this way, but I do so as one drunken night: someone claiming to have found something in his The evil, mutinous mood that worldview, which has little to do with the crude and comes after drunkenness seemed depressing ‘Orwellian’ future presented in 1984. In- to have set into a habit. That drunk- stead, it is proudly revolutionary, and emerges from en night had marked a period in his the revolutions in culture, politics and language that life. It had dragged him downward Orwell himself brought about. with strange suddenness. Before, he had fought against the money-code, Abandoning “literary ornaments” and yet he had clung to his wretch- Sharp one liners like “all art is propaganda” and ed remnant of decency. But now it “all issues are political issues” are enough on their was precisely from decency that he own to show that Orwell would have thrived in the wanted to escape. He wanted to go age of Twitter. He had many flaws, but reticence down, deep down, into some world The original manuscript for Orwell’s 1984. Image courtesy of netcharles.com

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had the privilege of seeing, as he put it in Shoot- ence. Although “with one part of my mind I thought the English people really feels and thinks,” whereas the spirit and the time that Orwell was appealing to, ing an Elephant (1936), “the dirty work of Empire at of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as movies were “a very unsafe guide to popular taste” and it shaped the style of his essays, which were at close quarters.” The fruits of this “dirty work,” as a something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, and the novel limited, too, as it “aimed almost exclu- once straight-talking, unstructured and often rude. colonial officer in Burma are intimately described: upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another sively at people above the £4-a-week level.” So, he Orwell’s taste for the pamphlet didn’t really catch “The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking part I thought that the greatest joy in the world wrote a long essay on the contents of newsagents’ on, and the great British historian A.J.P. Taylor ac- cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s shelves. Similarly, Orwell’s explanation of enduring cused him of nostalgia. Yet both the essay and, now, long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men guts.” “All I knew,” he concluded, “was that I was class boundaries amounted to four words: “the low- the blog, have retained some of the pamphlet’s soul. who had been flogged with bamboos.” stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and er classes smell.” This, he said, was the most domi- The essays of Christopher Hitchens, for example—on Orwell also reflected honestly on his own experi- my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who nant prejudice of all “bourgeois” Europeans, “the everything from wine and comedy to Thomas Jef- tried to make my job impossible.” Anger and shame, real secret of class distinctions in the West”, because ferson and the Vietnam War —were tremendously abstract condemnation and raw, personal hatred— “no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental popular, at least until his late-in-life transformation this may have been the default mindset of every as a physical feeling.” He then devotes the best part into a neo-conservative mouthpiece. More recently, cop, administrator and pencil-pusher in the British of two chapters to the politics of smells. websites and magazines like the UK-based Open De- Empire, and, we might add, every United States sol- Nothing was trivial to Orwell because everything mocracy, and our own Current Affairs and Jacobin, dier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Orwell was one of the was political. This view is the most basic foundation among others, have revived the tradition of medi- first to voice it. of what we now call “Cultural Criticism, and the fact um- to long-form essay writing. At their best, they that we now seriously study the daily experiences of are funny, thoughtful, acerbic and reflective. Inheri- “Popular tastes” others owes a great deal to Orwell’s extraordinary tors, in other words, of a style picked up, enlivened Here are some titles of Orwell’s essays and arti- eye for the ordinary. Orwell also attempted a less and passed on by Orwell. cles: Anti-Semitism in Britain, Shooting an Elephant, successful revolution in the medium of political and The Prevention of Literature, Reflections on Ghandi, cultural expression. In practice, it was more of a res- Reason and emotion Authentic Socialism, How the Poor Die, A Nice Cup of toration: a case for the pamphlet. The pamphlet, he There is also something more philosophical to Tea, A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray, Nonsense Po- wrote, is a one-man show. One has complete free- Orwell’s revolution in culture, and one of his most in- etry, Songs We Used to Sing, Books v Cigarettes, Bad dom of expression, including, if one chooses, the teresting insights comes from a 1940 review of Mein Climates Are Best, British Cookery, Good Bad Books, freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; Kampf, in which he argued that Hitler had “grasped and – my personal favorite – Some Thoughts on the or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious, the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life”: Common Toad. and “highbrow” than is ever possible in a newspa- Why did this great enemy of totalitarianism, per or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, Nearly all western thought since combatant in the Spanish Civil War, and chronicler since the pamphlet is always short and unbound, it the last war, certainly all “progres- of 20th Century thought also insist on writing about can be produced much more quickly than a book, sive” thought, has assumed tacitly trivial things? This tendency enraged Orwell’s more and in principle at any rate, can reach a bigger pub- that human beings desire nothing sanctimonious left-wing critics. They had a point: lic. Above all, the pamphlet does not have to follow beyond ease, security and avoidance they were, after all, living in an era when capitalism any prescribed pattern. It can be in prose or in verse, of pain. In such a view of life there is seemed to be imploding, fascism was ascendant, it can consist largely of maps or statistics or quota- no room, for instance, for patriotism communism was fighting for its life – and this guy tions, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, and the military virtues. The Social- was writing about the mating habits of toads! an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of “reportage.” All ist who finds his children playing And yet, Orwell had no problem reflecting deeply that is required is that it shall be topical, polemical, with soldiers is usually upset, but he on things that most of us barely even notice. Smells, and short. is never able to think of a substitute habits, and routines mattered. He argued, for in- This is actually a summary of Orwell’s view by for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists some- stance, that the shelves of small newsagents were Bernard Bailyn, the leading historian of North Amer- how won’t do. Hitler, because in his “the best available indication of what the mass of ican pamphlets between 1750 and 1776. This was own joyless mind he feels it with ex- George Orwell, “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941 “Secker and Warburg”. GB, London. (Searchlight Books, No.1). Print-run: 5,000 copies. Contents: Part I: England Your England; Part II: Shopkeepers at War; Part III: The English Revolution.

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ceptional strength, knows that hu- fans on the right leave out the part where he argues This is very good propaganda. Clear, emotive, 1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, man beings don’t only want comfort, “patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism.” stirring and, yes, ‘patriotic.’ Would something like it banks and major industries. safety, short working-hours, hygiene, Instead, “it is a devotion to something that is chang- work for us today, modified with some appeal to the 2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale birth-control and, in general, coming but is felt to be mystically the same,” something traditions of the United States? We won’t know until that the highest tax-free income in Britain does mon sense; they also, at least inter- you feel and don’t think. Even so, it remains hard to we try. not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. mittently, want struggle and self- reconcile patriotism with socialism. Orwell’s best at- Against “timid reformism” sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags tempt can be found in The English Revolution (1941): 3. Reform of the educational system along and loyalty-parades… “Greatest Orwell called for revolution and for socialism: democratic lines. happiness of the greatest number” explicitly and repeatedly until the day he died in is a good slogan, but at this moment England has got to be true to her- 4. Immediate Dominion status for India, 1950. Sometimes it is necessary to repeat this, with “Better an end with horror than a self. She is not being true to herself with power to secede when the war is over. his legacy now so distorted by people who got no horror without end” is a winner. Now while the refugees who have sought further than a few pages and online summaries of 5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, that we are fighting against the man our shores are penned up in con- Animal Farm. He hated that the Russian Revolution in which the coloured peoples [sic] are to be rep- who coined it, we ought not to under- centration camps, and company di- rate its emotional appeal. devolved into Stalinism, but what did he see as the resented. rectors work out subtle schemes to alternative? Not capitalism. “Hitler’s conquest of Eu- 6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, I recoiled when I first read this. Do human beings dodge their Excess Profits Tax… The rope,” he wrote in Shopkeepers at War (1941), “was a Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist pow- really want or need “drums, flags and loyalty-pa- heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are physical debunking of capitalism,” confirming both ers. rades”? It certainly would have seemed so in 1940. not in the House of Lords. They are in its inhumanity and ineffectiveness. Liberalism, in But even if it was or is true, where does that leave the fields and the streets, in the fac- the North American sense of the word, didn’t work At the time – remember, Britain was still at war the socialist, whose most basic guiding principle is tories and the armed forces, in the either. Adjusting a largely rotten system incremen- – these proposals were extremely revolutionary, internationalism? Obviously, Orwell did not think tally seemed almost laughable in 1941, and Orwell amounting to calls for the end of the Empire, the that chauvinistic human instincts should be accept- four-ale bar and the suburban back regularly fumed at the “timid reformism” of the Brit- beginning the end of capitalism, and the complete ed. He went to Spain to physically fight them. He garden; and at present they are still ish Labour Party. In ’41, for instance, he wrote that upending of the British class structure. These were did, however, see humans as overwhelmingly emo- kept under by a generation of ghosts. the party “has never been able to achieve any ma- the first steps on the path to Orwell’s “democratic tional animals. One of his most consistent problems Compared with the task of bringing jor change,” because “all through the critical years socialism,” which would aspire not just to national- with “book-trained” socialists was their “machine- the real England to the surface, even it was directly interested in the prosperity of British ized industries, but to a classless society. worship” and hyper-rationality: a vision of endless, the winning of the war, necessary capitalism,” devoted as much as anyone else to “the mechanized, conflict-free material abundance. For There’s a lot not to like about George Orwell. He Orwell, a society without foolishness, vulgarity, toil though it is, is secondary. By revolu- maintenance of the British Empire,” and had turned didn’t put much effort into developing female char- or prejudice would not be human, and the methods tion we become more ourselves, not ‘revolutionary’ politics into a “game of make-be- acters in his novels, and made little mention of wom- required for building it would have to be close to less. There is no question of stopping lieve.” en in his most noted essays. His attacks on pacifists Stalin’s. short, striking a compromise, salvag- It might be said that Orwell’s solution was anar- during the war were often overwrought, more than chism. You would certainly say so if you’ve read his This outlook strongly shaped Orwell’s views on ing ‘democracy’, standing still. Noth- once insinuating that they were Hitler sympathizers. moving account of anarchist Barcelona in Homage His obsession with the ‘common man’ can be grat- patriotism, an aspect of his thought that remains ing ever stands still. We must add to popular among conservatives on both sides of the to Catalonia (1938). Noam Chomsky, among others, ing, along with his endless denigration of the ‘intel- our heritage or lose it, we must grow Atlantic. He left them plenty of material, admitting have referred to Homage in this context. Although ligentsia.’ Orwell would have rejected any claim to that he preferred his upbringing “in an atmosphere greater or grow less, we must go for- they are right to do so from a theoretical standpoint, sainthood and so should we. But the least we can do tinged with militarism” to that of “the left-wing in- ward or backward. I believe in Eng- they could equally refer to Orwell’s practical “Six- is salvage him from the scrap-heap of cheap quotes tellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ they cannot land, and I believe that we shall go Point Programme” presented in The English Revolu- and shallow memes, and appreciate him for what understand the most ordinary emotions.” Orwell’s forward. tion: he was: a uniquely human revolutionary.

26 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 27 Whose Community? A Scalar Report from Graduate Center Grounds

Angela Dunne and Conor Tomás Reed

There’s an old joke that radicals have predicted fifty of the last five uprisings. In the tunnel vision of organizing—campaigns, petitions, protests, conference calls, meetings, late-night plots—a spark can be perceived as The One that will start a wildfire. An isolated grievance can be anticipated as the prism to refract broader injustices. The triumphant sounds of History may actually be the grinding gears of movement work slowly inching forward, backwards, forwards. But sometimes, in a rare confluence moment, what we do to radically improve our well-being can invoke tremendous impacts in the spaces where we live, study, and work.

28 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Nationwide, as the Janus v. AFSCME SupremeFall no. 2 2017 Court — ruling — 29 looms over public unions’ futures until its likely passage in cuny life cuny life

June 2018, graduate students are transformative change. In piv- can reconfigure the country and administration’s worsening le- We CUNY students, faculty, can be remixed in different are- calling for walkouts on 29 Novem- otal moments, people can “jump world (and vice versa, back and gitimacy, de Blasio and the city, and staff can powerfully co- nas by wider groups of people. ber against a federal tax revision The Graduate Center and the PSC scales” so that the interplay be- forth). To jump scales at CUNY, Cuomo and the state, and tax at- conspire in this moment. Key to that could eviscerate our funding have crucial roles to play. GC cam- packages. At the City University tween ourselves and each other, then, suggests that between our tacks and the Janus ruling on a jumping scales is circulating our paigns for $7k/class, job security, of New York, CUNY Chancellor and free tuition can outwardly Milliken has announced his resig- spread at the campuses where nation from a four-year tenure for we fan out to work, as BT&D’s de- the end of Spring 2018. The job mands to intervene in GC budget- contract between the Profession- ing can scale upwards to address al Staff Congress (PSC) and CUNY rampant CUNY fiscal mismanage- management expires this 30 No- ment. The GC’s politically activat- vember, a date that will mark ed and increasingly precarious grassroots PSC actions across graduate student body mirrors the university to center adjuncts the national scene of graduate professors’ demands for $7k/ students/adjuncts that demand class and job security. The Cam- sweeping changes in universities paign to Make CUNY Free Again and the government. Moreover, (Free CUNY) is pressuring the City the PSC’s position as a public sec- Council, Mayor de Blasio, and tor union advocating salary redis- Governor Cuomo to fully fund tribution for adjuncts can rede- tuition with taxes on New York’s fine the momentum for adjunct ultra-wealthy. Meanwhile at the struggles nationwide. Graduate Center, a new Budget From our Graduate Center Transparency and Democratiza- grounds, how can we measure tion (BT&D) and labor rights cam- the stakes of this conjuncture, paign has besieged the Graduate and how can we work together to Center’s administration, espe- shape it? The Fall 2017 semester’s cially as GC President Chase Rob- escalation campaign has been inson has proposed an “Academ- formed by an emerging ad-hoc ic Excellency Fee” increase of up coalition that includes the CUNY to $1,200/semester for Master’s Adjunct Project, CUNY Struggle, students. Doctoral Students Council (DSC), Neil Smith, the late Marxist Free CUNY, the Graduate Center geographer who taught for over PSC chapter, and concerned GC a dozen years at our school be- students -- a cross-organizational fore his early death, once spoke collaboration of students, faculty, of “scales” that enact “spatial- and staff not seen at this univer- ized politics.” For Smith, the sity for several years. In truth, our living conditions at home individual livelihoods, campus national level roiling with public first-person testimonies towards body, home, community, urban these groups are but a fraction of city, region, nation, and globe and our neighborhoods, and po- struggles over the PSC contract outrage, a multitude of sparks group base-building, and creat- our GC and CUNY communities. were key co-constitutive sites of litical shake-ups across our city, and tuition, the GC and CUNY can spread widely. ing relevant direct actions that As a way to welcome many new All photos credit to Stephen Jones

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and seasoned participants into adopt as part of its December re- leadership proclaimed $7k/class speech rights, anti-ROTC and this process, we offer a semester port to the Mayor. At the event, for adjuncts as their top priority campus militarization, the last chronology of how we got here: dozens of people from around the (without mentioning the above contract’s strike authorization, The Fall 2017 semester be- university linked free tuition to the events that rank-and-file adjuncts and various citywide campaigns. gan with a new elected leader- future of ethnic studies, immigra- had organized), but then urged GC organizers noted that if we sys- ship of our GC PSC chapter, the tion reform, admissions require- the delegates to vote down every tematically develop a list of these New Caucus and Fusion Inde- ments, and teaching conditions. single other adjunct and gradu- delegates, and consistently reach pendents (NCFI), who had won A 12 October event by CUNY ate teaching fellow (GTF) amend- out to them with our events and two-thirds of the vote to CUNY Struggle, “Get the Contract You ment to the contract demands perspectives for the new contract, Struggle’s third in May. Despite a Deserve!: $7k and Job Security for regarding pay parity, seniority, we could bypass the Delegate combative Spring election cam- Adjuncts,” laid out a strategy for etc. One long-time professor even Assembly and begin to cohere a paign season, both slates agreed the new contract campaign that made an important point that the more direct democratic orienta- to continue working together could more “horizontally” con- contract demand for a 5% pay tion to membership collaboration at the Graduate Center. Indeed, nect adjuncts across campuses, increase across the board would and communication. A sizeable because of Spring debates that instead of only taking top-down maintain pay inequities between number of these sympathetic del- compelled people on both slates perspectives and orders from PSC adjuncts and non-disposable egates could pass along our ef- to clarify their positions on union central communications and mo- faculty, instead of redistribute forts to their chapters (and vice democracy, adjunct demands, bilization calls. salaries more equitably, but they versa, back and forth), as we map and protest strategies, a recipro- At the 16 October CUNY Board were then accused of embracing out which chapters might “turn” cal engagement between radicals of Trustees Public Hearing, the “austerity logic” of the CUNY towards rank-and-file militancy. of various stripes has improved members of Free CUNY and the administration. With great famil- the cohesion of campus organiz- Back at the Graduate Center, CUNY Rising Alliance demanded iarity with Robert’s Rules of Order, ing. A CUNY Struggle-initiated 26 a 27 October DSC Town Hall, that the Board not raise tuition by the central leadership interjected September picket line outside hosted by the Student Life and $800 over four years, stop paying multiple times, as a line of a doz- the offices of Cuomo and CUNY Services Committee, collated con- poverty wages to adjuncts, and en mostly adjuncts and graduate Central, amassed 100 people from cerns by Master’s and Ph.D. stu- do everything in its power to urge students waited to speak once. At around CUNY and NYC. The PSC dents to bring to the administra- Cuomo to sign the Maintenance the 9pm discussion cut-off time, central leadership refused to motion. Then, a 31 October Adjunct of Effort (MOE) Bill to secure ba- tenured/tenureable faculty pro- bilize members for the rally, which Project “Haunting” went trick-or- sic operational CUNY funding. The posed for the stack list to be cut, placed it in the embarrassing po- treating for $7k/class, universal Chancellor disappeared halfway thus silencing their fellow con- sition of being outflanked on the grad fellowships, health insur- through the testimonies, in viola- tingent union members, at which new contract campaign by its own ance, and tuition remission in the tion of the public hearing’s regu- point a majority vote was taken to grassroots rank-and-file dissent- GC lobby and then right to Chase lations. A week later, the Board accept the contract demands. ers. Robinson’s office door. Although kicked out concerned students, A Even with this disheartening he was is the office, he did not 10 October City Hall Press CUNY workers, and community announced that Free experience, it was good to see a make himself available, so they Conference members, and raised the tuition few dozen of the attending del- informed the GC’s Public Safety CUNY had accrued over 4,000 pe- anyway. tition signatures towards a public egates who have been immersed Director about their trick-or-treat referendum to eliminate tuition, The 19 October PSC Delegate in CUNY and NYC movement work demands. He wrote them down which they urged the City Coun- Assembly was a differently disori- over the last several years around and said he would pass them on cil Task Force on CUNY Tuition to enting affair, in which the central tuition hikes, budget cuts, free to the President.

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At a 2 November Community Meeting, Chase Robinson Provost also provided information about how her office requi- This brings back the question of the claim that the request-ma- and Provost Joy Connolly discussed budgetary matters, the pro- res more transparency from departments in requiring them to king procedures at the Graduate Center are democratic. Does posed “Excellency Fee” tuition increase of up to $1,200/semes- record their requests for hires, units, and fellowship lines in a it make sense to charge more tuition for the students at the ter for Master’s students, new faculty hires, and departmental written document. However, neither of these answers addres- Graduate Center that receive no fellowships and are starved for diversity. Below we outline this meeting’s contents in-depth to sed the question of student involvement in budgetary decisions. resources? The Provost and President claimed that they have present the GC administration’s purported commitment to com- Making verbal requests at meetings with an undemocratically been thinking on this issue for three years and this is the deci- munity, in contrast to the grassroots initiatives otherwise laid appointed President and Provost, with no voting or consensus sion that they came to reluctantly. However, a more democratic out in this chronology. While the Graduate Center has 3723 stu- procedure, is hardly as democratic a process as Chase Robinson budgetary decision process could have developed more egalita- dents (3200 PhD and 500 Master’s), 140 central faculty, and hun- claims. rian solutions that don’t sidestep the rights of Master’s students. dreds of staff members in several unions, the meeting of three 3. What about Participatory Budgeting? 5. How do you fix a deficit? Chop from the top. dozen people was mostly populated by the administration and One student wanted to push further on this question of de- One English PhD student noted that, according to June 2016 their upper-level staff. Even though it was framed as a place to mocracy, stating that everything he heard in the meeting sug- figures, Chase Robinson was among the top five highest paid talk “among colleagues” in which Robinson and Connolly were gested that the governing processes at the Graduate Center administrators in CUNY with an annual salary of $350,000. The open to hearing community concerns, it proved to be a rigidly were undemocratic. He proposed the implementation of Parti- student proposed, if Robinson wished to demonstrate his sup- designated hour to address the GC administration and each cipatory Budgeting (PB): a process where community members port for the excellence of Master’s students in the Graduate Cen- other to perform the bare minimum of creating community. The decide how to spend part of a public or institutional budget. PB ter, would he then consider paying the tuition increase himself? limited amount of critical information came as a result of persis- vide much transparency about how the funds are actually being has been implemented at other CUNY campuses, like Queens Robinson was furious to hear this suggestion, which he quickly tent questioning from several concerned students in the audi- used. Robinson then deferred the question to Sebastian Persico, and Brooklyn College, as well as within local New York City go- refused. ence, including members of the DSC and the GC PSC chapter: the Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration, who, vernment. The Doctoral Student Council (DSC) has already be- 6. Diversity, Class, and Gentrification at CUNY 1. Will you release itemized budgets for the last 3-5 years? along with President Chase Robinson, are two of the five highest gun a PB initiative that opens up the Student Activity Fee for the In response to Joy Connolly distributing to the room a series 2. More details on budget transparency: Who sits on the paid administrators at the Graduate Center. Persico replied, “I’m development of student-led projects. The further expansion of of colorful graph print-outs about improved ethnic and gender budget committee and how is it formed? not sure what itemized means” and subsequently added that Participatory Budgeting at the GC would provide a more equi- student diversity at the Graduate Center, the same English stu- 3. How can we democratize budget decisions/design/ the organization on a massive 125 million dollar budget could table and democratic process to develop budget resolutions, ra- dent noted that these changes had occurred as a result of stu- implementation? be overwhelming. He suggested that the student “have a bet- ther than leaving decisions about student needs up to the mercy dent, faculty, and staff pressure upon the administration and 4. How do we know the money from the proposed “Aca- ter idea of what itemized means.” Robinson offered that he was of those at the top. their departments across the last several years. However, the demic Excellency Fee” -- will go to services for Master’s students? happy to make the major categories available, as is the practice, 4. What’s so “excellent” about a tuition increase for Ma- student added, Connolly’s graphs didn’t include information 5. To Robinson: you are the one of the top five highest but has seen no benefit in detailing the budget, implying that ster’s students? on class diversity or stratification, and in particular, statistics paid CUNY administrators, will you commit part of your salary this leads to questions about decisions on discretionary funds. In his initial address, Chase Robinson mentioned that the GC on how many CUNY students were being admitted into the Gra- for the excellency fee? The student stated that they would follow up on an itemization has filed a request to CUNY Central Offices for a tuition increa- duate Center. The student offered that if the Provost’s Office was 6. To Connolly: Your office’s data on diversity is missing request to the Finance and Administration office. se for its 500 Master’s students of 100 dollars more per credit. concerned with diversifying the student body, then they could class information. GC is at risk of becoming a gentrifying force 2. Budget Committee. Who makes the decisions? They are calling it the “Academic Excellency Fee” and claim that focus more on orienting admissions to the existing CUNY stu- in CUNY, what about data on students who come here from the The next question also pushed on budget transparency and the money will go toward more resources for those students, dent population. Otherwise, the Graduate Center runs the risk senior colleges? specifically asked about the individuals that sit on the Budget namely, advisement, career training, internships, and scholar- of gentrifying its graduate student body with wealthier students 1. Budget Itemization: Committee that Robinson mentioned throughout the mee- ships. A Master’s student and member of the DSC asked: How (even within broader ethnic and gender spectrums) who may One Biology PhD student asked: Is it possible to have access ting, as well as how that committee is formed. The student can we be sure where the money from this tuition increase will pursue certain upper-class-oriented studies and teach diverse to itemized budgets from the past five years? Chase Robinson asked about ways that students at the Graduate Center can get go if the budget is not transparent? He asked if Robinson would working-class CUNY undergraduates from elite outsider posi- answered that the budget at the Graduate Center is extremely onto the committees. Robinson responded that the members commit to making decisions around this fee transparent with tions. Connolly agreed that the information for economic class dynamic and 79% goes to academic affairs. He also stated that are drawn from both the Faculty Steering Committee and the an itemized report. The student also addressed the fact that the is important but that she imagined it would be difficult to get. there is a breakdown of major budget categories available on- Council of Executive Officers. He also admitted that in these DSC has a clear and itemized budget available for each spen- The student responded that data about those admitted from line. 3-4 years of budget cuts, there has been virtually no discretio- ding year and there is no reason that the administration cannot CUNY undergraduate colleges would suffice. Connolly then eva- He was referring to this graph (see picture attached). nary spending, and that budget decisions have been left up to do the same. Robinson responded that the proof of allocation ded the previous question addressed to Chase Robinson, by rei- The student responded that asking for the historical data the VP offices, and especially the Office of the Provost. The me- will be in the infrastructure that is built for Master’s students. terating how important Master’s students were to the Graduate from the past five years will not change and thus would not be chanisms that he offered for more student input were simply to The Provost responded that the money will be used for resour- Center community, which unintentionally made Robinson glare dynamic, and also, that the bulk calculations online do not pro- present requests at a meeting with the Provost or himself. The ces that Master’s students themselves have said that they want. again.

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At the 13 November GC PSC Chapter meeting, a in a rally to support Local 3 in their fight for a fair con- students in the Adjunct Project, CUNY Struggle, Free resolution against the master’s students tuition hike tract earlier this Fall. CUNY, DSC, PSC, and more—have set the tone and was unanimously passed, and members were urged Alongside calls for democratization, there were tenacity of the campaign, so that hopefully it’s not to practice cross-title solidarity, with the demand for also speakers with market-minded solutions that another several years before we get a new contract. $7k/class minimum to be fought by adjuncts alongsi- further entrench public sector unions into a business A 4 December PSC Contract Rally will meet outside de everyone else. Then on 15 November, twelve ma- model, like taking a sales standpoint in recruiting the Graduate Center at 4:30pm to march to Baruch ster’s and doctoral students held a collective meeting with bonuses and new member rebates. When con- College and rally again at a Board of Trustees Public with Chase Robinson and Matthew Schoengood that fronted with a question about participatory budge- Hearing. lasted almost an hour. Under the umbrella demand ting with regard to union dues, one PSC speaker see- Our vision for Community stands in direct con- of Budget Transparency and Democratization (BT&D), med uneasy and dismissed the proposal, suggesting trast to how Chase Robinson, James Milliken, and students opposed the “Excellency Fee” tuition hike, that until the members can understand the issues, it the CUNY administration deign to engage with us. As uneven funding and limited tuition remission, and would be precarious to give them that sort of access we demand participation in deciding the new CUNY their general hardship. Students also identified the to the budget. This conference illustrates some of the Chancellor, we should also begin to advocate at the president’s overall failure to be available, accoun- deeply conflicting opinions on how unions should be GC for a ‘’No Confidence’’ vote against Chase Robin- table, and effectively raise money for the college. structured, all of which have implications on their son. With a note of caution, we see that the DSC Ple- While Robinson vaguely offered to include students survival in an open-shop environment. We need to nary and PSC Delegate Assembly demonstrate simi- in the budgetary process and reach out to alumni for be aware of the philosophies and practices that we lar problems of limited representational democracy fundraising, he refused to rescind the tuition increa- adopt with relation to our unions. The resistance (and an attendant lack of trust in rank-and-file invol- se or address uneven funding packages. In contrast, to rank-and-file empowerment from the top (be it vement), even as we believe the DSC and PSC have at the 17 November DSC Plenary, representatives from CUNY or PSC administrators) is still prevalent students and campus workers’ interests at heart. unanimously passed resolutions on three issues: 1) and indicates the need for ongoing organizing from This new participatory coalition of the Adjunct Endorsing a Tuition Freeze for Academic Year 2018- below. We need a new democratic vision and stron- Project, CUNY Struggle, Free CUNY, DSC, and PSC 19, 2) Supporting the Adoption of the MOE Bill, and 3) ger cross-union solidarity if public sector unions are rank-and-file assembles its strength in political hete- Opposing the Plan to Implement an ‘Excellency Fee’ going to survive these attacks. rogeneity and creative experimentation. As we map for Masters’ Students. As the Advocate goes to press, three action dates out the deliberative bodies that the GC and CUNY Also on 17 November, the Murphy Institute (CUNY) put Neil Smith’s invitation for us to “jump scales” into administration must address in accordance with uni- and the Worker’s Institute (Cornell) put on a joint further (com)motion. A 29 November national grad versity governance policies, we also shape these ne- conference, Janus and Beyond: The Future of Public students walkout against the federal tax hikes inclu- gotiations with protests and direct actions that ope- Sector Unions. It featured talks and workshops that ded a local Union Square rally co-hosted by Barnard, rate beyond how we are rigidly governed. These new asked participants to re-imagine and explore stra- Columbia, CUNY, New School, and New York Univer- glimpses of student and worker solidarity outlined tegic options toward a new labor movement in re- sity teachers unions. Then on 30 November, CUNY above are the kind needed for cross-title solidarity sponse to the threat of Janus vs. AFSCME. There was actions for $7k and free tuition were held at Bronx on the PSC level and cross-campus/cross-borough a strong current that spoke about Janus as an op- Community College, the Graduate Center, and Hun- solidarity on the CUNY and NYC level. Even so, our portunity to restructure the top-down mechanisms ter College on the date that the current PSC contract grassroots groups have a similar problem of repre- in our unions, a sentiment that echoes many of the expires and almost 50,000 CUNY teachers and staff sentation – we’ll only be acting on behalf of the gene- democratization and adjunct struggles at CUNY. City began working without a contract. At the GC, we held ral GC and CUNY communities unless we re-arrange Council Member, I. Daneek Miller, spoke about how a speak-out in the Dining Commons and then swar- our efforts so that people can participate on a mass PSC contract, as well as to establish a Spring organi- unions need to adopt the philosophy of starting from med Robinson’s office doorstep with our demands. level from where they’re positioned in the university zing plan. For the first week of class, actions around the shop floor. He also mentioned the dire situation At Hunter, students and teachers rallied outside and and city. CUNY will highlight $7k and free tuition as the two of Local 3 and their now eight month strike against then had a brief stand-off with security when we took Looking towards 2018, members of this new coali- main demands across our communities. With broad Spectrum Cable with many workers running out of our speak-out into the building lobby. These 30 No- tion will host a CUNY winter retreat on 20 January to involvement by Advocate readers and beyond, this their unemployment and Spectrum showing no signs vember actions—coordinated by rank-and-file adjun- share materials for syllabi and classroom announce- collective work can amount to much more than fle- of giving in. In a show of solidarity, PSC participated cts, graduate teaching fellows, and undergraduate ments about BT&D, the Free CUNY campaign, and the eting sparks.

36 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 37 100 Years of the Russian Revolution 100 Years of the Russian Revolution

only with a man’s permission; likewise, women could til women had achieved full equality that they could only get a passport or a job with a man’s permission. consider the socialist revolution ultimately success- Women and the There was, however, a proportionally small but ful. After the revolution, immediate measures for strong proletariat in the cities. World War I played women’s liberation were taken. The Bolsheviks put an important role in increasing the weight of women forward four primary ways to support women’s equal- Russian Revolution workers in the Russian proletariat; as men went off ity: free love, women’s participation in the workforce, to war, more women joined the workforce – women the socialization of domestic work and the end of the were nearly half the workforce by 1917. Women in- family. Long before the “Wages for Housework” cam- Tatiana Cozzarelli dustrial workers suffered inequality as well, over the paign, the Bolsheviks argued that there was nothing already miserable conditions afforded to workers. natural or biological about women doing domestic They were paid lower wages and were not allowed work or raising children. This was an ideology perpet- to organize within the same unions. And yet women uated by capitalism that had no place in a socialist were the spark for the Russian Revolution. arxism is not always associ- women’s rights within the party. Yet, as Lenin put it, society, and thus liberating women from “domestic ated with the fight against equality in law does not mean equality in life. As a re- In late February 1917, the women in factories in sexism. It’s often stereotyped sult of the war and isolation, the real economic con- Petrograd left their workplaces on strike, going to into “Bernie Bros” or reduced ditions for women’s equality did not exist. It is under neighboring factories calling on the men to also leave into that one white guy who these dire circumstances that Stalinism took hold, their jobs and join. The Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda insists that discussing pa- erasing workers’ victories and specifically, women’s stated, “The first day of the revolution – that is the triarchy divides the working rights victories won by the Russian Revolution. It is Women’s Day, the day of the Women’s Workers Inter- class. It’s true that some left from Stalinism that the dogma that Marxism is un- national! All honor to the International! The women groups adopt class reductionist positions, and it’s concerned with patriarchy was born. were the first to tread the streets of Petrograd on that just as true that socialist feminisms exist as well. In day!” After the February Revolution, like in the 1905 M Women as the Spark for the Russian Revolution my view, class reductionist “Marxists” are not Marxist uprising, the workers organized delegate assemblies at all, for Marxism has taken up the question of gen- The context for the 1917 Russian Revolution is one to make decisions about the burgeoning movement: der oppression ever since its inception. August Bebel of complete misery for the country and its people. soviets. The Bolshevik paper Rabotnitsa (The Woman wrote Woman and Socialism in 1879; Engels wrote The Russia had recently gone through a series of wars: Worker) was relaunched in May 1917 and discussed Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in with Japan in 1905, a failed revolution in 1905, and equality of the sexes, as well as the need for the State 1884. A few years later, Clara Zetkin was editor for the World War I in 1914. During the World War I, the price to take up domestic labor tasks. The stage for the Oc- German Social Democratic Party’s women’s newspa- of products went up 131 percent in Moscow and tober Revolution was set by the radical activism of per Equality. She was the head of the women’s divi- women would spend hours waiting in the blistering women. It was the tireless organizing of women such sion within the party, recruiting women to Marxist cold for basics necessities like wheat and sugar. While as Aleksandra Kollontai, as well as the rest of the ideas and fighting for women to become subjects of Marx believed that the socialist revolution would first Bolshevik party that allowed the Bolsheviks to win the struggle against capitalism and patriarchy. occur in advanced industrialized nations, Russia over the majority in the soviets and take power in the It is the Russian Revolution that best illustrates stood far from the economic and productive power of October Revolution. Women also participated in the my argument. For leaders such as Lenin and Trotsky, countries such as Germany. Peasants made up eighty October Revolution, providing medical help, commu- revolution was insufficient to rid society of patriar- percent of the population—mostly illiterate and iso- nication and even joining the Red Guard. chy. It was just the beginning of a profound social lated from the political debates in the city. Peasant transformation of women’s role in society, as well as life was based on a strict division of labor and women What Did the Bolsheviks Think About Women’s a transformation of all social values and culture. This were taught to be obedient to their father and later Issues? is demonstrated by the laws enacted by the Bolshe- their husband. It was only after 1914 that women The Bolsheviks saw women’s role in society as a viks, as well as the broad vision and debates about were allowed to separate from their husbands, but measure of the society as a whole; it wouldn’t be un- 1923 cover of Rabotnitsa, the women’s journal published in the Soviet Union and Russia and one of the oldest Russian magazines for women and families – source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Rabotnitsa.jpg

38 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 39 FEATURES100 Years of the Russian Revolution 100 Years of the Russian Revolution

slavery” was a central discussion dividing those banal tasks be- stopped centuries old laws that for women’s rights, they were very A tenet of communism, to each ty that the counter revolutionary within the party and an important tween men and women. Rather, privileged the private property of conscious that this was insuffi- according to her need and from Stalinist bureaucracy emerged, task for the revolution. As Trotsky they wanted to divorce these men and provided equal rights to cient to guarantee true equality. each according to her ability, can going back on the advances made writes in Revolution Betrayed, tasks from the family unit and put all children – including children They stressed the material ba- only work in a society of plenty. during the early years after the The revolution made a hero- them in the hands of the state. In born outside of a registered mar- sis for inequalities, but they also Advanced capitalist mass produc- Russian Revolution. Stalinism ic effort to destroy the so-called this way, the family and women riage. If a woman did not know knew that a profound personal tion provides such a basis. How- went on to play a counterrevo- “family hearth” – that archaic, in particular, would shed much of who the father of her child was, change would have to occur in ever, when there isn’t enough, a lutionary role around the world stuffy and stagnant institution their “reproductive role.” all of her sexual partners would members of the new Soviet soci- bureaucracy eventually decides based on the theory of socialism in which the woman of the toil- There was far from a consensus share child support responsibili- ety—a social reorganization won who has and who does not. This in only one country. about these matters among the ties. The author of the family code, by proletarian revolution. This is is why Lenin and so many other ing classes performs galley la- Stalinism, the Counter Revo- Bolsheviks; Lenin was notoriously Alexander Goikhbarg saw this law what Lenin meant, perhaps, when Bolsheviks placed their hopes in a bor from childhood to death. lution and Women’s Rights The place of the family as a conservative about sex, while Kol- as transitory: one that was meant he said “the proletariat cannot German revolution, which would The Stalinist bureaucracy shut-in petty enterprise was to lontai argued that our perceptions to strengthen neither the state achieve complete freedom unless ensure that the USSR was not iso- staged a counter revolution which be occupied, according to the of sex and sexuality are socially nor the family, but to be a step to- it achieves complete freedom for lated. It would provide access to murdered the left opposition plans, by a finished system of constructed. There were lively de- wards the extinction of the family. women.” German industry and the goods it bates about the role of parents in produced. However, the third in- within the Bolshevik party, lock- social care and accommoda- In 1920, abortion was legal- The Struggles of a Young the upbringing of children; while ternational failed and the German ing up, exiling or killing those who tion: maternity houses, crech- ized, making the Soviet Union the Workers’ State es, kindergartens, schools, some argued that parents would first country in the world to do revolution was squashed, leaving attempted to carry on the legacy still play a central role, others ar- The young workers’ state had the Soviet Union to fend for itself. of the 1917 revolution. Theorists social dining rooms, social so. Prostitution and homosexual- to face considerable challenges in laundries, first-aid stations, gued that prioritizing familial ties ity were no longer banned in the It is from the conditions of scarci- who wrote about the end of the was contrary to a socialist form its first years. It was attacked by hospitals, sanatoria, athletic USSR. The Bolsheviks also opened fourteen imperialist armies and organizations, moving-picture of social organization. One Bol- public cafeterias, laundry-mats, shevik educator even thought up survived because of the morale theaters, etc. The complete schools and day care centers as and the sacrifices of workers and absorption of the housekeep- the possibility of settlements that a step towards the abolition of would be self-governed by chil- peasants in the Red Army. Facing ing functions of the family by women’s double shift. It was a its fourth war in twenty years, the institutions of the socialist so- dren with the help of educational step towards placing the respon- professionals. people of the Soviet Union faced ciety, uniting all generations in sibility for domestic work on the starvation and high unemploy- solidarity and mutual aid, was Equality in Law state, not on individual women. ment. Women suffered the most to bring to woman, and there- The Bolsheviks put these into The Bolsheviks saw women’s po- under these conditions. Although by to the loving couple, a real practice. In 1918, less than a year litical participation as central to under explicit orders not to do so, liberation from the thousand- after the Revolution, the Family the advancement of the Soviet women were laid off before their year-old fetters. Code was passed, which historian Union. They organized Zhenotdel, male counterparts. Many of these Unlike the Wages for House- Wendy Goldman calls the “most the women’s section of the party, women turned to prostitution as work campaign, the Bolsheviks progressive family legislation ever made up of workers, peasants the only way to survive, and the sought to take housework out of seen in the world.” It took the and housewives who organized 13th Congress of the Bolshevik the hands of individuals and put church out of the business of mar- women on the local level, while Party discussed this problem ex- it in the hands of the state. As Ar- riage, making marriage civil. It not delegates from Zhenotdel were plicitly, making new regulations gentine socialist Andrea D’Atri ar- only legalized divorce, but stream- elected for internships in the gov- to protect women’s employment gues, the Bolsheviks did not want lined the process and made it ac- ernment. arguing “that the preservation of to maintain domestic work in the cessible to anyone without need- Although the Bolsheviks made women workers in production has realm of the household, equally ing to provide a reason. The code major advances by passing laws political significance.” Alexandra Kollontai (center) with female deputies at the Conference of Communist Women of the Peoples of the East, circa 1920 – source: http://inrussia.com/woman-on-the-march

40 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 41 100 Years of the Russian Revolution review

family such as Nikolai Krylenko were arrested and wrote about the theory of the permanent revolution murdered while the author of the 1918 Family Code in which he argues that society will undergo changes Between Value and Valor was taken to an asylum. When Stalin began to ex- even after a socialist revolution, including changes in hort the idea of socialism in only one country, he also the role of women in society. re-criminalized homosexuality and prostitution. In Review of Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: What Can We Learn? 1936, Stalin banned abortion, arguing that women had the “noble duty” to be mothers. In order to put A hundred years have passed since the Russian Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump forward such reactionary ideas about gender, Stalin Revolution and it has been several decades since the last successful revolution. Some believe that revolu- squashed the women’s committee within the Cen- Asher Wycoff tral Committee of the Communist Party, as well as tion is impossible. Others believe that it will enshrine all women’s organizing on the local level. He made in law the racist, sexist or homophobic attitudes that government efforts to bring traditional gender roles, some workers hold. Many equate Marxism with the the very gender roles that the Bolsheviks had worked struggle against exploitation, not the struggle against to break with. By 1944, Stalin had organized designa- oppression. tions for women based on how many children they When the Bolsheviks took power and immediately had. The “Order of Maternal Glory” created catego- made laws supporting women’s rights, they had no ries of women and provided women with 10 or more illusions that even the most progressive gender legis- he first edition of Corey Robin’s children with the designation of “Mother Heroine.” lation in the history of the world could end patriarchy. The Reactionary Mind was pub- They had lively debates about how to end the family lished two years into the Obama The Left Opposition and The Bolshevik Legacy administration, at the height of the and what society might look like when all bourgeois As Stalin continued to play a counter-revolution- Tea Party reaction. Between the morals and patriarchal prejudices were rooted out. ary role around the world, Trotsky created the Fourth Three Percenters’ armed marches They saw women as political subjects in the workers’ International, which was dedicated to the legacy of on the National Mall and Glenn state, as well as in their own home and lives. Stalin- the Bolsheviks. The Transitional Program that laid Beck’s frantic chalkboard draw- out the tasks for the Fourth International returns to ism put an end to all these dreams, reverting the So- ings on cable news, US conservatism seemed to have the discussion of women’s rights as central to the viet Union to the most patriarchal kind of society. Tlost its bearings and its dignity. Popular magazines socialist revolution. Trotsky says, “Opportunist or- We cannot leave the legacy of Marxism to those overflowed with laments for the lost, sensible con- ganizations by their very nature concentrate their who pervert its meaning to crude class reductionism. servative of yesteryear. One of the chief purposes chief attention on the top layers of the working class We cannot leave Marx’s legacy to Stalinism and the of Robin’s intervention was to demonstrate that the and therefore ignore both the youth and the women patriarchal and counter revolutionary construction seemingly new, fringe elements of the US right were, in fact, wholly in line with the conservative tradition. workers. The decay of capitalism, however, deals its of gender and society that it upheld. This is not about Tracing the conservatism of the new millennium heaviest blows to the woman as a wage earner and as some fetish with Marx, but rather a concern with back to its origins in post-Revolutionary France, Rob- a housewife. The sections of the Fourth International drawing from the most advanced revolutionary tradi- in contended the movement’s philosophical bedrock should seek bases of support among the most exploit- tion for women’s liberation. Not leaving the legacy of had never been a temperate “preference for the fa- Marxism to those who associate with class reduction- ed layers of the working class; consequently, among miliar,” as Michael Oakeshott would have it. Rather, ism is important because they erase the legacy of the the women workers. Here they will find inexhaust- conservatism has always been motivated by a mis- ible stores of devotion, selflessness and readiness to Bolsheviks, of Clara Zetkin, of Rosa Luxemburg and sion to recover privilege either lost or threatened. It sacrifice.” Far from any class reductionism, Trotsky all of those Marxists who saw Marxism as a strategy is animated not by a romantic attachment to the old sees the organization of women in a revolutionary for women’s liberation. Those who saw it as in fact regime, but by a desire to dismantle the old regime, party as a central task for communists. Trotsky also the only strategy that could truly liberate all women. purge it of its decadent elements, and radically re-

42 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 43 review review

construct it in a more potent form. turing (labor, rent, and capital, in ues, but also the values of labor However strongly one may object to them, the im- from; his origins in the movement are plain enough. This is the conservative project in Smith’s account). The latter is a and capital) are spontaneously plicit consensus now ran, yesterday’s conservatives Rather, the question is why US conservatism gave rise all its iterations, from the monar- practical decision buyers and sell- and subjectively decided. In turn, were of a finer breed than Trump. to a bloviator like him in 2016. chism of Joseph de Maistre to the ers make at market. Price is thus, Austrian School economists, like Robin contests this consensus at length in the sec- Robin’s answer comes in three parts, the first two originalism of Antonin Scalia. One at best, a rough approximation F. A. Hayek, develop this system could, as the book’s subtitle indi- of value. Burke rejects this meta- from a technical into a moral one. ond edition’s closing chapter. Little about Trump is of which are not entirely satisfying. First, Trump’s cated, follow a steady path from physics, holding that “there is no The Hayekian market is an ongo- especially novel, he notes. While “the racism of the “mix of racial and economic populism” spoke clearly Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. value to a commodity apart from ing “drama of choice,” wherein Trumpist right is nastier than its most recent prede- to “the lower orders of the right,” assuaging the anxi- For obvious reasons, The Reac- its price at market.” individuals are compelled to de- cessors,” it finds ample precedent in Nixon and Rea- eties of a white working class left behind by the Re- tionary Mind has gotten a revised In a manner befitting a partisan termine their own hierarchies of gan. While Trump’s “freewheeling disregard of norms publican Party mainstream. Its truth-value aside, this second edition, with a revised of the aristocracy, however, Burke desires and work to fulfill said and rules” is unusually pronounced, a performative is a painfully familiar argument printed and reprinted subtitle, a scant six years later. declines to banish value from the desires to the best of their ability. aversion to business-as-usual has been common on in thousands of op-ed pages following the election. The new edition is substantially market altogether, opting instead The market is thus transformed the US right for generations. Ditto for Trump’s faux Robin does improve on the usual iterations of it, cor- reorganized, and swaps out a few to relocate it from the commod- from an expedient site of ex- populism and his cult of elite victimhood. Trump is rectly interpreting Trump’s “populist” appeal as a of the more conspicuously dated ity to the parties of its production: change to “the disciplining agent not an aberration, but an amplification of currents factor in keeping old voters rather than mobilizing chapters on neoconservative for- capital and labor. The relation of of all ethical action.” For the Aus- long pulsing through the conservative vein. What new ones. Nonetheless, anyone who has read even eign policy for newer entries on capital to labor is a subject-object trian School, Robin contends, the needs to be explained is thus not where Trump came a modest amount of post-election commentary may Edmund Burke’s concept of value, dyad. Capital decides value; labor market gives rise to a Nietzschean the Austrian School, and (who has its value decided. Burke’s con- “great politics” of strength, mas- else?) Donald Trump. The new ception of value is double-sided. tery, and civilization-building. It is essays coalesce around a theme When it comes to the commodity, the realm in which both economic largely absent from the first edi- value is price, and price is strictly and cultural values are decided, tion: the right’s longstanding proj- subjective. But when it comes to the realm in which great men are ect of instilling market economics class relations, value operates made. with the prestige of nation-build- through an objective and immu- This brings us to the obligatory ing. This tendency has been table “chain of subordination.” As final chapter on Trump. Like the prominent in the Global North Robin sees it, this is the inaugural first edition, the newer, shinier over the last forty years as market statement of conservative eco- Reactionary Mind sets out to com- rationale has come to permeate nomics: an affirmation of market bat conventional wisdom. In the every part of political life, but its spontaneity, propped up by fixed aftermath of the 2016 election, origins can be found well before social hierarchies. once-maligned elements of the the dawning of the neoliberal era. Burke’s notion of commodity US right enjoyed a tremendous The foundations are laid in value as a subjective determina- rehabilitation in liberal outlets. Burke’s later writings, where Rob- tion made at market becomes Neocon hardliners like Bill Kristol in finds a conspicuously modern central to the marginal revolution were rebranded as “moderate” notion of value. For most classical and reaches maturity in the work voices against Trumpism. Glenn economists, Adam Smith among of the Austrian School. Figures Beck found new allies in Saman- them, a clear distinction existed of the former, such as William tha Bee and The Atlantic’s edito- between value and price. The for- Jevons and Carl Menger, theorize rial board. New York Magazine mer is intrinsic to the commod- a more consistent system of the celebrated George W. Bush for ity, a substance comprised of the processes by which all market (reportedly) calling Trump’s inau- various expenditures of manufac- values (not just commodity val- gural address “some weird shit.” Corey Robin outside his apartment in Park Slope. Hostile reviews of his new book, “The Reactionary Mind,” have prompted much back and forth on the Web – Credit: Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

44 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 45 review Contributors feel their eyes glaze over at this point. this balance, sinking great politics into the economic Second, Robin suggests that Trump rose to promi- domain. For Trump, the market itself is the terrain Harry Blain is a Political Science PhD student at the Graduate Center, majoring in international nence because he most tidily encapsulates the pres- of momentous power struggles, of heroism, and of relations. He has previously worked and studied in Sydney, Edinburgh and London, writing for ent state of US conservatism: disorganization and di- national glory. Trump’s promises to restore jobs, re- publications including Open Democracy, the Guardian and others. rectionlessness. This is exacerbated by the absence store “fair” trade relations with Mexico and China, to of a strong left. In happier times, leftist organization restore the coal industry, etc., are promises to restore Tatiana Cozzarelli is an Urban Education PhD student and an editor of the online publication, Left Voice. provided vital opposition for conservatives, imposing honor. They are promises to return each link in the discipline and giving the movement a sense of pur- “chain of subordination” to its proper place. Trump’s pose. As this opposition weakens, so does the right’s anti-elitism consists not in a condemnation of elites Angela Dunne is a doctoral student in the Urban Education Program. She teaches in the First focus, and before long it collapses into heap of incon- Year Experience at Guttman Community College. generally, but a promise to reestablish a ruling elite sistencies and epithets. This line of argument follows comprised of only, as he puts it, “the sharpest, tough- a central thesis from the first edition – that conserva- est, and most vicious people in the world.” The refin- Ashley Marinaccio is a Level II Ph.D. student in the Theatre and Performance Department at tism is most successful as an opposition movement the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a wearer of many hats as a scholar and theatre practitioner. – through to its logical conclusion. As Edmund Burke er’s fire of market competition will purify the social For more information visit ashley-marinaccio.com remarked of the French Third Estate, US conserva- body, restore order to the nation, make it great again. An abridged version of the chapter on Trump has tives have found punishment in their success. In the Nandini Ramachandran is a doctoral student in anthropology at the GC and the managing process of triumphing over the left, they have be- been published in the latest issue of n+1, under the editor of the Advocate, as well as a freelance writer. She can be found online as @chaosbogey. come fractured and unmoored. This is how we ended title “Triumph of the Shill.” Presented in that rhetori- up with a Republican Party that controls the House, cal context, as a standalone piece of commentary, Bhargav Rani is a doctoral student of Theatre, a teaching fellow at Hunter College, and the the Senate, and the Presidency, and still remains un- one more drop in the “Leftist Analyses of Trump” Editor-in-Chief of the Advocate. His research explores the political and philosophical dimensions able to enact most of its agenda. bucket, it isn’t particularly striking. Robin centers the of performance in everyday life. Third, and most pertinently, Trump brings to a essay on a close-reading of The Art of the Deal, which head a key riddle of conservatism generally: he rec- is a clever conceit, but not quite enough to make the Conor Tomás Reed is an archivist, doctoral student, educator, and organizer at the City onciles “great politics” and market economics. The piece stand out in the oversaturated Trump Studies University of New York, a collective member of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document neoconservative orthodoxy that preceded Trump Initiative, a co-founding participant in the Free University of New York City, and a 2016-2017 market. Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. emphasized war-making and state-building over This issue is attenuated, however, in the context market expansion, adopting “two cheers for capital- of the book. One thing the new edition of The Reac- ism” as a catchword. The free market was a social tionary Mind does exceptionally well is situate each Curtis Russell is a PhD Fellow in Theatre at the Graduate Center, and holds an MA in good, certainly, but not a good-in-itself. For Goldwa- Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He is individual essay within a clear thematic arc. The re- a playwright, lyricist/librettist, dramaturg, and translator, and also reviews NYC theatre for ter and Reagan, it was legitimated through its utility sult is a political theory book that feels like a political OffOffOnline.com in the Cold War. The free market and an “adventur- theory book, whereas the first edition felt more like ous” foreign policy were parallel dimensions of the fight against Communism. Even after the end of his- an anthology of magazine essays (because it was). Asher Wycoff is a doctoral fellow in Political Science and Critical Theory at the CUNY Graduate As Robin traces the twin threads of great politics and Center, and an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College. His current research centers on the tory, war-making remained the dominant modality functions of eschatology in the liberal tradition. of US conservatism. In the second Bush administra- bourgeois economics throughout conservative intel- tion, unfettering the market at home took a backseat lectual history, the chapter on Trump appears on the horizon as a natural destination. It is not a climax, Alessandro Zammataro is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the GC, an Adjunct to fighting terror abroad. Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College and the Layout Editor of the Advocate. His main In the shadow of the Great Recession, however, but a denouement. It is the vantage point from which interests include the relationaship between Medieval Italian literature and visual arts, Digital with all the bubbling discontent it fostered, the con- the reader may look upon the roads already traveled Humanities and Digital Pedagogy. servative balance between economic and foreign and, like Benjamin’s angel of history, watch them un- policy became increasingly uneasy. Trump resets fold backward into a single catastrophe.

46 — — Fall no. 2 2017 Fall no. 2 2017 — — 47 www.gc .com

Doctoral Students’ Council Participatory Budgeting Process 2017-2018

Our Goals: Why Participatory Budgeting? The Doctoral Students’ Council aims for Participatory Budgeting to have the following impacts:

1. Open up Spending of Student Activity Fee: Allow students a greater role in spending decisions, and inspire increased transparency throughout CUNY. 2. Expand Civic Engagement: Engage more students in activities within the GC community. 3. Develop New Community Leaders and Infrastructures: Build the skills, knowledge, and capacity of students. 4. Build Community Infrastructure: Inspire students to more deeply engage and invest in the GC community, while also developing a sustainable project to improve the community. 5. Make Spending More Equitable: Generate spending decisions that are fairer, so resources go where they are needed most.

Proposals The proposal submission deadline passed as of November 30, 2017 at 11:59 PM. Depending on the number of applications, partial awards may be granted in lieu of a full award. If it is feasible for your project to receive a partial award, please indicate the amount of both the full and partial amount of funds requested for the project. In general, the following will be considered approximate amounts for full vs. partial awards: ○ Full award amount: up to $3000 ○ Partial award amount: up to $ 1500 For questions about the Participatory Budgeting application process, please email [email protected]. Comments or feedback about the process this year is helpful as it may shape the process in years to come.

Voting on Submitted Proposals All students registered during the fall 2017 semester will be eligible to vote. Before the voting period ends, there will be a Town Hall meeting where eligible applicants will interface with students to explain and answer questions about their project proposals.

Timeline • October 20: Participatory Budgeting process is announced • November 30: Deadline for Participatory Budgeting project proposals at 11:59 PM • December 1-December 8: Ad-hoc Review Committee will review final submissions for eligibility. Voting system is prepared. • December 11-20: Voting opens • December 11-15 (Scheduled on one or two afternoons/evenings during this week): Town Hall meeting where eligible applicants present their projects (Format: Poster Session) • December 20: Voting closes at 11:59 PM • January 2: Winner(s) announced • January 2-May 15: Project spending and implementation