River of Firecommons, Crisis & the Imagination
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Winslow In this collection, artists and activists, poets, teachers and artisans — all ese essays by a marvelous group of critical thinkers, artists, and activists opponents of capital and empire — re ect both on the damage done (and explore issues that should be of deep concern to people who hope to create being done) by the present order of things to ourselves and our planet, a liveable world where human values can ourish. but also to inevitable resistance to the barbarities of modern life as well —Noam Chomsky as to alternatives. Imagine. Can we imagine a better world? ere is no roadmap o ered here, certainly no line; rather commitments to an earthly RIVER OF FIRE COMMONS, CRISIS & THE IMAGINATION CRISIS & COMMONS, commons, a future where enclosure and privatization give way to sharing, and art and work and life become inseparable, much in the spirit of the artist socialist, William Morris, from whom we take our title, River of Fire. e contributors to this powerful collection bring much-needed critical and creative think- ing to the politics of class and the commons, and the multiple forms and spaces of capitalist capture and enclosure across the globe. In helping to broaden our knowledge and unlock our imaginations, they o er, individually and collectively, new possibilities for resistance and liberation. —Betsy Hartmann, Professor Emerita of Development Studies and senior policy analyst, Population and Development Program, Hampshire College RIVER e critical, re ective pieces in this volume not only illuminate aspects of our current world system necessary to interrogate if we wish to create a better one, but re ect a collectivity in action and the very kind of community through di erence that one would wish for the future. —Katharine Wallerstein, UC Berkeley Standing on the bridge of History, this collection provides unmatched insight into the stream of intellectual life of the San Francisco Bay at the dawn of the tech renaissance in the 21st Century. Reading through these essays yields a transparent view of the conjured intellects that OFCOMMONS, CRISIS FIRE & THE IMAGINATION shaped an epoch in this remarkable spot on the planet. —Ignacio Chapela, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley Contributors: Ann Ban eld, Patrick Bond, Summer Brenner, Charles Briggs, James Brook, Chris Carlsson, T.J. Clark, Mike Davis, Jesse Drew, Stephen Ducat, Laura Fantone, Anne-Lise Francois, John Gillis, Robin Kelley, Peter Linebaugh, Dean MacCannell, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Raj Patel, Vijay Prashad, Marcus Rediker, David Riker, William Russell, Faith Simon, Howard Slater, Rebecca Solnit, Susan Schwartzenberg, Peter Taylor, Lisa Gaye ompson, Amy Trachtenberg, Anne Wagner, Richard Walker, Michael Watts, Cal Winslow THE PUMPING STATION thepumpingstation.org Arlington MA, USA PUMPING Edited by Cal Winslow STATION RIVER OF FIRE COMMONS, CRISIS & THE IMAGINATION Edited by Cal Winslow The Pumping Station Arlington, MA in collaboration with The Mendocino Institute © 2016 Cal Winslow for the collection; individual authors for their contributions Published, in collaboration with the Mendocino Institute, by The Pumping Station 61 Cleveland Street #2, Arlington, MA 02474-6935, USA thepumpingstation.org No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Online purchasers of this book who have not paid sales tax in their own jurisdiction (http://bit.ly/SalesTaxRates) should, out of fairness to brick-and-mortar bookstores, file use tax returns to report the purchase. Cover design by Lisa Gaye Thompson based on The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Editorial assistance by Margery Meadow. Interior design by Lisa Gaye Thompson with formatting and photo preparation by Peter Taylor. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data River of fire : commons, crisis and imagination/ Cal Winslow p. cm. Includes bibliographical references Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951089 ISBN 978-0-9849216-6-9 (pbk) Second printing, November 2016 Printed by Lightning Source in Minion Pro and Avenir Next Condensed Available in digital form as a pdf from the Publisher, http://bit.ly/ROF2016 For Iain Boal Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy (1819) Table of Contents Cal Winslow, Preface and Acknowledgements . 1 Summer Brenner, 1401: Through the Window . 11 Designs John Gillis, Necessity of Margins . 18 Mike Davis, The Earth as a Dying Planet: Kropotkin, Lowell, and Huntington . 36 Ann Banfield, Two Politics of Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius or from Designer/Artisan to Designer/Manager . 61 Raj Patel, Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle: Notes on Feminist Technology . 92 Voices James Brook, Voices in Your Head . 107 Howard Slater, Out History Out . 117 Anne Wagner, Seeds . 119 Vijay Prashad, Who Do We Bomb? . .123 Visions Richard Walker, Capital versus the Commons . 125 Robin Kelley, Beyond Black Lives Matter . 138 Stephen Ducat, Tribe versus Class in an Age of Post-Reality Politics: How Community Can Eclipse the Commons . 149 Cal Winslow, Remembering E. P. Thompson . 168 Searches David Riker, In Search of the Border . 181 Places Michael Watts, The Precarious Lives of the Commons: Voices and Lessons from the Oilfields of the Niger Delta . 196 Patrick Bond, Limits to “Rights Talk” and the Move to Rights for the Commons: South Africa Grapples with Narratives Through and Beyond Protest Politics . 228 Charles Briggs, Reclaiming the Communicative Commons in Health . 265 Faith Simon, An African Diary . 290 Stories T. J. Clark, A Snake, A Flame, William Blake: Apprentice and Master . 311 Peter Linebaugh, London’s London: Working-Class Composition in William Blake’s Poem . 325 Marcus Rediker, The Poetics of History from Below . 354 Anne-Lise François, Taking Turns on the Commons (or Lessons in Unenclosed Time) . 361 Inventions Jesse Drew, Commons Sense: An Education for the Rest of Us . 391 Dean and Juliet Flower MacCannell, University, Inc. .412 Peter Taylor, Bringing All to the Table: From the Pumping Station to Project-Based Learning . 427 Laura Fantone, Precarious Struggles: Knowledge Sharing in Southern Europe and the United States . 440 Immersions Lisa Gaye Thompson, There is a Kind of Swimming . 462 Observations Amy Trachtenberg, Finding Fortuny in War: A Stripes/Sutras Collage . 469 Chapters Cal Winslow, The Redwood Forest, Requiem . 478 Will Russell, A Tale of Two Species: Marginalization of Nature in the Redwood Forest . 507 Chris Carlsson, Backing Into a History Commons: Shaping San Francisco .. 521 Rebecca Solnit, edited by Susan Schwartzenberg, A Real Estate History of the Avant-Garde . 537 Contributors . .568 D If art is not to perish utterly, there is something alive and devouring; something as it were a river of fire that will put all that tries to swim across to a hard proof indeed, and scare from the plunge every soul that is not made fearless by desire of truth and insight of the happy days to come beyond. William Morris, “The Prospects of Architecture,” Works, Vol. XXII, p.131. Preface __________________ Cal Winslow Without question, the assault on the earth’s various societies and territories has not proceeded without enormous conflict, fighting back by peoples around the world, and many a defeat for the forces of capital. Nevertheless, on balance the advance of capitalism has been nothing short of earthshaking. This assessment is taken from Richard Walker’s essay, included here, “Capital versus the Commons.” It serves as a fine introduction to this volume: it also helps us to explain the genesis of this book, inspired by Retort, a gathering of artists and activists, scholars, poets, teachers, and artisans, more or less centered in the Bay Area, all part of that fighting back, all opponents of capital and empire. We have collected in these pages, in many formats, reflections—on art and history, on education, health and work and welfare, on the city, on nature and the country—in the context of what we call the commons, a term here greatly expanded so as to include not just the natural such as land, forests, water, and air, but also other forms of common resources, including intellectual, cultural, genetic, now all subject to enclosure. These contributions in part reflect the experience of Retort; they also reflect a universal spirit of resistance—resistance to these enclosures and (Walker again) the “relentless geographical expansion of the territory commanded by capital (and capitalist states) and unrelieved dismantling of pre-capitalist economic formations to bring new labor and resources under the dominion of capital. And this has, in turn, brought an unending attack on and dissolution of all prior forms of the commons.” 2 . Preface I met Iain Boal (to whom this collection is dedicated) first on the radio, tuning in, purely by chance, to a public affairs program on our county community station. Iain was discussing enclosures and the loss of the commons in an era quite familiar to me, the years of the industrial revolution and the social revolution in England that wasn’t, the subject of Edward Thompson’s magisterial The Making of the English Working Class. Iain, however, was also discussing the relevance of the commons today and the meaning of our contemporary enclosures and resistance to them. I met Iain in person shortly thereafter and he in turn introduced me to Retort, some forty or so people, which expanded and contracted easily, both diverse and not so diverse. It had been meeting almost monthly for a decade or so at Iain and Gillian Boal’s home on Arch Street in North Berkeley.1 Retort is an unusual group, not really a collective, not a group with a common perspective (certainly no “line”) or a set of common activities.