Month: September 2012

my formula to override writer’s block

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I originally posted this long rambling post in early 2009, right after moving to Providence, RI — as the first post on my original albeit short-lived Devoke the Apocalypse blog. FWIW… It’s chemicals. But it’s still magic. And it’s also intention. Through observation and experimentation, I developed a complex formula to cure writer’s block. For myself. That’s the thing about formulas. They often don’t apply. Unless you’re talking about a fully controlled lab setting, formulas can be very problematic. I’m not talking about any specific formulas here, but the very idea of a formula. I hesitate to say what I have found to work for me, for fear that someone might try to replicate it without respect for context. When you set out to do something, you’re starting with a goal. You want to accomplish a certain thing. Now, goals aren’t fixed things either. Our goals may change, and it behooves us to allow for that possibility. But, in the short-term, when you set out to do something, you have a goal. If it’s something …

Falling in love with ourselves

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Also published in Occupy! #5. Occupy! is an OWS-inspired gazette, published by n+1. — In late October of last year my cousin came down to Liberty Square, then home of a thriving Occupy Wall Street, to meet me for a drink. He arrived early so he could check things out for himself. I was eager to hear his impressions. “What stood out to me,” he told me at a bar around the corner, “was how you all are recreating society—or creating a microcosm of society. It’s all there: a kitchen, a medical tent, a security force, a public library, and a whole alternative decision-making structure. It’s fascinating!” Much has been made about the prefigurative aspects of Occupy Wall Street and the occupy encampments across the country, when they existed. The camps, for example, served as more than just a protest, more than just a tactic. Participants consciously prefigured the kind of society that they were striving to build. It was indeed a compelling moment for my cousin—or for any stranger—to witness. In the two months …

Radicals and the 99%: Core and Mass Movement

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This essay is a chapter in the new book from AK Press We Are Many: Critical Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. The book is 450 pages with contributions from 50 authors — most of whom have been active in Occupy Wall Street. Order it here! — Occupy Wall Street audaciously claimed to be a movement of “the 99%,” challenging the extreme consolidation of wealth and political power by the top one percent. Our opponents, however, claim that the 99% movement is little more than a handful of fringe radicals who are out of touch with mainstream America. They’re not 100% wrong about us being radicals. Radicals played pivotal roles in initiating Occupy Wall Street. And radicals continue to pour an enormous amount of time, energy, creativity, and strategic thinking into this burgeoning movement. What our opponents are wrong about is the equation of radical with fringe. The word radical literally means going to the root of something. Establishment forces use the label radical interchangeably with the disparaging label extremist—as a means to …

We Are Many: #OWS Book Launch in NYC this Saturday (Sept.15)

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Next week marks the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street — the movement that took New York’s financial district by storm, rapidly swept across the nation, and dramatically shifted the dominant political discourse. AK Press is releasing their new book We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation just in time for the anniversary — with the official book launch event happening at Bluestockings Books in NYC, this Saturday, September 15, starting at 7:30pm. Click here for details and here to RSVP on Facebook. Kate Khatib from AK Press will present the book, followed by comments from some of the book’s contributors, followed by audience questions. I’ll be there, and I have a chapter in the book (Radicals and the 99%, Core and Mass Movement). I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of the book and checking out my comrades’ contributions. The book is 450 pages and has 50 authors, including: Michael Andrews, Michael Belt, Nadine Bloch, Rose Bookbinder, Mark Bray, Emily Brissette, George Caffentzis, George Ciccariello-Maher, Annie …

Claiming and Contesting Meanings and Symbols of the Nation

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The nation as a constructed concept frames a commonality amongst citizens who live within the borders of a defined land mass. The conceptual common terrain of nation has provided a large part of the ground upon which the idea of a public was built. Though a plausibly common terrain, it is also an arena of contestation. Different particular actors within nations vie for hegemony — to shape both power relations and the symbolic universe through which relations and reality are interpreted. Other particular actors have to emerge, to construct themselves (i.e. to organize), and to demand their place and their rights as equals within—as part of—the nation and the public. Here by actors I mean groups, aggregations, identities, etc. that congeal and organize sufficiently to develop the capacity for aligned collective action. The emergence of such actors requires some articulated common aspect of identity (e.g. women, blacks, workers of the world, Protestants, etc.). That commonality, internal to the identity of the actor/aggregation, also defines ways that members of the group are different from others. Such …

Communicative Capitalism, Status Update Psychology, and Filter Bubbles

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Have you ever taken photos at an event — with the thought that you would later post them to Facebook? Maybe you even loaded them from your smartphone while the event was still in progress? Have you ever Tweeted from a protest? Have you ever found yourself thinking about how you would translate something you were experiencing into a status update? I’ll cop to all of the above. In my post last week (Internet: R.I.P. Democracy?) I discussed Jodi Dean’s Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics. As the title of her article suggests, Dean argues that the virtual world—with its incredibly abundant circulation of information—is foreclosing on real-world political action. Sharing, “liking”, or commenting on a political article can create the illusion of taking action, as can blogging, signing an online petition, and countless other virtual political expressions. These forms give us a feeling of participation, but our virtual “contributions” are drowned in “a massive stream of content” that nobody—let alone anybody in power—actually has to respond to. Today I want to suggest …