#identity reductionism

[greatrunner]

"like we did not go thru all that james baldwin posting earlier this year for you to post screenshots EXCLUSIVELY of black people sipping starbucks and denouncing palestine"

I find this kind of argument odd. It largely ignores the fact that most of the time Americans have spent pushing the issue of Palestine, has been to call out Black, non-Black, and white voices who've consistently disregarded the lives of the people in occupied Palestine as an issue concerning Americans.

This specific instance, regarding the "sudden abandonment" of the Palestine movement by Black dems/liberals (from July to November) that got documented on Twitter and TikTok, was specifically spearheaded by Black voices and Black media creators.

The Madeline Pendelton incident where she calls Democrats vile genocide supporters, which then spurred on "Madeline is antiblack because she hated Democrats, which includes Black women", was an instance of Black people weaponizing Blackness against a valid judgement that just happened to come from a white nonbinary white person.

Non-Black people are certainly sharing screencaps of the above, but they're not the stewards of this moment. The origins are of Black people sharing screenshots or posts about people in their community showing their asses doing that.

The most visible people having these discussions on social media (that I've seen and interacted with), and circulating these posts, are Black. Black people critiquing or calling other Black folks out for it.

Black people were calling other Black folks antiblack for calling out Black liberals for their denouncement of the Palestine movement, running to Starbucks, claiming credit for the movement's visibility, all to cape for Kamala Harris once they made her presidential nominee.

Black people started the conversation about Beyonce's NFL nonsense being propaganda. Black people who still considered themselves fans of Beyonce's music. And they got dog piled by the Black Beyhive.

Black people are having community discourse, and Beyonce stans are moving goalposts to avoid acknowledging her existence as a billionaire and a tool for US Imperialism by defending American nationalism by tying it to Black Southern tradition and denouncing Black women with white mothers as "not Black enough".

"[...]and singling out black ppl to make them the face of it all is SO OBVIOUSLY antiblack scapegoating"

This isn't a situation of singling out Black people to make them the reps of genocide, apologia, and imperialism.

Black people becoming just another face in the imperial propaganda machine is happening, has happened. It's not scapegoating. That effort is happening on a state level, and it's impossible to ignore that the Black boujie class and even the working class are eager to take part in that shift. From the two stooges in the UN representing the US during the Palestinian Holocaust for the Biden Admin, Condoleezza Rice, Kamala Harris, Umar Johnson, Beyonce Knowles. Most of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Let's go further and acknowledge the African politicians working with the U.S. and other superpowers destabilizing places like the DRC, Sudan, Haiti, etc. The average Black person on the street who agrees America should attack or invade North Korea (despite not knowing where the fuck it is on a world map).

Black people having public discourse on hostile social media platforms about these things, and getting their content pushed, is not singling out Black people and ignoring all other 'races' (particularly, white people or non-Black people) doing similar or the same things.

It's possible to acknowledge that Black conservatism and liberalism is showing a concentrated effort of moving to the right, esp in how they engage in anti-colonial or anti-imperial discourse. That this is becoming a hindrance to liberation, and not go directly for "this is antiblack" because the moment is focusing explicitly on Black voices committing this tomfoolery. It's a Black discussion being carried out predominantly by Black people in spaces like Twitter and TikTok.

I think trying to paint what folk are seeing online happening with Black political thought as a smear campaign (by solely focusing on nonblack folks engaging with it), in this instance, is a reductive and irresponsible way of looking at the situation.

[not-those-kids]

hate to say it but speaking of phenomena in left spaces i think you guys need to lean away from identity reductionism. i do it, too, sometimes. but basically if youre trying to take accountability away from yourself or someone who has a lot of power/influence, or ur simply parroting an idea is correct because xyz said so or ur from this group

idk mans. ppl have diverse ideas in a group. its important to listen to the root issues that cause an ideology instead of just slapping a label on them and dismissing them outright. ie im not gonna listen to a black conservative or liberal, but I will listen on some insights because said insights are valuable. you take what u can from ppl and learn to be better.

[classic8media]

The Manipulation of Elections: How the Ruling Class Weaponizes "Agents of Chaos"

A short series on HBO called Agents of Chaos details how no more than 100 people were able to overthrow the 2016 United States election in favor of President Donald Trump in an intricate Russian troll farm psyop operation. A similar pattern appears to create a “doom loop” narrative in Bay Area elections and across the country using local networks of Tech Billionaires, Real Estate and Landlord…

[summerongrand]

7x02: The Watcher

Any amount of gratitude you might have been owed was more than paid off while we were dating...

Generally, from what I observe, fans who interpret this quote sexually are in one of two camps: they're eating it up or they think it's misogynistic. Ironically, those in the misogyny camp who until recently labeled seemingly every trivial slight toward Lucy as racist now insist that the offensive quote in the 7x02 gratitude scene is *not* racist. Their sloppy rebranding undermines both the integrity of actual discussions on racism and so-called "dog whistle" conversations about the subtle ways racism manifests.

Anyway 💋.

I grieved this scene, then rewatched it with fresh eyes and picked it apart more times than I can count, analyzing it through as many perspectives as possible. The quote is suggestive. More importantly, it's loaded with problematic implications, especially for women of Asian descent.

Please look up intersectionality if you're unfamiliar with this word. With WOC, we cannot disentangle misogyny from racism. We just can't. So when we talk about the misogyny, we gotta talk about the racism too. We can't leave the latter part out. But when we discuss WOC experiencing racism, the misogyny part is inherently there.

The implication that she "more than paid off" her gratitude with her body plays directly into ingrained media tropes and stereotypes about Asian women being hypersexualized, docile, existing for white male gratification, etc. She's not his plaything. She doesn't owe him sexual favors for doing his job as her TO. This is the same woman who sabotaged her own career to get him into Metro and she's still paying off that debt.

Last season, her ex-boyfriend called her a freak in the sheets and a fifteen year old made assumptions about her bedroom activities. We're two episodes into S7 and Lucy's already been sexualized twice.

I'm disappointed that a woman (Natalie Callaghan) wrote this episode. Like, why cause Lucy to embarrass herself publicly in front of both her exes, surrounded by colleagues who gossip? Why lean into and embrace racist stereotypes? I also wonder if there's some spillover of Melissa onto Lucy because the actress often shares suggestive content. If personal choices by an actress are being used to justify further objectification of her character, it compounds the existing problems of Asian female hypersexualization trope both on and off screen.

To those who ate this scene up—ask yourself why. Racism cloaked in snark to make it palatable isn't funny. It’s exhausting to see systemic issues iterated on screen, only to have it celebrated or ignored by viewers. This scene didn’t just undermine Lucy’s character, it fed right into intergenerational trauma for women who share her culture.

Last season, I pointed out that Lucy was being used as a plot device to advance Tim's storyline. I also said that Lucy was being used as a doormat for Tim. I'd rather that Lucy over the S7 one we've gotten so far who can't resist betting with her ex, flirting with him, checking him out, degrading herself, doesn't set boundaries around locker room gossip about her former relationship with said ex, etc. Her world shouldn't revolve around Tim but that's been her focus so far.

Oh, and Seth (white man) can't tell her he's running late? Tim (white man) made this about Tim too. He embarrassed her in front of a station that already gossips about her, plays circus music when she walks in (while Tim laughs), and makes bets about her relationship. Then after promising her kindness, he mocks her in front of Nolan (white man) during the food truck scene. That's not kindness. You don't tell someone you'll repay their kindness back after they saved your life (again), and do the opposite.

Look, I love these characters. I just hate what's currently being done to them (and by extension to real women like Lucy). I hope Natalie Callaghan learns from this.

[latkejoon]

you ever read a great post that gets One Crucial Thing Wrong

[epitome-the-burnkid-viii]

Sharing eye-opening news suppressed by the mainstream and much, much more daily! Watch my show #SupplementalBroadcast 🎱#youtuberecommendedchronicles🔮 on YouTube & Rumble New episodes posted regularly!!! 🧩🙏🎟️ #prophesy #conspiracy #currentevents #extraterrestrials #TheGreatAwakening

[thebardostate]

The Philosophy of Coincidence

When coincidences happen to others, we tend to shrug them off; but when they happen to us, that's a different story. Several forms of coincidence have been identified.

Serendipity (Horace Walpole) is a form of coincidence that is based on an active search for something (out of need or curiosity), a chance occurrence, an informed observation, and a valued outcome. So serendipity isn't finding something without looking for it: you were searching for something, during which you found something else by happy accident. Serendipity is not passive, it occurs while taking action.  

Seriality (Paul Kammerer) is a recurring pattern of similar or identical events or things in space or time, such as the number 6 in the picture below. It was the basis for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect."

Synchronicity (C.G. Jung) is a meaningful coincidence in that it furthers self-realization, personal and spiritual growth, and/or a deeper experience of human connectedness. Statistics doesn't know what to do with personal meaning, so it just ignores it; but a freakishly improbable coincidence paired with a psychologically important event is what makes a synchronicity. Its psychic import can't be understood solely as a matter of statistics without losing information due to reductionism. When a synchronicity strikes, the feeling is that the cosmos is sending you an unmistakable message with the psychic force of a thunderbolt.

Simulpathity (Bernard Beitman) occurs when one person spontaneously and simultaneously experiences the distress of another without conscious awareness of their distress and usually from some distance away. The phenomena is most pronounced between twins, but it is also reported between other closely bonded persons. A review of 160 cases found about 33% involved a parent or child, 28% friends and acquaintances, 14% husband and wife, and 15% siblings. As an example of the phenomena, the inventor of the EEG, Hans Berger, was motivated to study electrical brain waves in part because of a simulpathity experience he shared with his sister. Berger was almost run over by a horse pulling a cannon, and when he got home, he received a concerned telegram from his father sent at the request of his sister (who lived miles away), inquiring about Berger's health. His family had never previously sent him a telegram. "It was a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver" (J. Berger, 1940, p. 6).

Coincidences like these are another line of empirical evidence that materialism cannot easily account for. I once experienced a synchronicity event in which I asked the cosmos to send me a sign to confirm whether a major epiphany that I had just experienced was real. I then sat down to play a game of Risk on my computer, and won 26 battles in a row. I didn't even lose any armies until the very end, when I freaked out and experienced a moment of disbelief and self-doubt that this was actually happening, at which point I lost two armies - but I still won every single attack in the game. I find it especially interesting that the moment of self-doubt appears to have weakened the phenomenon I was observing. There were no witnesses, but no matter - the cosmos sent me an unmistakable message.

[kissingcullens]

Decolonization Is Not a Discourse, it Is a Material Process

GREAT interview with Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

“Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective. Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

Also, read their recent piece: “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation”

“In this conversation we talk about both the terms anti-zionism and decolonization which have each faced their own forms of elite capture and distortion. Along the way we talk about settler colonialism, the Oslo Accords, NGO’s, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians, the problems of neoliberal identity reductionism, and why as Lara and Leila write, “the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure.”

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

OP blocked me so I can’t even respond to yoi properly.

But here:

From what I understand, it was Israel who rejected the ceasefires? See how messed up that is? The fact that we have completely opposite notions of what is what just goes to show the polarization, propagandization, politicization and the constnat reductionism of this whole matter.

Nothing about what I said was in defense of Hamas, but only to provide context to their existence, just like I am aware of why Israel exists as well. I'd like to know where you got that information that Hamas doesn't want Israel to exist, period, but, considering the history of Zionism as its own movement and how it came to be, once again, there is nuance to their goals.

Meanwhile my initial comments was simply to ask about the power imbalance going on among tjis whole thing that I do think is important to take into consideration.

Look at article 13 of the 1988 Hamas charter.

If we're talking power imbalances... do you call the fact that Israel is surrounded by nations that all want them gone a power imbalance or no? There was a speech once by Hillel Neuer, I think was the guy, titled "Where are your Jews".

And Zionism as a movement has been around for thousands of years. Well - the modern movement hasn't been around for that long, I'll grant you, but the concept of Jewish people looking for their homeland, for that specific homeland, I mean, is far far further back than Palestinians, for instance, which dates back to the 1920s as a cohesive national identity.

Again, if I'm saying anything wrong here, please correct me.

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

The unconscious is not a non-conscious, pre-existing memory. It is the emergence, in the very moment, of signs of this real…signs that testify to what in one’s own conduct or intention escapes the I and the identifications of the subject, where one finds it difficult to recognize oneself as identical to oneself.

Psychoanalysis isolates the symptom’s rebellious dimension against a reductionism of this part of the human which cannot be measured, which insists and reiterates all the more as one does not want to know anything about it. Lacan pinned it as object a.

New symptoms are taking shape. These are all answers, protests that demonstrate the impossibility of one’s self-identity, the impasses of control and of self-management of emotions, thought, stress, anxiety and trauma.

The analytic orientation knows the over-determination of these symptoms by the effects of speech on the body. The unconscious is not a non-conscious, pre-existing memory. It is the emergence, in the very moment, of signs of this real which does not belong to the organism; signs that testify to what in one’s own conduct or intention escapes the I and the identifications of the subject, where one finds it difficult to recognize oneself as identical to oneself.

Yves Vanderveken, Congress Director, “The unconscious and the brain, nothing in common”, 13 and 14 of July 2019, Brussels.

[haggishlyhagging]

Feminists who identity their deep centering Selves with the term witch are not being merely metaphorical, or cute, or popularizing, or "trivializing." I suggest, rather, that the reverse is true: that to limit the term to apply only to those who have esoteric knowledge of and participate formally in "the Craft" is the real reductionism. This is the case particularly since the cult, as Murray demonstrated (perhaps inadvertently), has been strongly invaded by patriarchal influences.

Together with Robin Morgan, who has done so much both to elicit in women the wide and deep intuition of the meaning of Witch and to resist simple vulgarization, I hope that more feminists will give to the study of witches “the serious study that it warrants, recognizing it as a part of our entombed history, a remnant of the Old Religion which pre-dated all patriarchal faiths and which was a Goddess-worshipping, matriarchal faith . . . [reading] the anthropological, religious, and mythographic studies on the subject.” Hopefully, in doing so we will not sacrifice the original vigor and integrity that inspired the "New York Covens" in the late sixties to proclaim:

“You are a Witch by saying aloud, "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking about that. You are a Witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal.”

Many women have understood this identity of the Witch within, the Self who is the target of the fathers' attacks and the center of original movement. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English did much to spread knowledge among women of the role of the witches as midwives and healers, showing that their suppression coincided with the creation of a new male medical profession. In the early seventies, Andrea Dworkin named the witchcraze for what it is: gynocide. She showed its interconnectedness with other horrors such as foot-binding, fairy tales, rape, and pornography. Others have searched out pieces of the mosaic which are not easy to find.

Such works should be valued for igniting the Spark which inflames the desire to search further. There is much to be done. Working with increased confidence and precision, Hags must continue in the spiritual tradition of such visionaries as Matilda Joslyn Gage, continuing to uncover our past and paths to our future. This will be possible to the degree that we continue with courage in the Journey of our own time/space. Seeing through the fraudulent re-presentations of the witchcraze will help us recognize the tactics of today's Male Midwives, the professional Wizards who have unsuccessfully "succeeded" the Wise Women—the Unhealers of Modern Medicine.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[dailyanarchistposts]

The prism of social hierarchy

Amidst these broad historical shifts, the last decades of struggle have also seen a critique of social hierarchy becoming increasingly influential, particularly within anarchist circles. Writers like Murray Bookchin described hierarchies as including any social relation that allows one individual or group to wield power over another. In his words:

By hierarchy, I mean the cultural, traditional and psychological systems of obedience and command, not merely the economic and political systems to which the terms class and State most appropriately refer. Accordingly, hierarchy and domination could easily continue to exist in a “classless” or “Stateless” society. (The Ecology of Freedom, 1982)

What Bookchin offers here is a lens for understanding society that explicitly exceeds Marxist and anarchist orthodoxies, especially the class reductionism. This isn’t a matter of doing away with the struggle against the state and capital, given that both institutions are as hierarchical as any. Rather, the point is to recognise that additional hierarchies – those based, for example, on relations of race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and species – cannot be entirely contained within the narrow categories either of economic exploitation or political coercion. Various hierarchies existed before the advent of both class and the state, be it the hierarchy of men over women, the old over the young, or humans over other animals. And they will continue to exist in the future, too, even within ostensibly radical circles, unless we make a concerted effort to undermine them in the now. What we need is a broader focus for our resistance, one that includes a deep concern for the old targets without being limited by them. A social critique based on hierarchy offers this distinctly horizontal outlook, combining an appreciation of the holism of domination with the refusal to single out any one of its axes as primary.

This is no call to do away with class analysis altogether. The broad, materially focused analyses of theorists like Marx remain useful for explaining how economic factors motivated much of the development of oppressive relations. Nor can we forget that, were it not for the invention of the state, the normalisation of these relations to such a staggering extent would have been impossible. But we need to appreciate these insights without going overboard, mistakenly taking either class or the state to be the crux of social domination. Treating any single form of oppression as primary (almost always the one we just happen to feel closest to) is all too often a cheap excuse for sidelining the others. And this problem isn’t somehow abstract or peripheral, either, but denotes one of the main reasons many resistance movements seem incapable of relating to broader sections of society nowadays. Only by granting equal consideration to all oppressions can the struggle begin to maximise its inclusivity, accommodating those people – in fact, the vast majority of people – whose experiences and wellbeing have already been marginalised everywhere else.

Unlike identity politics, however, what keeps the critique of hierarchy from trailing off into reformism is that it nonetheless locates all oppressions within a single power structure. Only this time it’s hierarchy, not class, that frames the discussion as such. You can explain patriarchy, for example, not only as a specific form of oppression, but also as something that arises from a set of relations that includes gender whilst vastly exceeding it. Because there’s something inherent in patriarchy that permeates all other instances of oppression, and that thing is its core structure – specifically, its hierarchical structure. Patriarchy can be summarised simply as gender hierarchy; white supremacy, meanwhile, is a specific kind of racial hierarchy; the state is the hierarchy of government over the general population; capitalism is the hierarchy of the ruling class over the working class; and so on. It’s impossible to imagine an instance of oppression that isn’t grounded in exactly this kind of setup, namely, an institution that grants one section of society arbitrary control over another. Which is to say that all oppressions, no matter how diverse, presuppose the very same asymmetrical power relations, each of them subordinating the needs of one group to the whims of another. Everything from homelessness, to pollution, to transgender suicides can thus be revealed not as isolated issues, but instead as flowing from a common source. What we’re dealing with, basically, is a single problem: social hierarchy is a hydra with many heads, but only one body.

Some might approach this description with caution, as if it were just another attempt to reduce all oppressions to one. But the critique of hierarchy isn’t reductionist in the Marxian sense: rather than singling out any one form of oppression as more fundamental than the others, it merely emphasises the structure they all assume. This kind of bigger-picture thinking hardly means failing to realise what’s unique to every liberation struggle, as if to subsume them into some amorphous whole; the point is only to emphasise particularities without getting bogged down in them. That means combining an intimate knowledge of different oppressions with a broader understanding of those features they all hold in common, including the very real pain, exclusion, and destruction of potential each entails. In other words, every form of oppression, aside from being a problem in itself, must also serve as a gateway for entering the clash with social hierarchy as a whole.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of issues we’re facing – that is, if we’re going to approach them one by one. But this isn’t the only option open to us. Framing the discussion in terms of hierarchy (already common sense for many) offers that broad, revolutionary perspective we’ve lost sight of, locating all oppressions within a single power structure. Yet it does so in a way that refuses to prioritise any particular aspects of that structure, thereby balancing the key virtues of class struggle and identity politics.

Revolutionary struggle in the 21st century calls out to a new horizon. It’s time to strive beyond mere economic destinations such as socialism or communism, just as the absence of formal political institutions like the state will never be enough. Rather, what matters here is bringing about anarchy – the absence of mastery of any kind – in the fullest sense of the word. The anarchist project must thereby be distinguished from the antiquated goals of Marxists, as well as the Left more generally: the point is to dismantle oppression in all possible forms, and it means taking the maxim seriously, too, instead of cashing it out as just another empty slogan. Be wary, comrades. Who knows what adventures could result from such an audacious proposal?

[dipperdesperado]

notes on class analysis beyond class reductionism

In which your favorite anarchist cherry-picks their favorite pieces of identity politics and syncretizes them with his favorite parts of sociological class analysis (with a focus on Marxian conceptions) and center-periphery theories of the same topic… for the sake of abolishing oppression.

Class and economic reduction are some of the worst theoretical and methodological mistakes that we can make in our analysis. Class reductionism is an understanding that the principal unit of analysis for analyzing social conditions is economic class. Other facets of social being, adorned with the dubious “superstructural”[1] labels are seen as unimportant to deal with. Economic reduction is about (1) seeing the “real”[2] determinants of social life as economic and therefore (2) understanding the “base”[3] of society as mechanically determining the elements that exist “superstructurally”. It’s an orientation that talks about inevitable moments of historical development, based on an analysis of the economic situation. When folks rail against Marxist analyses, this tends to be a recurrent target of critique. 

This approach has two big issues. While economics are important, and in some cases are good to see as “primary” in a vague sense[4], they don’t paint the full picture. Reality isn't just economic distribution, production, and consumption, even if we decide that the only “reality” we care about is human sociality. This thinking relatedly doesn't allow us to understand the full scope of what revolutionary potentialities exist by way of class analysis. Said otherwise, focusing solely on class analysis makes that mode have to do more lifting than it is capable of doing, rendering it ineffectual, like trying to make a fish win a footrace, just because it is really fast in the water. We can’t just focus on one variable or fact of interest in our analysis, if we want our analysis to capture a sense of complexity. We need the right tools for the right jobs. Alongside this, we have to always keep in mind that we exist in a dialectical relationship[5] with those tools. A separate can of worms can be opened up if we look at the ways that complex adaptive systems function—seeing the Cerberus of capitalism, modernity, and coloniality as such would illuminate that no one element of its functions is “primary”[6]. That kind of linear thinking only serves to encourage fruitless intellectual pursuits and failed revolutionary regimes. 

If the working class defined by a specific relationship with the means of production, and we have a class reductionist perspective, it can lead to us assuming ideals and extremes represent the whole[7]. We are trying to apprehend totalities with too limited of a dataset[8]. While class and economics are necessary, they are insufficient in an analysis of social conditions, and of the potential that exists for change along realistic[9] lines. 

One way for us to supersede these failure points is by way of a commitment to relationality. When I say this, I am referring to an understanding based in looking at the relationships between our loci of interest[10], in a way that prioritizes evidence (credible information sourced from the world) over hypotheses (or inductive, deductive, or abductive conclusions), with a hyper-critical and skeptical stance towards grand narratives. If there is such a thing, we, as far as we know, can only make approximations. While these can improve, even to the extent that our working models provide all that we need to engage in reality, they will always be models. This commitment isn’t modernist (building grand narratives) or postmodernist (critiquing all structures that exist and living within that critique, by way of being unable to surpass the object of critique). It is metamodernist: an orientation that is dialectical and syncretic, taking the critiques found from metamodernism seriously while believing in the existence of a reality, accessing it through a sober assessment of our capacities and limitations. 

If we want our theory, method, and practice to be based in what is by way of what we want to be, this is paramount. I see class and economic reduction as prioritizing hypotheses to rationalize with flattering evidence, rather than creating hypotheses that are based on evidence. 

A requisite part of this relationality is through having an analysis of positionality. This can be by way of intersectionality[11], interpenetration[12], and/or imbrication[13]. Positionality is an understanding of where you are located, socially, politically, and economically, by way of your identities, properties[14], and experiences. This is looking at the social hierarchies at play and seeing where you are at, in a given moment/period of focus. The "i-words" come in when we use that analysis to inform our practice, bound to a commitment to centering the marginalized. 

The center-periphery model as discussed by FARJ is a useful way to stretch class analysis, but mixing models, without explaining points of divergence before we converge can cause confusion. When we use the center-periphery model to discuss society, and an analysis that is based in intersectionality or similar frameworks talk about bringing the margins to the center, we are not asking for “representation” or “maintenance” of the structures social hierarchy as currently formatted. There is a tacit understanding embedded in this analysis that, if we are to, for example, desire a structure that empowers Black women to have multifaceted, sustaining experiences of freedom and self-determination, whatever we build would be radically different than what currently exists. This commitment is a practical way that we can “destroy” the centers of power. This is what actually allows us to (con)federalize[15] power. This is why understanding positionality is important. If each individual’s uniqueness is their own totality, having an understanding of the different elements, identities, and properties that make up who they are (in regards to it being relevant to the analysis) will allow us to see how we relate to power structures. This gives us an understanding of where to plant strategic and tactically effective action. In any given moment or situation, we might be able to take stock of if we are reinforcing or undermining concentrations of power rather than (con)federalizing of power. If, based on our social composition[16], the most marginalized folks don’t feel safe or heard, we’re doing something wrong in our practice that needs to be revised. 

To make sure we're clear, this is not to say we focus on identity “alone”. This is why we advocate for using economic and political properties along with identities in our understanding of positionality. We can't ignore any of these elements if we want a complete analysis, and centering the marginalized allows our practice to hold the most liberatory potential. Class analysis, which is what I'll call the focus of traditional/conventional leftism, broadly fixates on two things in my estimation: (1) how class interests align and contradict, leading to class conflict, class warfare, and the potentialities for abolishing class. In this vein, the other part of these potentialities is (2) how to build unity. I think that these are useful starting points, but present some issues. Since class analysis is relatively fixed and general rather than relational, it can easily lead to vulgar conclusions from the analysis, where we hyperfixate on specific, mythologized groups of folks that don't hold up to our expectations in reality. It also has the effect of the things we ask for being limited by a desire to build unity.

Unity, in this case, tends to be based on that overarching conception. “we should do this because of our objective class interests” type shit. Again, while it may be true that as economically dispossessed folks, it would be advantageous for us to have control over the means of production or whatever, that alone isn't connecting with the full breadth of how we experience our lives and has an almost Christianity-faith-based, “searching for salvation” vibe to it. “Follow me and I’ll set you free” type shit. It isn't specific enough, as classes aren't monolithic. We have to struggle through our differences, building solidarity based on a bottom-up understanding of shared needs and desires (and how those interact with and shape personal needs and desires). The unity method by way of the most general elements that unite folks is more top-down, simplifying reality in a way that isn't as useful when we're at the ground level. This makes authoritarianism the only real method of holding it together (as top down means easily lead to top down ends), creating weak movements that are vulnerable to outside actors agitating the differences that exist and are being ignored, widening fissures within the movement. Not to mention the way that people who intuitively or lucidly understand that they don't fit into that mythologized model and thus will not participate. I know that when I look at the labor movement, and see all White dudes (but I see many more kinds of embodiment when actually looking at workplaces), I feel like that’s not a place meant for me. 

If we want to have folks join our movements, we need to be more specific in our analysis, so that our practice is more accurate and aligns with the world as it is while enabling us to make it as we like. We should specify the conflicts and contradictions that exist in society so that we can see, across sectors and spaces, where the spaces for intervention can arise, or how to take advantage of the ones that exist. By having positionality and any of the “i’s” in mind, and by looking at facilitating expansive conceptions of desire[17], we can actually create movement spaces that are more holistic in their approach.

A way that this type of analysis becomes useful in multiple situations is by understanding how it can fractalize. For the sake of this conversation, we can work with the scales of Macro (class/umbrella identity), Meso (section), Micro (bloc), and Nano (individual). 

Macro is at the highest level. When looking at analyzing where someone is in society for the sake of liberatory change, the macro level is the most broad/shallow and common features of groups of people. When people talk about the rich, the proletariat, or any other classes, they are on the macro level. This is useful for us to understand “the meta”[18], and get into all of the stuff that class analysis illuminates: class antagonism, the ways that all of the -isms affect people in a broad sense, and how these things change over a broad timescale.

Meso is us zooming in a bit--instead of looking at just “classes”, used here to mean “types”, we start to understand “sections” of those classes using intersectionality and positionality with more specificity. Rather than just referring to Black people or working people, we may refer to Black young women or German working people. It is understanding that, while we are still at a high level, there is more specificity at play that is useful to have awareness of. Just like there are shared experiences of alienation from the Means of Production for all working class people, we can see how zooming in specifically allows us to see what that actually means for certain sections of whatever unifying element of a given “class”. This is able to let us know that not all workers/genders/racial communities are created monolithically, and within a given community there are sections that have their own interests due to their positionality. 

Micro is about looking at actual groups of actual people, seeing the blocs that exist within our subgroups. For example, if we're looking at Black folks, we can see how sections are composed, and we can look at the actual circumstances in an area of interest to see how different sections relate to one another, to see what contradictions are invisibilized by way of not zooming in enough. Rather than sticking at a higher level and saying that there should be unity solely due to one or two shared variables of intersection, there can be an understanding of how people are seen in society as is, with the capacity to try and shift those resonances and dissonances into more beneficial assemblages for the goals of liberation. If there are contradictions between people connected by variables found in the higher level/more general classes, we can start at a bloc level, building our way up towards people seeing and acting in their “class interests”.

Nano is zooming all the way in. It is understanding specific folks, and seeing their specific experiences intimated and imbricated by the above scales. It is easy, especially when trying to understand how to change society, to not look at individuals. But, ignoring individuals, the building blocks of society, will leave good materials on the cutting room floor. I think we should oscillate between more and less individual understandings, so that we can mutualize the relationships between individuals, collectives, and collectives of collectives.

It's worth noting that all of these are connected, and we move from one to another based on what we're trying to understand. If we're looking at the structure of society, then class analysis, in both meanings of the word, is useful. If we're trying to relate to each other as individuals, we need to think about things at that level, not eschewing an awareness of systemic dynamics. We run into a lot of issues if we don't make sure our method is well-suited to our problems that we're trying to understand.

If we can stretch the idea of class to not just be an economic thing, but to focus on positions in social hierarchies, that allows us to understand oppression on different scales from the interpersonal to the societal, and gives us room to think about what it means to be in one position or another. By framing this in ontologies and epistemologies of  Black feminisms, we come away with a flexible framework for analyzing those positions, and we can, in every situation, center the marginalized, so that we have a more specific, intentional way to expand our understanding of prefiguration and material solidarity. This points us towards uniting in ways that undermine different social hierarchies that reinforce one another. By having these tools at our disposal, we can create unified action through maximal prefiguration in our practice. If we are making something that works for the least privileged of us, we have much less work to do for the more privileged of us. This also ensures that those folks aren't left behind, the way that they can be when we don't do the work to zoom in enough. If they are at the “center”, there is no “center”. If there is a “center”, then there are marginalized people who are being ignored. 

Let’s try to concretize this with an example. Start anywhere in the process (or at any level of zoom). For clarity, we will start at the macro level. We have two classes, the exploiters and the exploited. We can then cut that up, by way of intersectionality and positionality, to see that each of these groups have subgroups that have different relations to their exploitation or exploiting. This allows us to know that broadly speaking, there are contradictions and tensions within these classes that allow us to either foster more mutuality or sow more division, depending on how we approach things. Once we are aware of this, we can zoom in more to see how, within these classes, there are blocs that add more detail to those contradictions. We can see that blocs of communities are not intrinsically unified by way of their identity[19], and this keys us into the intentionality that has to go into organizing unified action, which I recommend to be based on solidarity (bottom-up) rather than unity (top-down). We can then get to the individual level, where we try to unearth desire, in the expanded sense where someone cultivates their individuality, what I call ego, or what Lorde calls the erotic. From here, we can build back up, having a meaningful and actionable awareness of social composition that tells us how the social world exists. By way of our ideology[20] and theories[21] for how the world can change, we can develop practice that materializes into that change. 

[Notes]

[1] In Marxian theories, the superstructure is everything that sits atop the economic mode of production of society. It is everything not economic, from art, to culture, to politics, etc.

[2] As in reality, notating an importance in the physical. This is true in a broad sense, but people tend to leave out things like life belief systems and human action as important unless it relates with a very clear causality to this.

[3] The “economic foundation” of society.

[4] I’m pretty skeptical of focusing on economics unless you’re literally choosing to focus on economics, mainly because of all the ideological, theoretical, methodological, and practical baggage that comes from this. 

[5] We exist in a symbiotic (meant in the neutral sense, not the colloquial, “positive”/“beneficial” sense) process with the tools we create and deploy. As we shape the tools from our ideas, the tools shape us right back, pointing us to particular potentialities. 

[6] How can primacy exist when all of the elements operate together to create emergent outcomes? The closest we get is when, by way of our commitment to relationality, we see that certain axes of oppression rear their head in a pronounced way that is still propped up by the other axes. 

[7] This, when combined with things like Eurocentricity, leads to vulgar dynamics in political struggle, where, for example, “working class” ends up meaning “White working class”, even though POC are much more emblematic of the class.

[8] If we're going to make sweeping statements about society, we should either commit to philosophical inquiry (which doesn’t have the same need for “accuracy” in the scientific sense), or we should do rigorous analysis to understand our context, using phenomenology, sociality, history, science, and culture as our “raw” data.

[9] Changes that can actually happen in the most open sense, where we are not relying on supernatural or physics-defying feats of reality-warping for our goals. It’s a combination of inspiration and analysis, where we are simultaneously thinking about the exciting futures that we want and what we can do now to get there. This is distinct from how some employ “pragmatism”, asking people to “vote harder” or whatever. This is doing things that many people may see as idealistic or impossible, but are possible in actuality, which becomes easier to see as we move away from hegemonic understandings of potentiality.

[10] This is just a funny way of saying the stuff that we’re looking at. This could be anything: “object”, “subject”, “process”, “event”, “phenomena”, and/or “thing”.

[11] The way multiple identities intersect, creating phenomenological “coordinates” that are simultaneously similar to specific variables within that coordinate, but where that specific also creates a unique phenomenological experience that can only be dictated on its own terms.

[12] Seeing how different facets of identity are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, based on different circumstances.

[13] Identities and social relations overlap and bump up against each other on the edges, and thus are able to be recognized as distinct but interconnected. This shows up in specific practical engagements, where a specific person’s identity, when compared to “normative” modes of being (cishet, white, male), impacts their experiences.

[14] I mean this in both senses of the word: economic property, and features. 

[15] (Con)federalism is a mode of social organization that stands in opposition to centralism. While centralism concentrates power within small groups of people and organizational bodies, (con)federalism distributes power to the grassroots level, and connects laterally and “vertically” with other organizational bodies to administer coordination. 

[16] The way a class is “composed”, through whatever collective experiences or positionalities unite everyone within. It is, based on a dialectical understanding of how the Cerberus is functioning, looking to see how we can (1) see what ways we are bound to the systems at play in a practical sense, and (2) find ways to holistically sever our selves from that binding, to create new relationships with each other, based on more communistic values. 

[17] Desire here is the (spiritual, emotional, physical, rational) needs, wants, and interests of an individual or a collective, in a given moment.

[18] I’m appropriating this term from gaming communities, meant there to talk about the toolset/features that are obviously advantageous to employ, so behavior tends to shift towards using those until the game is rebalanced towards fairness. In our case, we’ll focus on how the meta indicates relationships of power-over, leading to us needing to do the “rebalancing”. 

[19] Positionality tells us the ways that solidarity can develop by keying us into where people share or diverge in experiences based on the society in which they exist...it does not show were people's desires lie

[20] The word ideology has a negative connotation…but I think it is honest and useful. I mean it in the basic sense of our foundational assumptions and commitments, that are ideally evidence tested constantly, and revised if evidence demands it, but also allow us to continue working. 

[21] Our theories are the ideas that allow us to see if our ideology is accurate; it is the way that we build upon our foundation to see if it stands up to reality.

[branded-perceptions]

Motivating vs justifying reasons:

without motivation no observation which simultaneously is an ACTION

that in the realm of quantum scale is bound to via subjective decision of observation SIMULTANEOUSLY ACT UPON / alter objective reality in order to measure it which we then justify / explain subjectively via our reductionistic (like a computer compressing) consciousness made up of fictional numeric and linguistic SYMBOLS��� that we collectively our subjective emotions attach to

our social desires (and the resulting actions that alter reality according to) what we subjectively long for and thus collectively compete to create (and "race" for / chase mimetically wanting "more" ... "mehr") like past colonialism is defined by HOW / what we "observe" and make sense of ... the socio-psychological metaphor "Quantum observer effect" at "SCALE" (double-entendre: dimension vs "SEEsaw"⚖️) which requires proactive metacognitive BALANCE to make sure in by our habits

(what we "SEE" depends on the filtering of our mind symbols whose order and connotations depend on what we "SAW" in the past)

defined motivational competitions' psychotically self-justifying in-group identity "races" (competitive group chases for via shared symbols convergerted goals, behaviours and identities) collective attention shadows happens no injust causal abuse like "racism".

a behaviour or moral in-group justification that to one group ("kin") appears as "kind" or "go(o)d"🤥😷😇 might appear to another "party" or group ("kin") as "hatred" or "bad": these PSYCHOLOGICAL "quantum fluctuations" in "deCOHERENCE" (📚Free energy principle by Karl Friston) of in-groups' symbolic (sinn bolic) understandings can now be better conveyed and discussed via help of music pattern bridging logos, mythos and underlying emotions, metaphorically flirting with each other's sense-makings instead of physically fighting:

our subjective sense-makings are constructed via and defined by our collective sense-makings and emotionally stabilised via grouped🏟👏👏👏 symbolic🎅 constructs' argumentative team identitifications. No one of us has ever had an "independent" or "individual" mind, but tend to arrogantly believe otherwise. But some introspect more than others and thus learn to evaluate and especially in moral contexts (Immanuel Kant) create social differentiations and symbolic groupings more autonomously with an intrinsic compass.

Everything we think or communicate is inevitably a lie to a certain degree as we are bound to need to compress data of objective systems reality in order to fit into reductionistic psychological symbolic🎅 representations of it like linguistics or algebra that thus has inevitable blind spots as explored by Higher topos theory Jacob Lurie which we can only strive to handle responsibly via proactive curiosity about subjective UNfamiliarity of everything that might not be represented by familiARITY (in-group identifications "ARITY master functions" as used in AI-TECH) of our symbolic subjective perceptions and interpretations of objective reality.

Irony is the mimetic tool to communicate and dialectically evolve that: both linguistically and mathematically (ponder about the meaning of mathematic 0).

the emotional charging of dominance of linguistic / numeric symbolic🎅 constructs' explanatory reductionism of an in-group define what "MATTERS" to / is perceived as "real" (matter) and worthy of pursued by them, emotionally calibrating their motivations and out of this resulting curvature of psychotic justifications we tend to confuse with reason: 🔍list of psychological (group) biases.

https://twitter.com/BEFREEtoSEE/status/1788485006567850320

[summerongrand]

7x02: The Watcher

Any amount of gratitude you might have been owed was more than paid off while we were dating...

Generally, from what I observe, fans who interpret this quote sexually are in one of two camps: they're eating it up or they think it's misogynistic. Ironically, those in the misogyny camp who until recently labeled seemingly every trivial slight toward Lucy as racist now insist that the offensive quote in the 7x02 gratitude scene is *not* racist. Their sloppy rebranding undermines both the integrity of actual discussions on racism and so-called "dog whistle" conversations about the subtle ways racism manifests.

Anyway 💋.

I grieved this scene, then rewatched it with fresh eyes and picked it apart more times than I can count, analyzing it through as many perspectives as possible. The quote is suggestive. More importantly, it's loaded with problematic implications, especially for women of Asian descent.

Please look up intersectionality if you're unfamiliar with this word. With WOC, we cannot disentangle misogyny from racism. We just can't. So when we talk about the misogyny, we gotta talk about the racism too. We can't leave the latter part out. But when we discuss WOC experiencing racism, the misogyny part is inherently there.

The implication that she "more than paid off" her gratitude with her body plays directly into ingrained media tropes and stereotypes about Asian women being hypersexualized, docile, existing for white male gratification, etc. She's not his plaything. She doesn't owe him sexual favors for doing his job as her TO. This is the same woman who sabotaged her own career to get him into Metro and she's still paying off that debt.

Last season, her ex-boyfriend called her a freak in the sheets and a fifteen year old made assumptions about her bedroom activities. We're two episodes into S7 and Lucy's already been sexualized twice.

I'm disappointed that a woman (Natalie Callaghan) wrote this episode. Like, why cause Lucy to embarrass herself publicly in front of both her exes, surrounded by colleagues who gossip? Why lean into and embrace racist stereotypes? I also wonder if there's some spillover of Melissa onto Lucy because the actress often shares suggestive content. If personal choices by an actress are being used to justify further objectification of her character, it compounds the existing problems of Asian female hypersexualization trope both on and off screen.

To those who ate this scene up—ask yourself why. Racism cloaked in snark to make it palatable isn't funny. It’s exhausting to see systemic issues iterated on screen, only to have it celebrated or ignored by viewers. This scene didn’t just undermine Lucy’s character, it fed right into intergenerational trauma for women who share her culture.

Last season, I pointed out that Lucy was being used as a plot device to advance Tim's storyline. I also said that Lucy was being used as a doormat for Tim. I'd rather that Lucy over the S7 one we've gotten so far who can't resist betting with her ex, flirting with him, checking him out, degrading herself, doesn't set boundaries around locker room gossip about her former relationship with said ex, etc. Her world shouldn't revolve around Tim but that's been her focus so far.

Oh, and Seth (white man) can't tell her he's running late? Tim (white man) made this about Tim too. He embarrassed her in front of a station that already gossips about her, plays circus music when she walks in (while Tim laughs), and makes bets about her relationship. Then after promising her kindness, he mocks her in front of Nolan (white man) during the food truck scene. That's not kindness. You don't tell someone you'll repay their kindness back after they saved your life (again), and do the opposite.

Look, I love these characters. I just hate what's currently being done to them (and by extension to real women like Lucy). I hope Natalie Callaghan learns from this.