“Kill Your Love: How to Build a New World with Pessimism and Failure”
I woke up today to discover that a) The Evergreen Review is back (yes...THAT Evergreen Review) and that b) Yasmin Nair had written A Manifesto.
The Evergreen Review, in its original printed magazine format was an outlet for some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, focused on existential questions of who we are, how we got here and where we can go — together. You can find the collected works of all issues at book stores. I recommend them to all.
Yasmin’s piece is a call to these very things. She begins by addressing aliens and trying to explain human beings to them. In so doing, she looks at how humans define aliens and uses our sci-fi movies as a recurring thread throughout the composition. It’s not every day that I see A Boy And His Dog, Brazil & Planet Of The Apes layered into an examination of NeoLiberalism, Capitalism, Gentrification, Utopia, Freud — and even our linear definition of time. Doing so, brought so much joy to my inner 12 year old and outer 57 year old.
Although Ms. Nair included many elements in our wide world, her gaze is singularly focused on “the Left” and how we operate in ways to undo our own stated & unstated goals.
She addresses how we got here
The problem is that no one quite knows what, exactly, is to be won. Do we win elections? What does the left know about winning elections? In Chicago, the putative left here ran a mayoral candidate who literally had no idea, till late in the season, what he would do once he got power—in interviews, Chuy Garcia declared that we needed to get in there first, as if somehow politics was like a building that had been locked to him. In fact, he had the floor plan, and could do anything he wanted. The arrogance of the left lies in its assumption that, really, after all, nothing needs an explanation. Just get us in there and trust us to do the rest.
So, there’s a frightening question that no one knows how to answer: what does the left do once it’s in power? What does an election yield if the left has already surrendered its core, when it’s too terrified to speak of its ideology?
Many forms of who we are
Microcelebrities are the mayflies of the social media world; a month is eternity, and few last beyond a year or two at their peak before settling into online corners of disgruntlement. Indeed, this transience helps perpetuate the phenomenon, as thousands upon thousands of bloggers, tweeters, and Youtube "personalities" vie to become the next flavor of the month. The problem lies less with who and where they are, and more with what their existence—and our obsession with them—has done to change who we are and how we respond to each other. We have adopted a microcelebrity way of being in the world. We aspire to the same levels of narcissism, which is, please note, different from being narcissistic. Which is to say, a prominent social drive these days is not narcissism per se, but that we fear that a lack of public narcissism will come across as a lack of self-awareness and mark us as inadequate for modern times. Along with this comes an easily held belief that everything we need to know about ourselves is right there, in public view, with no messy underside to any of us—after all, aren’t we all confessing all our sins and more?
how we self-sabotage,
Neoliberalism survives as well as it does because its machinations allow people to express dissent even as they in fact only echo support for its worst effects. During Occupy, it was incredible to watch so many take to the streets, finally critical of how capitalism had wreaked its havoc. But as I wound my way through the massive crowds and their signs, it also became evident that the palpable anger was not so much at the system but that the system had failed them. Signs everywhere said, in effect, “I did the right thing for years, and I was still screwed over.”
And, how we might get to some place together, that can be useful to us all
I grow tired of words like “love” and “solidarity” being thrown around, especially in the radical queer circles I inhabit, as if they mean the same thing to everyone. Love always devolves to the individual level, and when push comes to shove we choose the needs of our loved ones (which is to say ourselves) over the needs of our community and our world. This makes for good epics and action movies, but makes genuine justice that much harder to achieve. Love, furthermore, is cheap and easy as an organising tool. Rather than focus on the hard work of changing systems, we dwell endlessly on the degree to which we can love one another; inevitably, at some point or the other, we become so immersed in loving each other, we forget that justice should exist even for those we hate or dislike. Even if we can find a way to move forward without love, we can’t help but congratulate ourselves on how fabulous we are, how grand, to be able to resolve matters even with those we don’t love. The line between worldly love and self-love to the point of narcissism is thin.
I told you at the start that this would be the most pessimistic of the documents stored in the capsule. Pessimism is not encouraged, especially in this land of sunny smiling faces where everyone has to keep insisting that they’re okay, even as the world falls around them. But as I think of how to move forward, dear aliens, the struggle is to consider revolutionary zeal that is inspired not by boundless love for one’s fellow creatures or sunny optimism that “we” will be all right. Because “we” are fucked.
What I propose instead is a strategic pessimism, a full understanding that we will, as a band of queers once said, first get our asses kicked before we win. We have to dispense with the idea that we must first love or like those whom we work for and with and, instead, understand that the point is not to create a giant happy neighborhood where everyone knows your name.
This Manifesto is to me, a call to working toward a future that we can all live in. Even if we fear it is not possible. Without any need to love each other. Question everything. No sacred cows. Just the persistent drum of: who? how? where? when? and why?
I recommend wholeheartedly that you read and share Ms. Nair’s Manifesto as well as the entirety of The Evergreen Review. I for one, welcome their arrival on this day.