From: Jesse Cohn <jessecohn-AT-verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] re: resist social cleansing!
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:28:32 -0500


Andrew wrote:

> I would also add the vital point that, if the group genuinely do not desire a set of practices, and this desire is homogeneous among the group, then the banning of the practices would be beside the point, as the people, not desiring the practices, would therefore not engage in them.

     Who's being simplistic now? Sorry, but there are way, way too many situations in which people find themselves "engaged" in doing things they don't want to do but unable to stop "engaging in them." Besides, if your response to any obnoxious or oppressive behavior X (e.g., rape or murder) is nothing more than to wait until everyone on earth stops wanting to do X, then this is even less realistic (or "desirable") than Bob Black's offer to pit one individual's "desire" to resist X against another individual's "desire" to do X.  (On your terms, Black's proposal is "reactive" anyway, isn't it?)

     A key anarchist insight, and one that firmly links it to the wider traditions of socialism, is the recognition that there are problems which can't be solved, addressed, or even understood within the bounds of "the individual" and his/her "desires." Forcing everything into those categories and delegitimizing everything else seems to me to be even sillier (and more destructive) than the marxist habit of stuffing everything into the categories of "production" and "class."


     --Jesse.


to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh,
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave . . .

amar es combatir, si dos se besan
el mundo cambia, encarnan los deseos,
el pensamiento encarna, brotan alas
en las espaldas del esclavo . . .

--Octavio Paz, _Piedra de Sol_ (_Sunstone_, trans. Eliot Weinberger)