Enjoyment and political violence
May. 16th, 2024 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dornishviperxI had a discussion with some friends back in February while the coast was on fire. I don't live on the coast, I live in the capital, but the air was still burning red and stained with ashes for days on days. I actually made the mistake of leaving my window open one night, because the heat in my apartment was suffocating, and I woke up to the taste of smoke in my mouth in the morning. The reason for the fires is simple: razed land sells cheap, and you can't build new condos or highway concessions on native forests or inhabited areas. The reason the fires get out of control is that pine and eucalyptus monocrops, which the forestry industry uses to maximize growth and gains, are perfect kindling. In simpler terms, there is an arsonist cartel operating in favor of real estate and extractive capital; there has been for decades, their death toll numbers in the thousands.
So anyway, one of those days, shortly before a few of my friends joined a mutual aid brigade to help reconstruction efforts in the coast after the fires subsided, we were walking around the city center, and there was a poster on the wall of a supermarket that said,
"The real estate and forestry industries murder our siblings. Mutual aid, organization and vengeance!"
Vengeance, huh?
The concept rattled around in our conversation as the sun went down and the heat didn't. Is it appropriate to call for vengeance, specifically, instead of something more transcendental like justice, or something more open like direct action? Whether the poster had said "Mutual aid, organization and justice" or "Mutual aid, organization and direct action", it still would've clearly been instigating the same kind of action, the difference is the wording used to talk about it.
One of my friends was really uncomfortable with calling for vengeance in a political context (the call for vengeance as a political action is not uncommon here, but it is mostly associated with anarchism, especially with more individualistic/nihilistic/insurrectionary anarchist tendencies which aren't his thing) because something about vengeance implies a certain degree of pleasure. Joy, even. Joy in the exercise of violence. To be very clear, all of us agree on the necessity of revolutionary violence and believe that any serious revolutionary movement needs to reach a point of armed insurrection to have any chance of challenging capital, so the question is not on violence, it is on the enjoyment of violence.
I was thinking back on that conversation last week, when I decided to finally sit down and read the essay that famously got Alfredo Bonanno thrown in prison for 18 months during the Lead Years, "Armed Joy"1. Bonanno essentially says that it is not just capitalism that alienates us from the innate joy of play and of existence, but productivity itself, and that most revolutionary structures in their formality actually replicate the productive impetus of capitalism and are therefore easily subsumed into it and incapable of being truly revolutionary. He advocates instead for centering pleasure and joy in individual insurrectionary action, where the violent action is in-and-of itself its own goal as both a form of play and a form of challenging the established order.
So to me this basically seems like a weird, inverse sort of hippie thing that's equally as useless as hippies are. Individualist anarchist tendencies all have the same issue as far as I can see, which is that they lack any kind of strategic vision past the immediacy of their action. There is no serious revolutionary process happening behind the direct, violent action of an individual attacking capital, because capitalism can easily squash that and even assimilate it. Frankly, it's interesting that Bonanno suggests that capitalism can assimilate anything (true) except bombs. Why would bombs be where it draws the line. It's just that the way that capitalism has of diffusing violent individual action is a mixture of tolerance, propaganda and prison. There's a certain amount of violent individual action that is absolutely permissible within capitalism, it's not really a threat to the system if one bank gets blown up, even if three of them do. A problem would be if every bank suddenly found itself under attack, which is not going to happen if there is no strategic vision beyond a person or a small affinity group carrying out an action with no coordination beyond the immediate moment. All of this is not to say that I don't respect the actions of those insurrectionary anarchist comrades who have taken it upon themselves to deal blows large and small to capitalism, because I absolutely do. Look at meeeee I'm so non-sectarian. Of course I respect and admire that decision.
Anyway, for a general critical discussion of the fundamentals of insurrectionary anarchism you can probably look elsewhere. What I thought was very interesting about his essay is his emphasis on pleasure, joy and play as a fundamental component of violent direct action in a revolutionary context. This is precisely what my friend was so uncomfortable with in the notion of vengeance, and something that I've very rarely seen be openly discussed in revolutionary political spaces - and yet something that is undeniably present a lot of the time when you talk to someone who has engaged in it. Certainly not everyone, but I would dare say most people I have spoken to who have engaged in direct confrontation with capital or the state or the patriarchy, through violent direct action (on whatever scale, could be a small thing like minor property damage too), have expressed some degree of enjoyment about the action. A while ago a friend told me that he once spoke to someone who was in the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front in the 80s who told him about how glad he felt when he shot a cop, that only didn't shoot him more than once because he couldn't spare the bullets. "Armed Joy" actually starts by recounting how the Red Brigades shot Indro Montanelli in the knee instead of the head, and explaining that they probably did it because it was more enjoyable to watch him suffer than to just watch him die. Now, these are examples of very different political contexts than my current one, but in the context of organized political spaces, people will often use the vocabulary of "fun" when referring to carrying out direct actions against power (again, could be for something as small as property damage, I'm not necessarily talking about anything Major). And sure, those are people with a history of political militancy in one way or another, but I've heard from a lot of people, including people who were not very politicized at the time or even now, that despite everything that happened around the 2019 uprising, direct confrontation with the state and capital was something they enjoyed. Along with other things, of course - coming together in their communities and thinking about their problems and trying to solve them collectively, certainly, are also things that people will name and recall fondly. But so is the exercise of violence.
So, the enjoyment of the exercise of violence against power is there. Probably not for everyone, but certainly for many, if not for most. Why aren't we talking about it? Bonanno is right about one thing, when it comes to formal revolutionary organizations: they do not center joy or play. In a lot ways, it's true that we enshrine productivity. We are always pushing ourselves to come up with rigorous analysis, and using that to push ourselves to come up with the best possible strategy, and using that to push ourselves to work in the best possible way within the mass movement. Our individual desires, joy or need for play don't come into it; in fact, it's very common to hear people express that they're willing to do something, which which would imply they're not thrilled to be doing it. This has an explanation, which is that there is a greater desire operating over any momentary desires, which is the desire for revolution. We accept that sometimes we do things that we do not love doing, because we understand that it's part of a strategy that will take us in the direction that we ultimately desire. There are other things operating as well, like a certain sense of historical responsibility, but I think the larger desire is an important one.
However, this doesn't detract from the fact that organized political spaces often don't center desire or play or pleasure, and instead focus solely on strategy and responsibility. This is a problem, because it's something that can and does lead to burnout in certain cases, if someone finds themselves repeatedly in the position of assuming responsibilities that they do not find pleasurable out of a sense of responsibility. The other problem that this has, which is something that Bonanno also points out in his essay, is that it separates the organized political space from the less-politicized masses. I usually try not to separate those concepts too much because I'm not overly fond of self-aggrandizing vanguardist conceptions of The PartyTM, but there is a difference in that not everyone at every moment in time will be available, willing or able to assume the responsibility of joining the organized political space - but if your life is as devoid of joy and play as capitalism requires it to be, then why on earth would you go out of your way to join another space that is similarly devoid of joy and play? Maybe that's a lesson that we do genuinely need to take, and incorporate more elements of joy and play and general decompression into the political space, so that it genuinely feels like a space that is setting itself apart from the normality of capitalism.
I say all of that in the general terms of political work because I am not just talking about the exercise of violence when I'm talking about incorporating joy and play. In fact, I think it's beneficial to incorporate joy and play into the non-violent work precisely because the current situation, where the only aspect of the political space that people consistently apply the vocabulary of fun and play to is the exercise of violence, strikes me as potentially problematic. A revolutionary organization, unlike Bonanno, doesn't exercise violence against power because it's fun and enjoyable, they do it because it's necessary. The fact that a lot of people find it enjoyable is irrelevant, if no one found it pleasurable they would still have to do it, and if the political context determined that it was an unnecessary or detrimental thing to do, they wouldn't do it even if everyone wanted to. If it's not the only thing that's associated with fun and play, then it's easier to keep a cool head when analyzing whether a specific situation calls for that kind of action. It also strikes me that it's probably necessary in some way to acknowledge the desire and joy of political violence when analyzing the situation. I don't think it makes sense to pretend it's not a factor on the scale at all, when it's so often expressed to be one. It's not a determining factor, but if it goes unacknowledged, it can lead to serious mistakes, like carrying out an action when the context isn't right for it, partially because people wanted to do it, would be disappointed if they didn't get to do it, and in not expressing that desire, instead of dealing with the disappointment head-on, it leads to an incorrect tactical decision that could have serious consequences. Additionally, I think it also makes sense to celebrate that desire when it is appropriate to do so, for example, in the context of an action that was thought of initially as an expression of desire and play, but turned out to be wholly appropriate for the context and was successfully carried out. I think this could lead to more interesting and creative expressions of struggle, to potentially great results - there's creativity in joy, and creativity is necessary for victory.
1Funnily enough, it has a much more provocative name in Spanish. It's translated into Spanish as "Armed Pleasure", which makes it sound almost erotic. The English translation of the title is more accurate to the original Italian and to the content of the essay, though.
So anyway, one of those days, shortly before a few of my friends joined a mutual aid brigade to help reconstruction efforts in the coast after the fires subsided, we were walking around the city center, and there was a poster on the wall of a supermarket that said,
"The real estate and forestry industries murder our siblings. Mutual aid, organization and vengeance!"
Vengeance, huh?
The concept rattled around in our conversation as the sun went down and the heat didn't. Is it appropriate to call for vengeance, specifically, instead of something more transcendental like justice, or something more open like direct action? Whether the poster had said "Mutual aid, organization and justice" or "Mutual aid, organization and direct action", it still would've clearly been instigating the same kind of action, the difference is the wording used to talk about it.
One of my friends was really uncomfortable with calling for vengeance in a political context (the call for vengeance as a political action is not uncommon here, but it is mostly associated with anarchism, especially with more individualistic/nihilistic/insurrectionary anarchist tendencies which aren't his thing) because something about vengeance implies a certain degree of pleasure. Joy, even. Joy in the exercise of violence. To be very clear, all of us agree on the necessity of revolutionary violence and believe that any serious revolutionary movement needs to reach a point of armed insurrection to have any chance of challenging capital, so the question is not on violence, it is on the enjoyment of violence.
I was thinking back on that conversation last week, when I decided to finally sit down and read the essay that famously got Alfredo Bonanno thrown in prison for 18 months during the Lead Years, "Armed Joy"1. Bonanno essentially says that it is not just capitalism that alienates us from the innate joy of play and of existence, but productivity itself, and that most revolutionary structures in their formality actually replicate the productive impetus of capitalism and are therefore easily subsumed into it and incapable of being truly revolutionary. He advocates instead for centering pleasure and joy in individual insurrectionary action, where the violent action is in-and-of itself its own goal as both a form of play and a form of challenging the established order.
So to me this basically seems like a weird, inverse sort of hippie thing that's equally as useless as hippies are. Individualist anarchist tendencies all have the same issue as far as I can see, which is that they lack any kind of strategic vision past the immediacy of their action. There is no serious revolutionary process happening behind the direct, violent action of an individual attacking capital, because capitalism can easily squash that and even assimilate it. Frankly, it's interesting that Bonanno suggests that capitalism can assimilate anything (true) except bombs. Why would bombs be where it draws the line. It's just that the way that capitalism has of diffusing violent individual action is a mixture of tolerance, propaganda and prison. There's a certain amount of violent individual action that is absolutely permissible within capitalism, it's not really a threat to the system if one bank gets blown up, even if three of them do. A problem would be if every bank suddenly found itself under attack, which is not going to happen if there is no strategic vision beyond a person or a small affinity group carrying out an action with no coordination beyond the immediate moment. All of this is not to say that I don't respect the actions of those insurrectionary anarchist comrades who have taken it upon themselves to deal blows large and small to capitalism, because I absolutely do. Look at meeeee I'm so non-sectarian. Of course I respect and admire that decision.
Anyway, for a general critical discussion of the fundamentals of insurrectionary anarchism you can probably look elsewhere. What I thought was very interesting about his essay is his emphasis on pleasure, joy and play as a fundamental component of violent direct action in a revolutionary context. This is precisely what my friend was so uncomfortable with in the notion of vengeance, and something that I've very rarely seen be openly discussed in revolutionary political spaces - and yet something that is undeniably present a lot of the time when you talk to someone who has engaged in it. Certainly not everyone, but I would dare say most people I have spoken to who have engaged in direct confrontation with capital or the state or the patriarchy, through violent direct action (on whatever scale, could be a small thing like minor property damage too), have expressed some degree of enjoyment about the action. A while ago a friend told me that he once spoke to someone who was in the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front in the 80s who told him about how glad he felt when he shot a cop, that only didn't shoot him more than once because he couldn't spare the bullets. "Armed Joy" actually starts by recounting how the Red Brigades shot Indro Montanelli in the knee instead of the head, and explaining that they probably did it because it was more enjoyable to watch him suffer than to just watch him die. Now, these are examples of very different political contexts than my current one, but in the context of organized political spaces, people will often use the vocabulary of "fun" when referring to carrying out direct actions against power (again, could be for something as small as property damage, I'm not necessarily talking about anything Major). And sure, those are people with a history of political militancy in one way or another, but I've heard from a lot of people, including people who were not very politicized at the time or even now, that despite everything that happened around the 2019 uprising, direct confrontation with the state and capital was something they enjoyed. Along with other things, of course - coming together in their communities and thinking about their problems and trying to solve them collectively, certainly, are also things that people will name and recall fondly. But so is the exercise of violence.
So, the enjoyment of the exercise of violence against power is there. Probably not for everyone, but certainly for many, if not for most. Why aren't we talking about it? Bonanno is right about one thing, when it comes to formal revolutionary organizations: they do not center joy or play. In a lot ways, it's true that we enshrine productivity. We are always pushing ourselves to come up with rigorous analysis, and using that to push ourselves to come up with the best possible strategy, and using that to push ourselves to work in the best possible way within the mass movement. Our individual desires, joy or need for play don't come into it; in fact, it's very common to hear people express that they're willing to do something, which which would imply they're not thrilled to be doing it. This has an explanation, which is that there is a greater desire operating over any momentary desires, which is the desire for revolution. We accept that sometimes we do things that we do not love doing, because we understand that it's part of a strategy that will take us in the direction that we ultimately desire. There are other things operating as well, like a certain sense of historical responsibility, but I think the larger desire is an important one.
However, this doesn't detract from the fact that organized political spaces often don't center desire or play or pleasure, and instead focus solely on strategy and responsibility. This is a problem, because it's something that can and does lead to burnout in certain cases, if someone finds themselves repeatedly in the position of assuming responsibilities that they do not find pleasurable out of a sense of responsibility. The other problem that this has, which is something that Bonanno also points out in his essay, is that it separates the organized political space from the less-politicized masses. I usually try not to separate those concepts too much because I'm not overly fond of self-aggrandizing vanguardist conceptions of The PartyTM, but there is a difference in that not everyone at every moment in time will be available, willing or able to assume the responsibility of joining the organized political space - but if your life is as devoid of joy and play as capitalism requires it to be, then why on earth would you go out of your way to join another space that is similarly devoid of joy and play? Maybe that's a lesson that we do genuinely need to take, and incorporate more elements of joy and play and general decompression into the political space, so that it genuinely feels like a space that is setting itself apart from the normality of capitalism.
I say all of that in the general terms of political work because I am not just talking about the exercise of violence when I'm talking about incorporating joy and play. In fact, I think it's beneficial to incorporate joy and play into the non-violent work precisely because the current situation, where the only aspect of the political space that people consistently apply the vocabulary of fun and play to is the exercise of violence, strikes me as potentially problematic. A revolutionary organization, unlike Bonanno, doesn't exercise violence against power because it's fun and enjoyable, they do it because it's necessary. The fact that a lot of people find it enjoyable is irrelevant, if no one found it pleasurable they would still have to do it, and if the political context determined that it was an unnecessary or detrimental thing to do, they wouldn't do it even if everyone wanted to. If it's not the only thing that's associated with fun and play, then it's easier to keep a cool head when analyzing whether a specific situation calls for that kind of action. It also strikes me that it's probably necessary in some way to acknowledge the desire and joy of political violence when analyzing the situation. I don't think it makes sense to pretend it's not a factor on the scale at all, when it's so often expressed to be one. It's not a determining factor, but if it goes unacknowledged, it can lead to serious mistakes, like carrying out an action when the context isn't right for it, partially because people wanted to do it, would be disappointed if they didn't get to do it, and in not expressing that desire, instead of dealing with the disappointment head-on, it leads to an incorrect tactical decision that could have serious consequences. Additionally, I think it also makes sense to celebrate that desire when it is appropriate to do so, for example, in the context of an action that was thought of initially as an expression of desire and play, but turned out to be wholly appropriate for the context and was successfully carried out. I think this could lead to more interesting and creative expressions of struggle, to potentially great results - there's creativity in joy, and creativity is necessary for victory.
1Funnily enough, it has a much more provocative name in Spanish. It's translated into Spanish as "Armed Pleasure", which makes it sound almost erotic. The English translation of the title is more accurate to the original Italian and to the content of the essay, though.
