It's war on the streets and war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs
so the police can bother me
2pac Shakur, "Changes"
I have a lot to be thankful for, not least of which is the amazing group of family and friends who have responded so thoughtfully and warmly to the start of this blog. Thank you for your support. I hope to hear more from all of you as this idea develops further. Also...sorry it's been so long between this post and the last one.
In this post I want to respond to some questions raised by dear friend H., who writes:
where does this war, these wars, begin and end?
how does projecting war abroad in such a way that we see it as separate from our own humanity make us misperceive the violence, dispossession, political imprisonment, etc. that is continuous with each of our lives? make us blind to these things?
drinking tea with my friend emily, and now at home writing to you, ambulances weave themselves too easily into the soundtrack of tonight. i try to dissemble the barriers i put up, internally, against knowing what these sounds mean. but the borders of this country are policed with violence.
i think that we have wartime consciences, but we are taught not to know them as such. taught that war is somewhere else, too painful to conceive of, experienced by avatars or sensationalized photos in the associated press. that pain cannot actually exist, can surely not be present here with us...those people who bear the deepest burdens of war here must be equally unreal, untouchable. and the same goes for the parts of ourselves that bear these burdens of contiguous, continuous warfaring...not just the soldiers of this country, but the children, suffer from ptsd.
My response to H's email has taken me forever. In the interest of getting this post out of its lonely "edit" page, I am just going to boil it down to the following thoughts/questions. Please respond in the comments so we can think further about this!
- What is the difference between conscience and consciousness? (Which, admittedly, my first post blurred.) If we take as truth that our existing consciences of war and violence are being actively dismantled, what's the best way think about this particular project? For example, not so much "building" as exploring/deepening/unearthing that conscience through an active effort at consciousness-raising...
- I want to focus initially on raising my consciousness of wars abroad, not because I think any form of state violence is more important or terrible than any other, but because I know that I actively don't think about wars abroad more than I actively don't think about domestic forms of state violence. I want to engage with the various emotional and intellectual constructs that I have put up to avoid thinking about wars abroad. I think they are different from the constructs that I use to think about (or not think about) violence and oppression here, and I want to know how, and why. What about you? How do those constructs differ for you? Where do you disengage and where do you engage? Why? What what does that look like?
- H's email made me think of Angela Davis's excellent Abolition Democracy, in which she breaks down the connections between torture, war, prisons, slavery. I remember reading this book and feeling totally floored. It is really, really amazing. What readings (or other materials) would you recommend that draw these connections and advanced your understanding of the contiguity of these various systems?
Lastly, I know this post is mostly just re-posting an email that H. sent out to all four of my readers (HEY YALL!) plus some questions. In the future I hope to have a more balanced mix of questions and analysis. A work in progress!
where does this war, these wars, begin and end?
how does projecting war abroad in such a way that we see it as separate from our own humanity make us misperceive the violence, dispossession, political imprisonment, etc. that is continuous with each of our lives? make us blind to these things?
drinking tea with my friend emily, and now at home writing to you, ambulances weave themselves too easily into the soundtrack of tonight. i try to dissemble the barriers i put up, internally, against knowing what these sounds mean. but the borders of this country are policed with violence.
i think that we have wartime consciences, but we are taught not to know them as such. taught that war is somewhere else, too painful to conceive of, experienced by avatars or sensationalized photos in the associated press. that pain cannot actually exist, can surely not be present here with us...those people who bear the deepest burdens of war here must be equally unreal, untouchable. and the same goes for the parts of ourselves that bear these burdens of contiguous, continuous warfaring...not just the soldiers of this country, but the children, suffer from ptsd.
My response to H's email has taken me forever. In the interest of getting this post out of its lonely "edit" page, I am just going to boil it down to the following thoughts/questions. Please respond in the comments so we can think further about this!
- What is the difference between conscience and consciousness? (Which, admittedly, my first post blurred.) If we take as truth that our existing consciences of war and violence are being actively dismantled, what's the best way think about this particular project? For example, not so much "building" as exploring/deepening/unearthing that conscience through an active effort at consciousness-raising...
- I want to focus initially on raising my consciousness of wars abroad, not because I think any form of state violence is more important or terrible than any other, but because I know that I actively don't think about wars abroad more than I actively don't think about domestic forms of state violence. I want to engage with the various emotional and intellectual constructs that I have put up to avoid thinking about wars abroad. I think they are different from the constructs that I use to think about (or not think about) violence and oppression here, and I want to know how, and why. What about you? How do those constructs differ for you? Where do you disengage and where do you engage? Why? What what does that look like?
- H's email made me think of Angela Davis's excellent Abolition Democracy, in which she breaks down the connections between torture, war, prisons, slavery. I remember reading this book and feeling totally floored. It is really, really amazing. What readings (or other materials) would you recommend that draw these connections and advanced your understanding of the contiguity of these various systems?
Lastly, I know this post is mostly just re-posting an email that H. sent out to all four of my readers (HEY YALL!) plus some questions. In the future I hope to have a more balanced mix of questions and analysis. A work in progress!
