Who is we?
On collectivity and updating our practices
It was December 3rd when I started writing this and its been hard to find my words. The genocide in Gaza continues. 700 people were killed in a 24 hour span and 1.5 million people have been displaced while people online engage in moral debates that ultimately end with justifying death. If genocide is the answer then what is the question.
Three days ago, Bisan posted a gut wrenching update. It was the first thing my system digested upon waking. I expanded the comment sections to see so many of my friends and loved ones offering words of encouragement and commitments as to how they would be in the practice of liberation. My heart broke a thousand times over.
I vowed to remain hopeful because it is part of my responsibility on this earth to believe in freedom and do whatever I can to ensure the possibilities of it for Palestinians and all people. And if hope feels like it is not there, then as an artist and a dreamer, my attention will go toward harnessing the power of my imagination. And if that feels hard, well it is time to honestly ask myself: Do my practices prepare me to show up for the needs of today?
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Stefano Harney, a black studies scholar who works collaboratively with Fred Moten and others, introduced this concept of “individuation,” in a recent class I had with him as part of my Praxis study programme. Individuation has roots in Jungian psychology, referring to the process of separating from the “collective”—including one’s parents and cultural norms—to become a unique individual. Harney takes a different approach, connecting individuation to Enlightenment’s construction of the “Human,” and capitalism, concluding that this process of individuation is the goal of Capitalist Institutions. Individuation here is the name given to a process whose function is to produce “individuals,” or more precisely the fantasy of an individual who produces discrete property and value and is responsible for a discrete body and mind. This contained self is no longer porous to outer influence and is supposedly, governable and knowable / known. This contained self receives the “benefit” of not being the “wild uncontained other.”
In a later class, Yayo Herrero, an amazing Spanish eco-feminist scholar, took an ecological standpoint charting how this idea of individuality is one birthed from hierarchy, domination, and violence to people, other-than-human beings and the land. In each case, the individual became a container for distributing the category of Human, but in exchange we are made to shed our innate connection to the other-than-human world and a greater collective We. In effect, disconnection becomes a societal practice engrained into multiple levels of our being. This individual then becomes incorporated into a capitalist system that has declared war to life and life’s limits and whose new God is money. In this system, war and illness is profitable, as is unsafety, so genocide here is not out of the question, but rather an answer. If we believe what is sacred is that which should be protected, we must move away from this worship of money towards a belief again that people (humans and other-than-humans) and the Earth should be protected above all.
How do we do this? There is no one answer but perhaps many of us could do some practice-updating. A practice of silence is not enough. A practice of avoidance is not enough. A practice of believing you have to be in total complete agreement with all of your comrades in movement spaces in order to fight for life is not enough.
Stefano introduced a practice of orienting towards a “collective We,” and immediately multiple people in my program decided it could be useful to try speaking from the “We,” instead of “I,” in our session. As someone who often uses the “We” as a pronoun, my entire body rejected the idea.
Part of me immediately felt fear around being incorporated into a We, especially as the only black person in the program. Another part of me was in disbelief that a quick language change shifting could be the way to cure us all of the ills of capitalism which have taught us to only be responsible for the self and not any other, a belief that convinces many around me to be silent in the face of active genocide. “It is not their responsibility,” they say or rather “I am not responsible for the We.” But in retrospect, it was and is a worthy practice. There are some things worth practicing even for a moment just to see what emerges from that ritualistic space. The purpose of the practice is not a curative one. Try it: what happens when you speak from the We.
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I am thinking about Anupa Mistry’s reflection on collective practices, written in their body politic substack:
Faith as a cultural practice takes the view of rehearsal as the performance. I contemplate this while reading Steve Biko, the African socialist, nationalist, and anti-Apartheid activist, who was murdered by South African police at 31-years-old. “The major thing to note about our songs is that they were never songs for individuals,” he wrote in 1971. “All African songs are group songs. Though many have words, this is not the most important thing about them. Tunes were adapted to suit the occasion and had the wonderful effect of making everybody read the same things from the common experience.”
What happens when we read and write together; when we breathe together; when we sing together? This is the diligent work of removing the distance between yourself and the ugliness and contradiction of humanity. Learning this song requires conceiving of a horizon.
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There is something here though with the We and I think Herrero’s work greatly highlights this larger disconnection we have been made to feel from the “We,” and it is this disconnect, this wound that needs some tender healing. There is quite a lot of learning and unlearning required in order to begin to actually feel connected to others in love and in struggle.
Personally, I’ve been turning toward spiritual practices again as a way to tend to the We, albeit from a different perspective.
Throughout my personal readings, three important ideas have stuck with me, the first being that our objective and overarching goal on Earth should be to live in harmony with society, which comes from the belief that people are our comrades and by extension, those we can love and trust.
The second being that our life duties include not only responsibilities to self and those close to us but also include contributing towards a community / collective of human and other-than-human beings. Movement work is community contribution. Through this we learn not only that we belong here on this earth but we learn to make a switch from the attachment to the self toward a genuine love and concern for others, and it is this concern for others that we must continue to grow.
And lastly I have been working with a Buddhist meditation practice that is all about building courage and actively working to root in self-responsibility while also strengthening connection to others in this world. In this practice, I do not imagine liberation just for myself but for all and am instructed to imagine the boundaries between myself and others dissolve. In just a month of doing this, it is evident that my brain is slowly beginning to rewire…
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On December 10th, I am doing a virtual eros study on Glory Holes! This series launched this past summer in New York at Hex House and the first event was also on Glory Holes with my dear friend and amazing artist Ize Commers.
This virtual share will function as a lecture and open study into some of the further research I’ve been doing while a part of Fluent’s praxis programme. I’ll touch a bit on the history of glory holes, talk about the work of fellow hole obsessed artists: Ize Commers and Kamikaze Jones, and will share about how glory holes have been supporting my liberation practice lately.
Notes on Suggested Donation: I’m asking for a suggest donation between $10-30, although you won’t be turned away if that is out of your range. As many of you know, I have been unemployed going on six months here despite actively looking for work each day. In the past three weeks, I’ve only had $30 coming in as income and although I have gotten over 400 subscribers to this substack, less than 10 of you are subscribers. I’ll keep writing and sharing either way, but wanted to be transparent.
RSVP HERE <3