In our last hot interview with Adam Rothstein, Jerk Emeritus, he regaled us with tales of his adventures among the mole people. He was just finishing telling us about how he and the beautiful-but-deadly Mistress of Numbers escaped the clutches of The Claw ™ and saved the internet from certain doom…
[rothstei]: Did she pulls out the “Numbers,” so to speak? Is that how you survived?
Adam Rothstein: No, we both died. I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Instead I’d rather talk about myself.
[r]: Oh, ok. Well, in regards to the recent political debate here on www.grin...
AR: See that’s exactly what I’m not talking about. I’m talking about…
[r]: Class warfare? Class consciousness? Race warfare? Race consciousness?
AR: No, no, maybe, no. It’s more of a feeling I guess, a sort of “knowing when one is right, and then totally being right all the time."
[r]: Are you bringing this back to the topic of your strict and uncompromising heterosexuality [V.2. N. 69]?
AR: Well it’s similar, yet entirely different. And by different, well, yeah… hetero. Not like, gay, different. Like totally straight.
[r]: But in your afore mentioned dreams of September 4th, 1989…
AR: No, no, that’s not it all. How come you don’t know what I’m talking about? I know what I’m talking about.
[r]: Well, if we may, let’s turn to one of the many letters that [rothstei] has received. [trowtbac] of Nova Scotia writes, “Who is this [rothstei] guy anyway? Is it even a person? Why does he edit and delete his plan in the span of 15 minutes, before anyone has had a chance to read it? I’m going to go read [eatmeat]. They’ve had the same plan up for almost a year now. That is the sort of regularity I can handle!”
AR: Obviously, [trowtbac], once you GRADUATE and EXPERIENCE some of the REAL world YOU might know A LITTLE bit about WHAT you’re TALKING about!
[r]: Are you this much of an asshole in real life?
AR: VAPIDITY! PURE UNABASHED VAPIDITY!!!
[r]: Do you think if you had your entire name as the title of your Plan, you would think a little longer before lashing out at people you don’t even know?
AR: Well, this might be as good a time as any to plug my new book/album, Shut UP: A Pretty Awesome Addition to Discourse, that Defies All Current Genrefication. It costs money.
[r]: Available at all real retailers, I’m sure.
AR: Genrefication is really one of the biggest political issues facing students, arts, literature, and punk music today.
[r]: If you had to cite a point of departure, in terms of genre, for your book, what would it be?
AR: Somewhere between post-punk and Microsoft Word mail merge, I think. And totally White. That is, pro-monarchist, not anything to do with melanin. The tough part is breaking back into the genrefication, you know, to get your own fair share of the pie. If you really want to be the one who started “it all,” you have to be different, but not too out there, otherwise you can’t claim to have influenced everyone else. And don’t get stuck with one of those “post” genres either… at first people think its really cool, but after a while it becomes cooler to think you’re not cool. That shit ain’t cool.
[r]: I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.
AR: Well, not really. Don’t want to be too corporate about it. You know, keep that whole totally-sweet-totally-almost-garbage DIU thing going.
[r]: You mean DIY?
AR: No, Dubitable Irony Usage. Nobody knows what it means. Only that it’s a thing to be, not to do. That why using yourself is totally in. As long as you can make other people believe. That is, sell it. That is, sell up.
[r]: Out?
AR: Done already? Fine I’m going home.
[r]: Any last remarks?
AR: Yeah, hipsters ain’t shit but hos and tricks. But buy my album/book. Free [jungesam]!
10.20.2006
10.14.2006
More Politics, Immigration, and My Overwhelming Disgust for Liberals
Seeing as how my Plan seems to be back on to the format of "real" issues, and as this is not completely unrelated to the on-going gentrification discussion, and as I'm not sure that most people are aware, I thought I would discuss the controversal Columbia University Minuteman protest.
So Columbia's conservative group brought some Gilchrist guy, the leader of the Minutemen Project, to speak at Columbia a week or so ago. The Minutemen are paramilitaries who stand on the border in Texas with guns to "protect" land and america in general from immigrants crossing the border. Much to my, and I think most people's suprise, the protest managed to rush the stage and shut down the talk. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can watch it for yourself here.
Then, much to my complete lack of suprise, this spontaneous action completely out of character for our era on the part of the students was characterized as "liberal student fascism" not only by the media, but by many students who are against the Minutemen. You can read one typical editorial in Columbia's Spectator here.
I also hear that our good friend Bill O'Reilly had some pretty choice remarks for the Columbia students as well. I'm not going to repost them here, you could find them easily enough if you want.
The thing that absolutely infuriates me, and is one of the primary reasons I believe "politics" as actionable arena is currently impossible (on the national scene, that is), is the response of the liberals. Just as the guy they are there to disagree with is forced to shut up, they forget what the issue is. All of a sudden the issue has become "Free Speech". The immigrants are forgotten--now merely a footnote--to the real issue of trying to preserve the senseless duality of american liberal politics.
Despite the current "liberal arts" education's continued focus on the power of words and discourse, the insistence upon the ability of a force of speech to be "hateful", or to carry with it the weight of racist, classist, or other exploitative power, the "liberal" political set seems unable to understand the true relationship between political force and discourse. In fact, they seem determined to define their political position by placing themselves in the very dead zone where words have no meaning and there is little, and if any, incidental, opportunities for progressing from discourse to actual political consequences.*
Free speech is, currently in our era, a general ideal that in the free-play of discourse and rational discussion the "good, fair, and universal" ideas will rise to the top, and the "emotional, prejudiced, and hateful" thoughts will be dismissed. Somehow the phrasing of the general protection of the right to speak from the interference of the government as codified in a 200-some year-old document, which we ever so cutely refer to as the Constitution (note the capital "C") has convinced us that as parties to the social contract of society we each have become a state unto ourselves and are there for responsible for protecting every individual's right to speak, if not out of categorical "duty" (fuck the 2nd critique, waht waht) then out of some pragmatic understanding of karma whereby our protection of other's speech will cause them to protect our own down the road, or out of some apocalyptic fear of progressing down the burning road to the hell of communism/fascism which will no doubt be the end result of prevented speech. My allusions to religion here are not idle, nor are they polemic.
However, what is forgotten, as is all too often, is that unfortunately ideas like this are bred in cloistered, protected, "free" domains (call them towers if you want, my school is in a converted department store) and therefore such ideas will tend to have little practical (or in this case, political) relevance to the "real world of everyday life" etc etc etc.
I think, as "fascism" has already been invoked, that it wouldn't be a bad example to turn towards for explication of the complexities of speech and politics. We all know it's one of my favorite, too. So, we all know (don't we?) that one of the generally agreed upon (by the academics who know such things) fundamentals of fascism is the authoritarian control of speech and discourse. And more locally, we have images in our minds of brown-shirted Nazi thugs breaking up the meetings of the social democrats (such a wonderful name for a political party, is is not?), smashing their presses, and taking the billy club to teachers in the streets. This is the point of comparison for all those who are calling the students who broke up the talk with their protest "fascist".
But how were the Nazis able to accomplish this? They were allowed to! The social democrats had insufficient organization that wasn't able to counter the thugs. The communists fought back, fighting for their streets and neighborhoods with their lives. But they were eventually defeated, because the Nazis had the implicit (if not explicit) backing of the state apparatus and the police. Never forget that Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht were murdered at the hands of the army and paramilitaries working hand in hand under the orders of a trade-union Social Democrat! This event at the beginning of the Weimar Constitution (there's that magic word again) would prove emblematic for the German governments commitment to politics; nationalistic politics were allowed a free reign, anyone else was forced to fight up hill for their lives, if not for the liberation of the political scene.
It is exactly the sort of bungling, misunderstood, weak-kneed conception of politics that the Social Democrats had that we now see in american liberal politics. The idea of conflict sickens liberals, and they opt for the path of least resistance. Hitler was given the chancellorship as a means to "calming down" the political scene, by bringing him to the "table" of a cabinet with Social Democrats they hoped to control him. Because they opened the door, he walked in. I'll spare you the history lesson, but I would ask that you compare it to our current events. I believe that we are lucky that this country is already filled with immigrants, and the nationalists will only decrease further into the minority. Because these racists are of the same fabric of the opponents to the civil rights movements 40 years ago. If the demographics hadn't changed, we would still be in the days of the zoot suit riots and church burnings, because these fucks haven't changed their tune, they've only been more and more outnumbered. And the liberals continue to allow this tripe to be fed to the waiting mouths of their friends, not dissuaded from "just a taste" for themselves, either.
Speech is one thing, but it is linked to power. When a person gets on stage to discursively justify his/her actions, his actions and speech are intimately linked. There is not such thing as an open-forum were ideas may be shared, and political associations evaporate. When Gilchrist appeared on the stage under the banner of his organization he may as well have been holding a gun to the face of a person. When he was given a microphone so his opinions could be amplified, he might as well have been handed a box of bullets. When Columbia security prosecutes the students for attempting to stop him, they might as well have chambered a round in his rifle and helped to steady his aim.
Politics can occur only when one acts, in speech one only prepares to act. You can argue against the nationalists until you are blue in the face. You might even shake hands with a nationalist afterwards, and say it was a "good debate". And then afterward, once s/he gets in the car and drives away, you can rest easy, knowing your position was defended. But what about the nationalist? Right back to the border, with gun in hand. Or worse, to the next talk, to win more supporters, to romance more students that need a cause, to send more people with guns out to do whatever guns are meant for.
I say, Fuck That. Is free speech worth anything to the people who can't afford a chair in the classroom? Or the people who can't get close to a classroom? Or the people who are dead? You, Liberal, can hold all the opinions that you want. I will hardly coerce anyone into changing their beliefs. But I refuse to augment my belief in the right of people to exist because you have some moral compunction, some "damn spot" on your shining white ideal of free speech. If speech is the common denomenator, the act of expression of human life, how can you attempt to defend that expression in the face of the lack of concern for that life?
The way you can, Liberal, is because you have turned the facts of exploitation into an issue. You have reduced the struggle of humanity against the forces within itself that would destroy it into a mere fairy tale: an idealistic dream, a round table, and a banner. There is no compromise with hatred, or with exploitation of human life. It is not "if you are not with us you are against us," you misunderstand. They don't care if you are with them or not. All they want is to use your microphone, and if they convince one person in a room of one hundred, then they have won. The other 99 they couldn't care about if they don't stand in their way.
That is why the nationalists got so pissed off over Columbia. This is the real danger to them, that the David Horowitz's, the Michael Savage's, the O'Reilly's, might not be able to hide behind liberals own political confusion any longer. Those kids on the stage at Columbia, although they might not have known it, charged the gleaming wall and found it was all an apparition, and easily stepped through. The hippies found that out on Oct. 21, 1967, but that wave broke on the steps of the Pentagon. It is so easy to tell these idiots to fuck off, yet no one wants to raise the finger. And until they do, the idiots will proceed unperturbed. They always have and they always will.
----
* It is ironic, of course, that I phrase this condemnation in the form of an essay. However, I have attempted to make this argument in person to the Columbia students and other liberals I know, so at least in this way I hope that these thoughts articulated in discourse might change or shift the mental states and subjective discursive patterns that allow the cesspool of political thought to continue to stagnate. And who knows, someone might even think twice about their liberal position after reading this.
So Columbia's conservative group brought some Gilchrist guy, the leader of the Minutemen Project, to speak at Columbia a week or so ago. The Minutemen are paramilitaries who stand on the border in Texas with guns to "protect" land and america in general from immigrants crossing the border. Much to my, and I think most people's suprise, the protest managed to rush the stage and shut down the talk. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can watch it for yourself here.
Then, much to my complete lack of suprise, this spontaneous action completely out of character for our era on the part of the students was characterized as "liberal student fascism" not only by the media, but by many students who are against the Minutemen. You can read one typical editorial in Columbia's Spectator here.
I also hear that our good friend Bill O'Reilly had some pretty choice remarks for the Columbia students as well. I'm not going to repost them here, you could find them easily enough if you want.
The thing that absolutely infuriates me, and is one of the primary reasons I believe "politics" as actionable arena is currently impossible (on the national scene, that is), is the response of the liberals. Just as the guy they are there to disagree with is forced to shut up, they forget what the issue is. All of a sudden the issue has become "Free Speech". The immigrants are forgotten--now merely a footnote--to the real issue of trying to preserve the senseless duality of american liberal politics.
Despite the current "liberal arts" education's continued focus on the power of words and discourse, the insistence upon the ability of a force of speech to be "hateful", or to carry with it the weight of racist, classist, or other exploitative power, the "liberal" political set seems unable to understand the true relationship between political force and discourse. In fact, they seem determined to define their political position by placing themselves in the very dead zone where words have no meaning and there is little, and if any, incidental, opportunities for progressing from discourse to actual political consequences.*
Free speech is, currently in our era, a general ideal that in the free-play of discourse and rational discussion the "good, fair, and universal" ideas will rise to the top, and the "emotional, prejudiced, and hateful" thoughts will be dismissed. Somehow the phrasing of the general protection of the right to speak from the interference of the government as codified in a 200-some year-old document, which we ever so cutely refer to as the Constitution (note the capital "C") has convinced us that as parties to the social contract of society we each have become a state unto ourselves and are there for responsible for protecting every individual's right to speak, if not out of categorical "duty" (fuck the 2nd critique, waht waht) then out of some pragmatic understanding of karma whereby our protection of other's speech will cause them to protect our own down the road, or out of some apocalyptic fear of progressing down the burning road to the hell of communism/fascism which will no doubt be the end result of prevented speech. My allusions to religion here are not idle, nor are they polemic.
However, what is forgotten, as is all too often, is that unfortunately ideas like this are bred in cloistered, protected, "free" domains (call them towers if you want, my school is in a converted department store) and therefore such ideas will tend to have little practical (or in this case, political) relevance to the "real world of everyday life" etc etc etc.
I think, as "fascism" has already been invoked, that it wouldn't be a bad example to turn towards for explication of the complexities of speech and politics. We all know it's one of my favorite, too. So, we all know (don't we?) that one of the generally agreed upon (by the academics who know such things) fundamentals of fascism is the authoritarian control of speech and discourse. And more locally, we have images in our minds of brown-shirted Nazi thugs breaking up the meetings of the social democrats (such a wonderful name for a political party, is is not?), smashing their presses, and taking the billy club to teachers in the streets. This is the point of comparison for all those who are calling the students who broke up the talk with their protest "fascist".
But how were the Nazis able to accomplish this? They were allowed to! The social democrats had insufficient organization that wasn't able to counter the thugs. The communists fought back, fighting for their streets and neighborhoods with their lives. But they were eventually defeated, because the Nazis had the implicit (if not explicit) backing of the state apparatus and the police. Never forget that Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht were murdered at the hands of the army and paramilitaries working hand in hand under the orders of a trade-union Social Democrat! This event at the beginning of the Weimar Constitution (there's that magic word again) would prove emblematic for the German governments commitment to politics; nationalistic politics were allowed a free reign, anyone else was forced to fight up hill for their lives, if not for the liberation of the political scene.
It is exactly the sort of bungling, misunderstood, weak-kneed conception of politics that the Social Democrats had that we now see in american liberal politics. The idea of conflict sickens liberals, and they opt for the path of least resistance. Hitler was given the chancellorship as a means to "calming down" the political scene, by bringing him to the "table" of a cabinet with Social Democrats they hoped to control him. Because they opened the door, he walked in. I'll spare you the history lesson, but I would ask that you compare it to our current events. I believe that we are lucky that this country is already filled with immigrants, and the nationalists will only decrease further into the minority. Because these racists are of the same fabric of the opponents to the civil rights movements 40 years ago. If the demographics hadn't changed, we would still be in the days of the zoot suit riots and church burnings, because these fucks haven't changed their tune, they've only been more and more outnumbered. And the liberals continue to allow this tripe to be fed to the waiting mouths of their friends, not dissuaded from "just a taste" for themselves, either.
Speech is one thing, but it is linked to power. When a person gets on stage to discursively justify his/her actions, his actions and speech are intimately linked. There is not such thing as an open-forum were ideas may be shared, and political associations evaporate. When Gilchrist appeared on the stage under the banner of his organization he may as well have been holding a gun to the face of a person. When he was given a microphone so his opinions could be amplified, he might as well have been handed a box of bullets. When Columbia security prosecutes the students for attempting to stop him, they might as well have chambered a round in his rifle and helped to steady his aim.
Politics can occur only when one acts, in speech one only prepares to act. You can argue against the nationalists until you are blue in the face. You might even shake hands with a nationalist afterwards, and say it was a "good debate". And then afterward, once s/he gets in the car and drives away, you can rest easy, knowing your position was defended. But what about the nationalist? Right back to the border, with gun in hand. Or worse, to the next talk, to win more supporters, to romance more students that need a cause, to send more people with guns out to do whatever guns are meant for.
I say, Fuck That. Is free speech worth anything to the people who can't afford a chair in the classroom? Or the people who can't get close to a classroom? Or the people who are dead? You, Liberal, can hold all the opinions that you want. I will hardly coerce anyone into changing their beliefs. But I refuse to augment my belief in the right of people to exist because you have some moral compunction, some "damn spot" on your shining white ideal of free speech. If speech is the common denomenator, the act of expression of human life, how can you attempt to defend that expression in the face of the lack of concern for that life?
The way you can, Liberal, is because you have turned the facts of exploitation into an issue. You have reduced the struggle of humanity against the forces within itself that would destroy it into a mere fairy tale: an idealistic dream, a round table, and a banner. There is no compromise with hatred, or with exploitation of human life. It is not "if you are not with us you are against us," you misunderstand. They don't care if you are with them or not. All they want is to use your microphone, and if they convince one person in a room of one hundred, then they have won. The other 99 they couldn't care about if they don't stand in their way.
That is why the nationalists got so pissed off over Columbia. This is the real danger to them, that the David Horowitz's, the Michael Savage's, the O'Reilly's, might not be able to hide behind liberals own political confusion any longer. Those kids on the stage at Columbia, although they might not have known it, charged the gleaming wall and found it was all an apparition, and easily stepped through. The hippies found that out on Oct. 21, 1967, but that wave broke on the steps of the Pentagon. It is so easy to tell these idiots to fuck off, yet no one wants to raise the finger. And until they do, the idiots will proceed unperturbed. They always have and they always will.
----
* It is ironic, of course, that I phrase this condemnation in the form of an essay. However, I have attempted to make this argument in person to the Columbia students and other liberals I know, so at least in this way I hope that these thoughts articulated in discourse might change or shift the mental states and subjective discursive patterns that allow the cesspool of political thought to continue to stagnate. And who knows, someone might even think twice about their liberal position after reading this.
10.11.2006
Thoughts on Gentrification
I like everything that [glynnsea] and [riveraal] said about gentrification. That said, I still think the "concept" is difficult to define in a way that makes any sort of "political response" difficult (in response to what [jungesam] was talking about). I think there are real, what we might call "material" facts of the phenomenon, and real "social issues" (in the sense of less material facts) resulting from these material conditions. Yet, it is hard to link these together in a way that makes gentrification describe anything that is in itself a problem that can be countered effectively.
Some material issues/facts:
-economic differences, what we might call class
-the shortage of urban housing
-the shortage of adequate housing
-the fact of housing being available through a market
-the gravitation of infrastructural elements to certain areas in confluence with other similar elements following a dynamic pattern, and
-the rising of infrastructural elements in coordination with other economic interests (retail, etc.) in confluence with other similar elements in a dynamic pattern
These are not things too eye-opening, just me saying in complicated ways some basic facts of capitalism.
Some social issues/facts:
-there is this thing called culture, where people who live/express themselves a certain way tend to flock together
-there is this thing called race, where people who look the same have often created a similar culture in relation to (not "because of" or "predicating", exclusively) the fact that there has historically been economic "facts" (that's putting it mildly) associated with the differences between these races
-in addition to the economic dynamics between cultures/races, there are also dynamisms of a more implicit character, which could be called "libidinal" (being a force or energy that is not explicitly manifest) that can guide behavior and act as a accumulated, economical principle that is also in relation (and not neccesarily "because of" or "predicating", exclusively) to the differentiations of culture
-because of the coherence of cultures, there is often a dissonance between "different" cultures
-PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT: because of any and all of the above issues/facts, and predicated by any and all of the above issues/facts, there are people who will take advantage of the fact of these conditions in order to better their own condition (in any of these diverse treatments of the term) often at the expense of others by manipulating these facts along pathways which we could call POWER. This is what we, by vastly simplifying the above conditions, term exploitation.
So this is what I see as the point: by just getting mad at anybody for exploitation, you discount the reality of all these important factors, depoliticizing the facts of exploitation and making it simply a "political issue" like "free speech" or "abortion" etc. This is what liberals (and I mean conservatives too, in that they take part in the liberal political process) do to make politics meaningless.
Yet, the reality of exploitation in the real world (not just in my clever little lists) means that its reality is expressed as a reaction to exploitation, which I think is what [jungesam] might term political, as an angry condemnation of whatever particular single fact of the above happens to be present (its bourgeois culture, its racism, its class, etc etc).
But that ends up being, at least in my opinion (because of course I have only highly rational post-structural marxist thought processes!!) a little stupid. I mean, I understand [davismic]'s revulsion. I feel it too. Where else am I supposed to live? I don't want to live in hipsterville brooklyn, although that might be my race/class "place", and I don't think I should have a train ride of more than an hour, which leaves me with few options. Of course, I don't have to live in a city (believe me I'm GTFO after this year) but does that mean I should move back to Iowa where housing is plentiful? And although this sounds like a cop-out, if I didn't move in here, you can bet they would have rented the place the next day. These forces are bigger than people, bigger even than idiotic hipster fashion "movements", it is the way that the economic system works in this country. And its the way it has worked since there were cities in this country. [riveraal] notes the irony of 20th cent. white flight, but it has been going on longer than that. My great-grandmother lived 10 blocks from where I live now, in the 20s, and my grandfather (different family side) was born in Harlem Hospital, where I catch the subway! Yet it is a black neighboorhood! Hartford is good example too, because it is much smaller. The jews and italians moved out of the city to Bloomfield around the turn of the century to get away from you-know-who, and then in the 70s they moved further out as the blacks and hispanics moved out to Bloomfield, and now at the turn of this century the young white professionals are moving back into the city. Who is gentrifying who? Who is "responsible"?
I don't think that this means that we can just sit back and do nothing. But I think that all of this makes it tough to declare how the "issue" of gentrification should be politicized. Critique like this is one thing, another thing is just to let people know it is happening (to speak of hipsters, I think that while "gentrification" is a word they all know, I don't think many know what it really means). [glynnsea]'s suggestions of affordable housing action is a great idea, because that is really one of the key factors in the process. [riveraal]'s mention of catching people who abuse the affordable housing procedures for their own gain is another important idea. These are all "political", I guess, but you see what I mean about it being difficult to plot a course. Another problem I've noticed is that alot of people just don't care enough to organize against losing their "culture". I thought it was interesting, [glynnsea], what you said about people wanting to keep a good community to raise their kids in. It sounds like there is a very strong sense of community there, that an invasion of another culture could seriously disrupt. However, I don't see that in my neighborhood at all. People throw trash out their windows in between the buildings, which leads to all sorts of infestations; bottles and other trash are left on the street; after a friday night it looks like a dumpster was overturned in front of our building, right on the same steps where parents sit with their children and let their kids run around. They sell drugs on the corner, which while it doesn't present any immediate problems (its not a movie, there aren't drive-bys or anything) it draws a pretty nasty element of crackheads and prostitutes around the same area where there are really young kids out late at night (say what you want about addiction, but I DO NOT like crackheads, I think they are fucked). Whatever sense of community is here, it doesn't seem very interested in improving itself or even maintaining itself. The cause of this I'm sure is dense and complex, involving a number of factors that are similar and related to gentrification, yet at the same time it makes it pretty hard to talk about a political response to a certain exploitation when there is no way to "organize" the exploited in the traditional model of political response. This is not say that I think more "white people" in the neighborhood would help, but I tend to think that whoever is willing to live in this area could. Of course, some people don't have much of a choice, but it still seems a little strange, and not very political, to speak about a ghetto as a place to reserve for people who can't live anywhere that is worth living. (seems sort of like a "reservation", doesn't it?) And when the interests-that-be "improve" the area, by stimulating a cultural change that results in an "increased sense of community" actualized in the "higher values" of a different culture, who really wins? The people who move out probably go to live in an area that is alot like the one that they just left, only in a different place, the people who move in have an increased sense of "culture" by living in a "really chill area" (see the east village), but then before long live in an area just like the one that they left. Everyone keeps on living, the only people who's situation has really changed is the people who profited on the movement. Where's the politics in gentrification? Everywhere, and nowhere. I know Sam, seems a bit "post-modern", but what else is there? Class consciousness? The resolution of this contradiction of history? I secretly wish, but I don't seem to think so.
Well, I just spent an hour of work not working. Let's call it political and have another cup of coffee, eh?
Some material issues/facts:
-economic differences, what we might call class
-the shortage of urban housing
-the shortage of adequate housing
-the fact of housing being available through a market
-the gravitation of infrastructural elements to certain areas in confluence with other similar elements following a dynamic pattern, and
-the rising of infrastructural elements in coordination with other economic interests (retail, etc.) in confluence with other similar elements in a dynamic pattern
These are not things too eye-opening, just me saying in complicated ways some basic facts of capitalism.
Some social issues/facts:
-there is this thing called culture, where people who live/express themselves a certain way tend to flock together
-there is this thing called race, where people who look the same have often created a similar culture in relation to (not "because of" or "predicating", exclusively) the fact that there has historically been economic "facts" (that's putting it mildly) associated with the differences between these races
-in addition to the economic dynamics between cultures/races, there are also dynamisms of a more implicit character, which could be called "libidinal" (being a force or energy that is not explicitly manifest) that can guide behavior and act as a accumulated, economical principle that is also in relation (and not neccesarily "because of" or "predicating", exclusively) to the differentiations of culture
-because of the coherence of cultures, there is often a dissonance between "different" cultures
-PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT: because of any and all of the above issues/facts, and predicated by any and all of the above issues/facts, there are people who will take advantage of the fact of these conditions in order to better their own condition (in any of these diverse treatments of the term) often at the expense of others by manipulating these facts along pathways which we could call POWER. This is what we, by vastly simplifying the above conditions, term exploitation.
So this is what I see as the point: by just getting mad at anybody for exploitation, you discount the reality of all these important factors, depoliticizing the facts of exploitation and making it simply a "political issue" like "free speech" or "abortion" etc. This is what liberals (and I mean conservatives too, in that they take part in the liberal political process) do to make politics meaningless.
Yet, the reality of exploitation in the real world (not just in my clever little lists) means that its reality is expressed as a reaction to exploitation, which I think is what [jungesam] might term political, as an angry condemnation of whatever particular single fact of the above happens to be present (its bourgeois culture, its racism, its class, etc etc).
But that ends up being, at least in my opinion (because of course I have only highly rational post-structural marxist thought processes!!) a little stupid. I mean, I understand [davismic]'s revulsion. I feel it too. Where else am I supposed to live? I don't want to live in hipsterville brooklyn, although that might be my race/class "place", and I don't think I should have a train ride of more than an hour, which leaves me with few options. Of course, I don't have to live in a city (believe me I'm GTFO after this year) but does that mean I should move back to Iowa where housing is plentiful? And although this sounds like a cop-out, if I didn't move in here, you can bet they would have rented the place the next day. These forces are bigger than people, bigger even than idiotic hipster fashion "movements", it is the way that the economic system works in this country. And its the way it has worked since there were cities in this country. [riveraal] notes the irony of 20th cent. white flight, but it has been going on longer than that. My great-grandmother lived 10 blocks from where I live now, in the 20s, and my grandfather (different family side) was born in Harlem Hospital, where I catch the subway! Yet it is a black neighboorhood! Hartford is good example too, because it is much smaller. The jews and italians moved out of the city to Bloomfield around the turn of the century to get away from you-know-who, and then in the 70s they moved further out as the blacks and hispanics moved out to Bloomfield, and now at the turn of this century the young white professionals are moving back into the city. Who is gentrifying who? Who is "responsible"?
I don't think that this means that we can just sit back and do nothing. But I think that all of this makes it tough to declare how the "issue" of gentrification should be politicized. Critique like this is one thing, another thing is just to let people know it is happening (to speak of hipsters, I think that while "gentrification" is a word they all know, I don't think many know what it really means). [glynnsea]'s suggestions of affordable housing action is a great idea, because that is really one of the key factors in the process. [riveraal]'s mention of catching people who abuse the affordable housing procedures for their own gain is another important idea. These are all "political", I guess, but you see what I mean about it being difficult to plot a course. Another problem I've noticed is that alot of people just don't care enough to organize against losing their "culture". I thought it was interesting, [glynnsea], what you said about people wanting to keep a good community to raise their kids in. It sounds like there is a very strong sense of community there, that an invasion of another culture could seriously disrupt. However, I don't see that in my neighborhood at all. People throw trash out their windows in between the buildings, which leads to all sorts of infestations; bottles and other trash are left on the street; after a friday night it looks like a dumpster was overturned in front of our building, right on the same steps where parents sit with their children and let their kids run around. They sell drugs on the corner, which while it doesn't present any immediate problems (its not a movie, there aren't drive-bys or anything) it draws a pretty nasty element of crackheads and prostitutes around the same area where there are really young kids out late at night (say what you want about addiction, but I DO NOT like crackheads, I think they are fucked). Whatever sense of community is here, it doesn't seem very interested in improving itself or even maintaining itself. The cause of this I'm sure is dense and complex, involving a number of factors that are similar and related to gentrification, yet at the same time it makes it pretty hard to talk about a political response to a certain exploitation when there is no way to "organize" the exploited in the traditional model of political response. This is not say that I think more "white people" in the neighborhood would help, but I tend to think that whoever is willing to live in this area could. Of course, some people don't have much of a choice, but it still seems a little strange, and not very political, to speak about a ghetto as a place to reserve for people who can't live anywhere that is worth living. (seems sort of like a "reservation", doesn't it?) And when the interests-that-be "improve" the area, by stimulating a cultural change that results in an "increased sense of community" actualized in the "higher values" of a different culture, who really wins? The people who move out probably go to live in an area that is alot like the one that they just left, only in a different place, the people who move in have an increased sense of "culture" by living in a "really chill area" (see the east village), but then before long live in an area just like the one that they left. Everyone keeps on living, the only people who's situation has really changed is the people who profited on the movement. Where's the politics in gentrification? Everywhere, and nowhere. I know Sam, seems a bit "post-modern", but what else is there? Class consciousness? The resolution of this contradiction of history? I secretly wish, but I don't seem to think so.
Well, I just spent an hour of work not working. Let's call it political and have another cup of coffee, eh?
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