The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 17

December 31, 2016

I usually spend the first of the year or thereabouts thinking about what I’d like to do during the upcoming year. Haven’t gotten around to it yet but I plan on doing so after I finish this. Which means it’s going to be shorter than usual…

….

In doing research for Knocking the Hustle, I examined the racial aspects of the Clinton era…the era Democrats tout the way Republicans touted Reagan, the era supposedly filled with nothing but economic success. Turns out the “economic success” defined as job growth was two tiered with “good jobs” (jobs with high wages solid benefits and security) going to white men and women, and “bad jobs” (jobs with low wages few benefits and no job security) going to black and brown men and women. 

Fast forward.

Turns out all of the employment growth between 2005-2015, comes from “alternative work arrangements”. Not all the employment growth in black and Latino/a communities….all the growth period.

Let that sink in a bit.

The Clinton era narrative was pretty straightforward. Work hard, build your capital, be responsible, and you will be rewarded. The Obama era narrative was similar. 

The Clinton era narrative was true to a point, but particularly true for whites. 

Now it’s arguably not even true for them. And I think they now know this.

….

Achille Mbembe argues that the age of humanism is ending.

There is no sign that 2017 will be much different from 2016.

Under Israeli occupation for decades, Gaza will still be the biggest open prison on Earth.

In the United States, the killing of black people at the hands of the police will proceed unabated and hundreds of thousands more will join those already housed in the prison-industrial complex that came on the heels of plantation slavery and Jim Crow laws.

Europe will continue its slow descent into liberal authoritarianism or what cultural theorist Stuart Hall called authoritarian populism. Despite complex agreements reached at international forums, the ecological destruction of the Earth will continue and the war on terror will increasingly morph into a war of extermination between various forms of nihilism.

Inequalities will keep growing worldwide. But far from fuelling a renewed cycle of class struggles, social conflicts will increasingly take the form of racism, ultra nationalism, sexism, ethnic and religious rivalries, xenophobia, homophobia and other deadly passions.

    He touches on one of the same notes I’ve touched on here, emphasizing the declining role of reason (and the seeming decline in even the possibility of reason and truth), but also connects this trend to the growing power of Facebook, Instagram, and the like. 

    (Funny because I found out about this and the above link through Facebook…)

    I’d like to know where Mbembe locates the beginning of this age he refers to, as it isn’t quite clear in the piece. Surely we don’t see such an age dominant in the beginning or the middle of the twentieth century, nor do we see such an age dominant in the era before. At best perhaps we can look to the American post-civil rights era, but even here this appears to be far too US-centric. 

    I also think Mbembe may be taking the troubling spread of right wing populist nationalism and making more of it than might be warranted. The example of North Carolina is far from perfect, but it suggests something.

    ….

  The supermanager is neoliberalism’s governance mechanism, a way to negotiate and smooth over differences between sectors of power in society, just as the supermanager avant la lettre did so in Nazi Germany.

From The Supermanagerial Reich. Although there’s a lot going on in this essay, the section on the political economy of Nazism stands out for me. Not sure why much of the work on Nazism ignores the political economy question but this represents a needed breath of fresh air, particularly given the current moment.

….

Finally got a chance to pick up Anne Clark’s anthology on Detroit while I was in town. Browsed through an essay (“Up in the Morning & Off to School in Detroit”) which begins with the author noting that every single school she’s attended in Detroit’s been closed down. Six, including the head start before she began kindergarten.

Although I didn’t go to school in Detroit my circumstances are similar. In the seventies I attended McNair Elementary in Inkster, Michigan. In 1979 or 1980 I split time between McNair and a magnet school (hindsight this was likely an attempt to provide quality schooling in poor school districts without turning to forced busing). In the early eighties I attended Sacred Heart elementary—a working class private Catholic school in Dearborn (then one of the most racist cities north of the Mason-Dixon line). In high school I attended Bishop Borgess—another working class private school. Of those schools, only Sacred Heart remains. Bishop Borgess like most of Detroit’s Catholic schools shut its doors and is now a charter school. Where McNair once stood only an empty field remains. 

….

2017. 

I think I’ve already gotten several “happy new year” messages.

I’ve given a few in return. 

But I’m not sure I’m about that happy life right about now. 

So I hope your 2017 is better than your 2016. That you work as hard as you play in trying to bring the world we want into being. And that I lay eyes on you as often as possible.