The Counterpublic Papers
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The Counterpublic Papers vol. 3, no. 14

The Counterpublic Papers vol. 3, no. 14

December 30, 2017

2017.

Here’s my 2017 in a nutshell.

I received an award earlier in the year, one that came with $50,000 in research money. Opens up a lot of possibilities. I received the call on a Thursday at about noon.

Fifteen minutes after that call, I received another call, that was about as bad, as the award was good.

Those two phone calls, back to back, pretty much explains it. The best and worst, all in the same year. 2016 was kind of like that. 2017 was definitely like that. I imagine 2018 will be like that. Didn’t think a year that was simultaneously god-awful and wonderful was possible.

Now I know.

….

Links, then lists:

I’ve noted here that we should be weaponizing voter registration, wielding the 15th amendment like a +10 vorpal sword. And most of you probably know this but when I say “we” I don’t mean “the democratic party”. They only have the incentive to increase registration and mobilize them in limited circumstances—in many if not most presidential campaigns, in some gubernatorial campaigns, and in even fewer mayoral campaigns (when a black mayor or mayoral candidate faces a credible white challenger). Otherwise? The more turnout increases, the more the representative feels beholden to a flesh and blood constituency he/she would rather not feel beholden to.

Robert Greene II reflects on this dynamic as it relates to the special election in Alabama, and in the Deep South in general.

….

A couple of radical takes on the #MeToo Movement. One looks at the movement from a queer anti-penal perspective. The other from more of a traditional left class perspective. I don’t think we get to a new institutional arrangement without the moment we’re in—I’ve stated as much here and in a range of conversations out in the world. But it’s important to note that this moment we’re in doesn’t have to lead to the new institutional arrangement. Indeed it isn’t hard at all to imagine a dynamic where sexual harassment in certain workplaces with certain types of workforces more or less disappears while deep structural inequalities (that, with exceptions, are more likely to affect women than men) remain intact. And given the way the prison industrial complex (and related technologies of punishment and discipline) tends to define “non-normal” populations in ways that just so happen to parallel power hierarchies, it isn’t hard to imagine a dynamic where the people caught in the sifter are ones that “look” less and less like Harvey Weinstein.

(Along these lines there’s a possibility that rising miscarriages—since April 2014 there’s been a sharp uptick in fetal deaths—in Flint are a function of the Flint Water Crisis.)

(Last week I wrote a bit about Black Panther. This week an article about A Wrinkle in Time. The classic holds a special place in my heart. I was in third grade when I picked it up in the “media center” (really the school library). Only The Hobbit, The Dark is Rising, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Chronicles of Prydain, shaped my childhood as much. I think movies like BP and Wrinkle do empower blacks and women—but they do far more to empower the directors, actors, and producers, than they do flesh and blood people.)

….

“I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything,” she said. “This thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down to where you can’t win.”—Erica Garner

Erica Garner, who became an activist and organizer in the wake of her father Eric Garner’s death at the hands of NYC police, passed away a couple of days ago.

She was right and wrong. It does beat individuals down. But it doesn’t eradicate the tendency. We don’t just have to think broader in spatial terms, connecting what’s happening in NYC to what’s happening across the globe. We have to think broader in temporal terms, radically expanding our timeline.

….

On December 28, George Ciccariello-Maher sent word that he’s leaving Drexel as of today.

After December 31st, 2017, I will no longer work at Drexel University. This is not a decision I take lightly; however, after nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable. Staying at Drexel in the eye of this storm has become detrimental to my own writing, speaking, and organizing.

I’ve known Ciccariello-Maher for…maybe a decade now. He’s been producing cutting edge scholarship and engaging in activist work since I’ve known him. He knows that this is part of a larger struggle. He knows that what happened to him has led to a surge of anti-fascist activism across the country.

But knowing doesn’t feed a family.

If you’ve resources to bring him to campus, whether for a lecture or something more permanent, I ask you consider doing so.

….

Lists.

Asked around for best of lists. Best album. Best Non-Fiction. Best Fiction. Best podcasts. A lot of this stuff didn’t come out in 2017 so your mileage may vary. But I don’t think you can go wrong:

Best podcasts:

Media Indigena

That Black Couple

Reveal

How to Survive the End of the World

On Being

Ear Hustle

Radio Open Source (I was a part of their show on Amazon.)