political economy of care

(well, I never did make a post out of this, so I might as well just put it out there as a small puddle of barely-begun thoughts...)

Over the past few years, especially since my relationship with RC revealed itself to be irreparably fucked and not at all what I thought it was (ie not feminist in nature), I've been interested articulating the concept of "care" (and love, for that matter) in a social and political way.

I've found quite useful Arlie Hochschild's concepts of "emotional work" (usually unpaid, in personal relationships) and "emotional labour" (usually paid, in relationships with strangers/customers) (also called "affective labour" by Hardt and Negri -- and Sara Ahmed refers to "affective economies").

This article is focused particularly on childcare, which is only the most obvious (and not my favourite) example of domestic and reproductive care labour. But it is at least a starting point of a conversation I want to have.

As is this: "Polyamory as a Reserve Army of Care Labour" (which has been removed *again*):

"Pretending that polyamorous relationship itself were a liberating mechanism, simply because they don’t have a conventional framework for relating, has done a few things: in some cases it has provided men with immunity to womanize, in many cases it provides men with a reserve army of care labor while giving them less impetus to be mutually responsive to the activity of the relationship, and so I would argue that there is potentially even less of a two-way mutual flow of care labor between men and women in polyamorous relationships. Beyond that, heterosexual polyamory, can at worst be a threat to sociability and solidarity between women."

 And the part on "hedging" and care labour:

"As often happens, responsibility and empathy can be replaced by the care work of another relationship. If she demands that a male partner treat her better in some sense, or commit to her emotional or sexual well being, he has the option of not relating to her subjectivity (my experience in the relationship), and going to another woman for gratification."

I also watched the Public Feelings Salon with Lauren Berlant and took some very brief notes:

• optimism and trauma make you non-sovereign 
• (a good non-sovereignty, dependence)
• forms of losing control are forms of belonging to the social
• attachment to the political
• relationship between personal romantic and political fantasies
• trying to imagine intimacies where they feel recognized (I want to have that feeling again of being recognized and held in the world) - political and personal guiding fantasy

an honest account of how i've been spending my time online

• comparing images of tarot decks
• reading reviews of tarot decks on amazon
• looking up reason why my homemade yogurt fails
• browsing ravelry for knitting patterns
• revisiting the yarn.com page that lists the interchangeable circular needle sets for sale
• lurking on okcupid but never doing anything

I'm a cliché spinster. 

the state and all that (a post from october that never made it to the public realm)

I've been fixated for years on the pervasive impact of neoliberalism, not simply as a retrenchment of social institutions at large and the privatization of the public, but in the insidious ways its ideological influence festers everywhere, beyond the larger and institutional impact -- including in so-called radical or liberatory ideals. I feel like way more of us embrace neoliberal subjectivity than we'd like to admit.

I really appreciated this piece by Henry Giroux, that addressing this influence, and calls for the reclaiming of radical democracy. It's been helpful at a time when I've been considering and reconsidering my imagining of the state within my political framework.

Here are a bunch of excerpts from that piece:

1/

Economic Darwinism individualizes the social by shredding social bonds that are not commodified and in doing so depoliticizes, atomizes and infantilizes the broader public. All problems are now defined as a problem faulty character and a deficient sense of individual responsibility. At the same time, freedom is reduced to consumerism and self-interest becomes the only guiding principle for living one's life.

2/

What is crucial to recognize is that the central issues of power and politics can lead to cynicism and despair if capitalism is not addressed as a system of social relations that diminishes - through its cultural politics, modes of commodification and market pedagogies - the capacities and possibilities of individuals and groups to move beyond the vicissitudes of necessity and survival in order to fully participate in exercising some control over the myriad forces that shape their daily lives.

 
3/

If neoliberal authoritarianism is to be challenged and overcome, it is crucial that intellectuals, unions, workers, young people and various social movements unite to reclaim democracy as a central element in fashioning a radical imagination that foregrounds the necessity for drastically altering the material and symbolic forces that hide behind a counterfeit claim to participatory democracy. This means imagining a radical democracy that can provide a living wage, decent health care, public works and massive investments in education, child care and housing for the poor, along with a range of other crucial social provisions that can make a difference between living and dying for those who have been cast into the ranks of the disposable. This means at the very least recognizing that government has a responsibility to serve the public good rather than the financial and corporate interests of the rich and powerful who are driving the United States into the dark recesses of authoritarianism.

4/

The rebuilding of a radical democracy must be accompanied with placing a high priority on renewing the social contract, embracing the demands of the commons and encouraging social investments.

I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that reviving the radical imagination, as a call to reclaim a radical democracy, be understood as simply a pragmatic adjustment of the institutions of liberal democracy or a return to the social democracy of the New Deal and Great Society. On the contrary, any rethinking of the political can only be comprehended as part of a radical break from liberalism and formalistic politics if there is to be any move toward a genuine democracy in which matters of equality, power and justice are central to what can be called a radical democratic politics. 

2014 has been the best year of my life

I feel filled with such appreciation for everything that has happened in this year. I love where I am right now and I am so thankful for everything along the way that's brought me here.

I've deepened existing friendships and made new ones. I've challenged myself and changed. It's been a milestone year; a year of big accomplishments and passing through thresholds. I finished my Master's and I moved away from Toronto, my home of over a decade - something I never really thought I'd do. But I'm really glad I did.

I have continued to grow, to increase my understanding and practice of loving-kindness, ethics of care, mutual aid. I have been gentle and strong, I have taken care of myself very well, and I feel good. I hope people in my life feel loved by me to the degree that I feel it; I feel it strongly and a lot.

Of course I've also had my struggles and my lonely moments. But this year I have felt a solid foundation of goodness.

I feel such gratitude for everyone and everything that has helped me be this and feel this. I have had so much support.

At this point in my life, I feel less like an 'individual' than I ever have. I am an extension of and reflection of you. Thank you.

away & with

Ah, I interrupted this habit before it could actually catch. I stopped writing. I never wrote well. I much prefer verbal dialogue. I've been having that. But it's fleeting. I still long to capture something a little more tangible for me to roll around and play with for a bit after the company's gone.

I've been in Vancouver, visiting good friends. Visiting friends with whom conversation is ongoing, even when it stopped for large portions of time (like one year, since my last visit to Vancouver).

A friend with whom I've never sat down and talked in darkness, in stillness; we've always been overlapping in the fast-paced circles and rhythms of a different city. But those spaces of overlap have been significant, for both of us I think, and I'm glad we get to keep doing that -- despite the geographic relocation (for both of us).

A friend who questions, compulsively, in big, deep ways; it's tiring for him, I know he winds himself so tight, and relaxing is just not an option. I am happy to be a loving, soft sponge. I am quite genuinely content to let him spill into me like that. I know he's been holding on for so long. And frankly, I've worked hard to be a loving, soft sponge, and I am not ashamed. And he helps me work through so much deep stuff of my own. He is a man I trust. He is so honest and forthcoming, even and especially about the ways that he's fucked up, the ways that he's been fundamentally shaped by patriarchy, to ways in which he knows he can play it to his advantage. I find it comforting that he speaks so frankly, and that he seems willing to act like a type of masculine proxy for all my deep, underlying issues with dudes. It's really fucking helpful, especially at a time last week when I was spiraling out in anxiety and trauma-response, due to all of the public discourse around rape culture, consent, and gender violence.

A friend who...gosh, it feels too intimate to say what I actually think I feel. I mean, they are my friend, I respect and trust them so much. I find them to be so wise, so compassionate, such a beautiful human. Like, totally fucking gorgeous, it strikes my heart and surprises me each time that I feel this so strongly. Like, my heart flutters when our legs touch under the table. Another friend who I haven't spent as much time with as I would ideally like to, but I appreciate that it feels like we have a deep friendship despite that fact. I have loved getting to share the things that we have. I just wish there were space where I could let it be known that, without any particular expectation, I would like to hold their heart even more, and cradle it with such tenderness, if they wanted to reveal it a little more.

After that visit, I was sick sick sick. Exhausted. Now, visitors here is Victoria, and I feel rejuvenated once again. More favourite people who I love very deeply. I'm so lucky!

And new connections. Amazing connections. One in particular where we somehow keep finding ourselves in the same place. Not simply physically; that's pretty easy in a town of this size. But when they talk, they are somehow narrating my inner thoughts -- it keeps happening! And, of course, they have their own whole vast world way beyond me. But we have uncannily similar experiences. And we meet each other so easily, I know we just have so much to share. I am looking forward to more and more and more.

People of planet earth, I love you.

a letter to an ex

It's "private," but it's really not, so here it is:

Rxx,

As these public conversations about gender violence, misogyny, rape culture and consent play out, I feel compelled to write you to remind you that I have outstanding grievances toward you which have not been resolved -- furthermore, I'm not even sure they've actually been heard by you.

I had been thinking about these issues in relation to you prior to this recent explosion of public discourse -- I have been having conversation and writing about this for quite a while -- but now that these public conversations are happening, it is difficult for me to not say something directly to you, and that is why I am writing you now.

I am not going to restate all the things I've already said before. I am simply going to urge you to contemplate the space of unresolved grievance that sits between us. I am not going to ask anything of you, because I am not going to open myself up to the vulnerability of whether my safety and well-being means anything to you. I've seen the result of that question too many times.

But I am going to assert that while you seem to believe that "red is red, and blue is blue" and that our accounts of our shared experiences can't be that different from each other, that is very untrue. In fact, your statement is just a continuation of the ongoing dismissal and overwriting of my actual life and my actual experiences and my actual subjectivity. 

I have never tried to stop you from doing anything, I have never tried to take anything away from you -- except for the things that undermined my subjectivity. I only wanted my right to choice (or freedom, as you might call it) to be respected as highly as you respected your own.

I hate that I was so deeply hurt and disrepected by someone I trusted so much -- not only as an intimate friend and a lover, but as a feminist ally.

(Insert angry feminine archetype of your choice here.)
- Stef

responsibility / a mess

As a follow up to the previous, I'm also thinking about my relationship with the state -- or maybe, more generally, what social and political institutions look like in my ideal mind. I'm also having great conversations (that I wish I could recreate but I can't) critiquing the current libertarian/lifestyle anarchist mode of seeing "freedom" as the ultimate political goal. I believe very strongly in responsibility, rather than freedom, as the thing we should be cultivating and nourishing. I believe that these huge systems of dominance and oppression implicate us all -- and there is no easy way out. There is no escape hatch.

We must respond to these things. We must understand our relationships to them. We must be accountable. We must let others call us into account. And given that this doesn't mesh well with the political ideals of unencumbered "freedom" (unless it's along the lines of my existentialist freedom, which is choice, which is responsibility), it is unlikely that most people would desire to do this on their own.

So what is the role of the state, or of social and political institutions, in potentially moving us toward a more responsible future? Can the state have a transformative function? Can it help bring about greater equity? Of course we can and should reconfigure political formations, but doesn't the state have a responsibility?

Right now, I am clumsily slamming together two different strands of thought -- which I know are connected, but probably not exactly where I articulated them in this crude rendering. But I guess this is just a thought bookmark for myself.


==> Edit/update:

For one thing, it seems this blog is receiving page views, which is totally unexpected and weird. Who is out there?

For another thing, I am completely unsatisfied with anything I have articulated here so far.

I wanted to share a quote by Gustav Landauer which is closer to my thoughts and inclinations than what I have so far written here:

The State is a condition, a certain relationship among human beings, a mode of behavior, we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one and other... We are the State and continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community... 

 I also wanted to share a thoughtful piece by someone with whom I have become acquainted recently, which highlights and takes down the "liberal thought-magic" that imagines and assumes that the only politics worthy of consideration happen at the state level and within so-called civil society ("the public").

I'm re-introducing myself to collectivist anarchist ideals. I think there is a lot within these currents of thought that resonates with me. But I am trying to grapple with and understand what my assumptions, thoughts, and hopes are about about political and social institutions. And it's messy. So pardon me.