Youssef Ishaghpour: To you words are enemies.
Jean-Luc Godard: No, only when they’re taken as orders, or thoughtless, or used malevolently as weapons.
- Cinema: the archaelogy of film and the memory of a century, p. 103.
Theory and practice. The word and the deed. “Writers don’t know what they’re talking about, men of action can’t express themselves. Look at Mao,” says a man in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Notre Musique.
What about women of action? Unfortunately, that’s Godard for you. As for Mao, well, I’m of a different generation – and temperament – than Godard, so Mao isn’t my frame of reference. But I’m just as fascinated with the separation between theory and practice, reflection and action. Godard has always been concerned with how words limit what we can express, and I think this is why he puts so much hope in the power of the image to communicate the uncertainties of life.
Like Jean-Luc Godard, I have a love/hate relationship with words. Part of what makes radical politics so exciting is its ability to think of the world in new ways – to employ theory. But theory, given that its mostly communicated through writing, also runs the danger of tripping over words. While some people guard their ideologies like a fortress – quick to denounce so-and-so as “not an Anarchist!” for instance – others are so hesitant they refuse to adopt any words to describe themselves, and may even go as far as to reject “theory” completely.
As I see it, neither approach is very useful. Ideologues’ allegiance to labels overlooks how struggle occurs independent of vocabulary: people can revolt without raising a flag. But if we refuse to engage with theory, we risk allowing the vocabulary of others’ to set the terms.
There’s got to be a happy medium that puts the written word to use without over-committing to ideology. This is why I love reading periodicals – monthlies, quarterlies, annuals, you name it. The periodical’s task, as I see it, is to bridge theory and practice; it’s frequent appearance allows quick response to events, both describing and theorizing. Unlike a book, a periodical never aspires to have the last word on a subject. Instead, it usually has the first word.
By this criteria, my favorite publication these days is Left Turn magazine. At its best, it is a forum for radical organizers’ to reflect on their work and to put it into the larger context of the organizing people are doing elsewhere, both in North America and globally. It strays away from ideological terms – like “socialist,” “marxist,” “anarchist” – and sticks to broader, more descriptive (but no less social movement-based) words like “anti-capitalist,” “anti-imperialist,” “anti-racist,” “radical feminist.” Left Turn is quartlerly, so it has a commitment to keep pace with events as they happen.
Another favorite is Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. Obviously, it comes from a particular ideological tradition – it’s the journal of the Institute of Anarchist Studies, an organization that funds radical writers with an interest in all things anarchist. But its my belief, anyway, that something sets anarchism apart from other political theories. Because anarchism throughout its history has been so action-oriented – stressing the deed over the word – its theories have a greater amount of openness. When anarchist theory is applied to a present day situation, what results aren’t rigid formulas, but important, probing insights.
Perspectives has been around for quite awhile, and has gone through a lot of changes. It used to be a newsletter, then it was a magazine, now its a full-on 100-page paperback journal. It’s still dealing with growing pains – lots of pixelated, unclear images and more spelling errors than you’d find in an academic publication – but its new format is really promising. Each issue has a theme, allowing for a close and thorough look at a hot topic. The current issue is on “Borders and Migration,” and includes everything from etymologies of the words border and region, to thoughtful reports on anti-border organizing, to book reviews, interviews, and poetry. It’s also very international in scope, with maps of European detention centers and an analysis of Canadian immigration policies followed shortly after by an interview with a Bolivian anarcha-feminist.
This themed approach will be especially fruitful if Perspectives keeps its focus on current events and maintains such stylistically diverse content. One of the problems that’s befallen the publication in the past has been an overly academic bearing. I can’t think of too many specifics without the issues in front of me, but I can recall being uncomfortable with the prevalence of “professional” scholars in previous issues. It was my problem too, I suppose, since I contributed a book review that discussed in part my experiences as an undergraduate – and which I completed for college credit! The university isn’t inherently bad, but like all institutions it brings with it a certain vocabulary that’s insular, if not outright confusing.
As I see it, the vocabulary radicals use has to balance between references to the concepts of our traditions, and the more open – if more compromised – language of everyday life. For anarchism, I think this means engaging with the world as it is, participating in social movements rather than forsaking them for our own organizations. I don’t actually think there are many – if any – anarchists who want to shut off the rest of the world and resign , but our theory and practice can often have that effect. The best anarchist theory – and the best periodicals – can offer is honest and useful reflection on daily life and the struggles to change it for the better. The worst of it retreats into comfortable words and analysis that appeases a desire to critique this world, but has no commitment to making that critique transparent to others.
Illustrating both sides of the coin, in my opinion, is the latest issue of Fifth Estate, an anarchist magazine. It’s been published for over thirty years (quarterly, I believe), but my knowledge of the magazine only really begins with the current issue, having thrown down the $3 for it at my local newsstand essentially on a whim. On the cover of this issue of Fifth Estate is the image of a plane flying over a city; it’s an appropriate image, in my experience, because several articles in the magazine flew right over my head.
Several articles made very valuable arguments, but left me behind, as they seemed to address countercultures I didn’t even know existed (especially David Meester’s “Letter from Appalachia,” and to a lesser extent, Cookie Orlando’s “Gender Trouble at Burning Man). The most confusing of the lot, however, were two highly theoretical articles full of references to Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze. If you haven’t any idea who Guy and Gilles are, well, I’m afraid you’re already left behind. The first piece, by Will Weikart, argues that radicals stop thinking dialectically, and start thinking in “immanence;” the other, by Jack Bratch, has some thoughts about the State and activism coded, in Bratch’s words, in a “Nietzschean/Debordian strategic evaluation.” Not the sort of easy reading you’d expect from a newsstand periodcal, I’m fine with that. It’s the relevance of the work that I find myself struggling to comprehend.
Despite my confusion, I’m really glad I picked this issue up, because it had two of the best pieces of anarchist analysis I’ve read in a long time. The first, “Anarchism and Disability” by Mitzi Waltz, explores practical ways to cope with the complex social dimensions of disabilities, both mental and physical. Waltz is a professional scholar, but you wouldn’t know it from reading her article, which reminded me of the best of Colin Ward’s writing in its accessibility and practicality. The other article I enjoyed was “Solidarity, Immigration, and Border Regimes,” by Onto, which discussed the author’s experiences as an anarchist struggling against murderous border policies in solidarity with those most affected by those policies, immigrant workers. Like Waltz’s article, it was wholly committed to engaging the world with anarchist principles.
I can’t finish up a blog post – of all things! – about print publications without acknowledging the fact that print publications are really struggling in the face of the internet to stay in operation – and to stay relevant. I think the journal route that Perspectives on Anarchist Theory is taking will probably prove most fruitful – a journal is published less frequently, and thus can be more in-depth than a magazine weighing reporting and analysis, like Left Turn or Fifth Estate. As much as I love magazines, up-to-date radical reporting – by the written word, anyways – is quickly becoming the domain of the internet. A lot of the most exciting writing and analysis is happening at the websites to the left – too many great things to mention now. Too many great things to mention – lets hope it stays that way!
