The Scenario

For more than six millennia, the virus of patriarchal imperialism and its attendant maladies (war, conquest, enslavement, degradation, pollution) have been a greater or lesser scourge on our planet and her peoples.

Six centuries ago, however, new and more virulent strains of the virus emerged, turbocharged by racist and capitalist techniques and technologies of power, and these new strains of patriarchal imperialism, aggravated by the unspeakable brutalities of capitalist war and racializing rule, have plunged our planet and her peoples into a social and ecological death spiral from which there may be no recovery.

Indeed, by all reliable accounts, we are fast approaching the terminal stages of this death spiral, the endgame of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism…

Ours is the Age of Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide. 

It is an age marked by a dire deepening of the deathly double fracture that is the defining product of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism: one fracture dividing the world between the “superior races” who dominate and devastate and the “inferior races” of the dominated and devastated; the other fracture dividing the world between the “civilized” realms where human culture prevails and the “environment” where a nature, raw and untapped, clings to existence. 

“Global Apartheid” names the regimes of murder by commission and omission that maintain and advance the powers and privileges of the “superior races” and the “talented tenths” -- the latter being those “exceptional specimens” of the “inferior races” who desperately vie to emulate and rival their “superiors” by violently distinguishing themselves from the “ordinary specimens” of their kind.

“Planetary Ecocide” names the “managed depletion” of the “environment” in the service of the pleasures and profits of the masters of the civilized realms of human culture -- these masters being bent on maximizing the powers and privileges that they enjoy at the top of the above mentioned racial hierarchies.

The powerful and privileged masters of the realms of human culture willfully persist and violently insist upon promoting a climate of ignorance so that few become wise to the endgame and properly identify the horrors of Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide. If we are to counter this climate of ignorance and put a stop to the present social and ecological death spiral, it is imperative that we who are wise to the horrors of Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide assemble and organize ourselves to share resources and collaborate towards the following ends:

• Recognizing the devastating realities of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism; 

• Recollecting that which has been devastated by the advances of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism;

• Resisting further advances of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism; and 

• Repairing that which has been devastated by the advances of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism.

The first iteration of the Against Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide research group (AGAPE) revolved around collectively becoming wise to the horrors of Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide. Now, having collectively become wise to these horrors, the next iteration of AGAPE will revolve around preparing to confront the means by which the forces of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism repress endeavors to engage in the practices of recognition, recollection, resistance, and repair that constitute forms of anti-imperialist rebellion. These means of repression are various but they can be placed into five broad categories that differ from but defer to one another in devious ways.

• There are “guns and bombs” or means of physical violence -- deployed to threaten, brutalize, and kill rebels and to flatten sites of rebellion.

• There are “smoke and mirrors” or means of cultural violence -- deployed to obscure and distort reality and to mystify histories and legacies of rebellion. 

• There are “policies and procedures” or means of institutional violence -- deployed to identify potential rebels, administer and surveil their lives, and police their livelihoods.

• There are “prisons and fortresses” or means of carceral violence -- deployed by interlocking turns to keep some rebels locked in and others locked out.

• Lastly, there are “carrots and sticks” or means of behavioral violence -- deployed by interlocking turns to encourage compliance and acquiescence and to discourage rebellion.

If we are to take rebellion seriously and earnestly engage in the practices of recognition, recollection, resistance, and repair that effect rebellion, we must carefully prepare ourselves to confront and counter the various means of repression that will be deployed against us. To do otherwise would be to proceed without integrity and seriousness and to make a farce of rebellion. With this in mind, we will gather to consider what it will cost us to rise in rebellion against the forces of patriarchal imperialism and racial capitalism and bring an end to Global Apartheid and Planetary Ecocide, investigating each category of repressive apparatus that threatens  us one-by-one and in their entanglements with one another.

AGAPE seminar & studio sessions will take place once a month virtually via Zoom. As previously, sessions will abide by the principle of intellectual generosity. Participants will be encouraged to come as they are, to drop in whenever they can find the time and for however long they can find the time, regardless of whether they read the texts in advance. Participants who can only drop by for 15 minutes in the middle of a session without having done the readings will be just as welcome as participants who read every text twice over in advance and stay for full sessions.

There is no cost to participate, but those who have the means are encouraged to make a donation to support the organizer. If you would like to participate or donate, please send an email to muindi@thefyrthyr.org.

Reference Texts

• “On Violence” from The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon

• We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson

• Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes

• The Subversive Seventies by Michael Hardt

• Tip of the Spear Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton

• The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad

• Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination by Adom Getachew

• Policing Empires by Julian Go

• Border & Rule by Harsha Walia

• Colonialism in Global Perspective by Kris Manjapra

• Decolonial Ecology by Malcom Ferdinand

• Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe

• Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form by Rizvana Bradley

• All Incomplete by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

• The Surrounds: Life Within and Beyond Capture by AbdouMaliq Simone