Against Global Apartheid & Planetary Ecocide (A.G.A.P.E.)
Imagine a world in which political geographies are drawn by the ever changing flows of freshwater that are vital to life on Earth, so that all borders become fluid and dynamic; a world in which territorial nations are abolished, so that all nations become, in effect, diasporic nations; a world in which each and every geopolitical unit is a fluid multi-national body inclusive of all the different diasporas that suffuse a given freshwater ecoregion; a world in which the many multitudes of the diffuse diasporas and all of the different ecoregional bodies are included within a planetary body that makes plans pertaining to the freshwaters of the ecosphere as a whole.
We, the anti-colonial ecoregionalists of the 21st century — the wild and unruly bastards of the 20th century’s anti-colonial nationalists, the land defenders and the water protectors — are endeavoring to make this world a reality.
In striving to realize this world, we are struggling against the various forms of inter-national and intra-national colonialism presently administering the cruel pleasures and foul profits of genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide according to the racist logic of global apartheid; and we are struggling for the nurture and care of the beautiful and differentiated languages, cultures, customs, and ways of life of the Earth’s people, which are vital to the health of the planet.
Our world-making project turns on four spokes.
FREE MIGRATION & THE DIASPORIZATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES.
Against territorial nationalism. — Free migration and the diasporization of national identities does not imply the obliteration of nations’ roots but, rather, the creeping of their roots and the spreading of their branches and leaves. For instance, the roots of the Black African diaspora remain deep in Sub-Saharan Africa but they have crept outward into the Caribbean Islands and the Americas and, what’s more, branches and leaves of the African diaspora can now be found all over the globe.
THE CREOLIZATION OF ETHNIC & RACIAL IDENTITIES.
Against Eurocentrism, white supremacy, anti-blackness, and all other forms of ethnocentrism and racism. — The creolization of ethnic and racial identities does not imply the obliteration of races and ethnicities but, rather, their continuous variation. The writings of Édouard Glissant tell of how the creolization of the peoples of the Black Atlantic has not produced a fixed monolithic monoculture but, instead, many improvised polyrhythmic polycultures. Creolization is not the homogenizing assimilation of the many into one (“e pluribus unum”) but the hybridizing proliferation of the many into more (“e pluribus multis”).
THE QUEERING OF GENDER & SEXUAL IDENTITIES.
Against patriarchal sexism. — Similar to the creolization of ethnic and racial identities, the queering of gender and sexual identities does not imply the obliteration of genders and sexes but, rather, their continuous variation. The queering of gender and sexual identities neither yields a single gray gender identity nor a single gray sexual orientation but, instead, yields colorful spectra of transitional and transitory genders and polymorphously perverse sexualities.
Given that different cultures configure their gender and sexual identities differently, the queering of gender and sexual identities is, in fact, coterminous with the creolization of ethnic and racial identities. That being said, we must separately emphasize the queering of gender and sexual identities because the hetero-patriarchal power formations that prevail over our world today are particularly hostile towards the queering of gender and sexual identities that follows from the creolization of ethnic and racial identities.
CONVIVIAL COMMUNISM.
Against industrial capitalism. — Convivial communism does not imply the obliteration of industrial capitalism but, rather, its marginalization. Convivial communism centers relations of production that provide for social subsistence, and it marginalizes relations of production that impede social subsistence.
Industrial capitalism, by contrast, centers relations of production that privilege capital accumulation, and it marginalizes relations of production that impede capital accumulation, with an extreme prejudice against the relations of production that deep rooting indigenous peoples have developed to provide for social subsistence.
Whereas industrial capitalism endeavors to liquidate any and all relations of subsistence that are determined to be unprofitable, convivial communism endeavors to enable wildly different relations of subsistence to proliferate and radiate mutualistically, together in Relation, regardless of their profitability.
“Relation contaminates, sweetens, as a principle, or as flower dust. ”
The maneuvers with which we steer the wheel of our world-making project are three:
TAKING DIRECT ACTION
Against rights activism and against protest as an appeal to authority — we defy any and all forms of stable, non-consensual, and non-negotiable authority.
As David Graeber once put it, the difference between protest and direct action is that protest, however militant, is an appeal to authorities to behave differently; by contrast, direct action is a matter of proceeding as one would if the existing structure of power did not exist or, to be more precise, as if the existing structure of power is unstable and consensually (re-)negotiable as opposed to stable, non-consensual, and non-negotiable.
Our motto: Better to defy authority than appeal to it.
MAKING CASES
Against legislating rules and regulations — we defend direct actions with due process.
As Gilles Deleuze once put it, all of the abominations through which humans have suffered are cases: not denials of abstract rights, but abominable cases. One can say that these cases resemble each other, have something in common, but that only makes them situations for jurisprudence and due process, not for the abstract legislation of rights. For us, politics is a matter of inventing jurisprudences and forms of due process such that, following each abominable case, plans are made to ward off and protect against the recurrence of the same and similar such abominations.
Our motto: Never legislate when you can litigate.
MAKING PLANS
Against formulating policies and charging police officers with securing compliance with said policies — we establish planning bodies and charge planners with negotiating dissensus and finding consensus, so that all who are involved and affected by a given plan recognize their needs and feelings in the given plan.
As Fred Moten and Stefano Harney once put it, planning is a means to develop supportive and sustainable communities along with others. Policy, by contrast, is means to administer scarcity and precarity for the sake of others and on behalf of others.
Our motto: Don’t make policy for others, make plans with them.
