For the Ancestors
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
— Karl Marx from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
“[Because] even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.”
— Walter Benjamin from “On the Concept of History”
[But] to see the dead as the individuals they once were tends to obscure their nature. Try to consider the living as we might assume the dead to do: collectively. The collective would accrue not only across space but also throughout time. It would include all those who have ever lived. And so we would also be thinking of the dead. The living reduce the dead to those who have lived; yet the dead already include the living in their own great collective.
[…] How do the living live with the dead? Until the dehumanization of society by capitalism, all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete. Thus living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the eliminated.
— John Berger from “Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead”
Western(ized) scientists who present themselves to the public as experts in the field of psychology are claiming to have rather recently “discovered” a fact that every “primitive” non-Western person will have been well aware of since early childhood: the fact that the spirits of our ancestors remain with us.
In order to make the claim that they have “discovered” something, these Western(ized) scientists refuse to use “primitivisms” that are sensible and poetic. Instead, they prefer to use banal mannerisms: they speak of “multigenerational family systems” and “stress being transmitted transgenerationally.”. These banal mannerisms only serve to help Western(ized) scientists cling to that “uniquely modern form of egoism” that “[reduces] the dead [to] the eliminated”.
Why are Western(ized) scientists so desperate to maintain that the dead are those who have been eliminated?
Well, think of it this way, if the dead victims of Western civilization’s genocidal conquests are still with us, then the West could be said to owe these dead victims apologies and reparations. But if these victims have been eliminated and are no longer with us, then it is meaningless to apologize and make reparations to them.
What’s more, if the dead perpetrators of all the genocides, ethnocides, and ecocides that constitute Western civilization’s conquests are still with us, then these dead perpetrators ought to be confronted and challenged to apologize and make reparations to their victims in the name of truth and reconciliation. But if these perpetrators have been eliminated and are no longer with us, then it is meaningless to confront and challenge them.
When communing with the dead — no matter whether it is to confront and challenge, or make amends, or express gratitude — the most common mistake is, as John Berger writes , “to see the dead as the individuals they once were,” for this “tends to obscure their nature.” Whenever the Western(ized) scientist scoffs at the “primitive” non-Westerner who defers to the spirits of their ancestors, you will find that the Western(ized) scientist is purposefully making this very mistake: they are presuming that the “primitive” non-Westerner is saying that each and every one of their individual ancestors exists in the present as a spirit that is in touch with them directly. When talking about “stress transmitted transgenerationally,” it is often more sensible and more poetic for one to say “I can sense my anxious mother’s spirit in the room” even though one knows very well that, thinking literally, one is talking about a situation triggering stress that has been communicated transgenerationally to one’s own person via one’s late mother. Western(ized) scientists take such figurative sayings literally in order to make “primitive” non-Westerners out to be superstitious fools, but Western(ized) scientists are, in fact, fooling themselves in order to avoid the truth of what is being said so poetically and sensibly by the “primitive” non-Westerner. To add insult to injury, when compelled to admit the truth of such a “primitivism,” the Western(ized) scientist will proceed to make an elaborate show of explicating all that was obviously implicit in the “primitivism” in order to claim to have made a “scientific discovery” or a “theoretical breakthrough.”
It is as if I said to you, “Your wool coat is in the closet.” And then you were to respond to me, “You silly fool. My wool coat is not simply in the closet; it is, scientifically speaking, hanging on a coat hanger in the closet along with five other coats that are not my wool coat.” You would hardly be surprised if I clucked my tongue at you and told you to fuck off.
We who are not afraid of being called “(neo)primitives,” – we who sensibly and poetically speak of “our ancestors remaining with us” — read the “latest” psychological findings on “multi-generational family systems,” cluck our tongues at the overwrought verbiage and the scrupulous efforts to avoid “primitivisms” that make sense and poetry, and we say, “Get the fuck outta here!” We do the same when we read climate science reports that avoid sensible and poetic “primitivisms” like “care for the forest that feeds you” in favor of banal mannerisms like “engage in sustainable agroforestry.”
Too many “civilized” and “modern” people speak dismissively of “primitive ancestor cults” and imagine that all “primitive” peoples worship and serve their ancestors like “civilized” peoples do monarchs, oligarchs, Big Gods, and other imperialist patriarchs. Too few regard “primitive” practices closely enough and think about them deeply enough to recognize their psychological sophistication. Those who thoughtlessly dismiss “primitive superstitions” regarding ancestral spirits are refusing to comprehend matters: these so-called “superstitious practices” are, more often than not, sophisticated devices for recognizing and healing what psychologists have recently come to recognize as chronic stresses and traumas transmitted transgenerationally.
If Western(ized) scientists are now making a show of explicating some of what was obviously implicit in non-Western(ized) others’ observations regarding ancestral spirits, it is because there is now something to be profitably extracted from those observations. Indeed, what has happened is this: the transgenerational transmission of chronic stresses and traumas has become so acute in our time that there is a growing market for treating those who are suffering from these chronic stresses and traumas. The aim of Western(ized) psychology is not at all to heal chronic stresses and traumas that have been transmitted through the generations: the Western(ized) scientist does not want to enable peoples to confront and challenge their cruel ancestors nor seek reparations for their suffering ancestors. Rather, the aim of Western(ized) psychology is to find better ways to “manage” the transgenerational transmission of chronic stresses and traumas without ever enabling peoples to heal them. palliative treatment instead of curative treatment.
Increased exposure to chronic stresses and psychological traumas sickens and eventually kills us. This is a recent “discovery” claimed by scientists in the burgeoning field psycho-immuno-neuro-endocrinology. But imperialist patriarchies have known this to be true for millennia. Ay, for some five hundred years, imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy has, far more than any other imperialist patriarchy, excelled at using chronic stresses and psychological traumas to sicken and to kill those it oppresses. To use sensible and poetic terms, imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy has especially excelled at preventing the living from communing with the dead, so that chronic stresses and psychological traumas are communicated transgenerationally without ever healing.
All imperialisms work by filtering and channeling differing social elements apart from one another, making it increasingly burdensome and unappealing for differing social elements to commune fluently with one another, and making it more practical and appealing for some social elements to dominate, exploit, and eliminate others. Borrowing a term coined by Achille Mbembe, “necropolitical” imperialisms are those that filter and channel the living apart from the dead (including those cast as “socially dead”), and make it practical and appealing for the living to regard the dead as the eliminated. There is no curative psychotherapy for today’s prevailing stresses and traumas that does not involve countering today’s ruling necropolitical imperialisms; a psychotherapy that does not aim to counter necropolitical imperialisms can only ever provide palliative care. Countering necropolitical imperialisms means making it increasingly easy and appealing for the living and the dead to confluence and commune with one another: not so that the living and the dead differ any less from one another but, rather to the contrary, so that the living and the dead come to defer more to one another despite differing. To recognize this is to recognize that what many Western(ized) anthropologists have called practices in and through which the living “venerate” the dead are better understood as practices for (re-)creating “mutual deferences” amongst the living and the dead, involving confrontations, challenges, and reparations in addition to or as opposed to venerations.
