SKIN IN THE GAME
Inquiring into the What else in activism
~~~~~
10.03.2024
The allure of the familiar and the accustomed only shines more brightly, more reassuringly, set against a background of disarray, disillusionment, fear, anger, and disenchantment. The comfort of well-worn strategies tempts us, even if it is also a smothering weight.
Pause: the hushed silence of a still lake. Reflect: the whispers of one’s own thoughts. Step back: the unsettling embrace of solitude. Recognize: the weight of one’s own limitations. Accept: the fragile thread of one's limits. Mistrust: muttered uncertainties in a dark room. Unlearn: abandoned layers of shed skin.
A hell of a project for activists attached to doing and more doing. For whom productivity and self-esteem entwine and exhaustion is a badge of honor. For whom slowing down, disengaging, acknowledging failures, (re)questioning our work, suspecting our assumptions may seem like an unfathomable risk.
But doesn’t the widespread disillusionment with the possibilities of progressive change demand we take the risk? The pandemic of burnout in social justice movements and the rise of reactionary movements of all kinds not only reveal our exhaustion but expose the shortcomings of our organizing methods and perhaps the sterility of our most fundamental assumptions.
How could it be otherwise? In a time of global mass extinctions and interconnected crises that together threaten humanity's survival, the dead end of twentieth-century neoliberal forms of activism is obvious. It may even be that conventional activism’s emphasis on institutional solutions and “inclusion”— within the (violent) circles of state and corporate power—not only fails to dismantle the existing systems of dominance but strengthens them. All while preaching “diversity,” “equity,” “equality,” and “justice.” As Sara Ahmed has pointed out, “when race and gender equality become neoliberal techniques, they can become techniques for concealing inequalities.”
Meanwhile, the allure of the familiar and the accustomed only shines more brightly, more reassuringly, set against a background of disarray, disillusionment, fear, anger, and disenchantment. The comfort of well-worn strategies tempts us, even if it is also a smothering weight.
The times call for acknowledging our limitations, despair, fear, and failures. How else can we mobilize them to energize rather than paralyze us? What possibilities lie unnoticed in these “negative” affects? What must we leave behind? What new kinds of engagement are required, and what are their enabling conditions?
At Djolifon, we grapple with these paradoxes by offering activists space in which to probe the uncharted regions of radical political imaginaries and investigate, individually and collectively, the realms of what else is possible in response to the crisis of our time.
We seek to understand the depths of our unlearning and grieving and the opportunities they might contain. This must be a process of unlearning that critically questions and reevaluates the assumptions and strategies of our engrained habits of organizing.
Take for instance how engrossed in doing “important work” most activists have become, and how this feeds a false sense of consequentiality associated with the “frenziedness” of conventional activism. Doing at all costs is costing us dearly, argues Norma Wong, an American Zen priest and activist: “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns […] to commit oneself to too many projects […] is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence.”
Perhaps such unintended cooperation in violence is one of the root causes of the pandemic of burnout in social justice movements, which ought to reflect how unwell we are if it does nothing else. Again, how could it be otherwise considering the state of the world and the immense emotional, physical, and monetary demands on activists? The dangers of our time are all too clear. Could staying with the pain of being unwell be one of our weights to heal in ways that lay a foundation for understanding our collective and planetary sorrow?
Djolifon’s sense is that this foundation, rather than being disheartening, has the potential to open a path for a deeper grieving process that can acknowledge and address the loss of certainties associated with an institution-centered notion of change and transformation. Grieving might be an invitation to “get out of the way” and notice other ways.
Grieving
is like standing on the edge of a vast ocean,
Being swayed by the crash of waves against the shore,
lulling you into receptivity to the mystery of existence.
It's like immersing yourself in the depths of that ocean,
where the sublime and the monstrous coexist
and surround you with contrasting forces.
Grieving
becomes one’s guide through the labyrinth,
unraveling the threads of a life that’s grown stagnant,
inviting you to grasp the hands of a resounding yes
to the pain inherent
in being human.
In submersion in the dynamic processes of life,
its sublimity and its monstrosity
simultaneously.
Grieving
is a slap that awakens you from this getting-by life
making you susceptible to sensuality,
to a rapprochement of dimensions beyond the limits of thought
and those of the body.
It is a coming-to-know compassion—
for one's life, those of others, of the planet, of the world,
sewing our interconnection,
and inviting the abundance of what else.
So, how to get out of the way to make way for what else? Could it be a matter of saying yes to life in a times of mass death? We need this yes to reconnect us to our pain, individual, collective, and planetary. This yes that says no to a life of transaction, extraction, and violence. A suicidal yes in a way. A yes that moves us out of this getting-by life (which the majority of us has been confined to), that breaks free from the desire for certainty and security. A very risky yes.
Our skin, already immersed in the game of existence and survival, beckons us to delve deeper into the meaning of being human, especially in turbulent times.
These inquiries (and many more) are the motivating forces behind Djolifon, a new initiative aiming to be a political space of probing, unlearning, reflection, experimentation, and co-creation of other ideas, knowledges, ways of knowing, and modes of engagement. We seek to bring forth forms of creativity and activism that are comfortable with uncertainty, failure, and limitation, especially ideas and practices that bring the ways of the small, the slow, the “inefficient,” the “irrational,” and above all, the heretofore invisible into radical political imaginaries and engagements in activism.
As a facilitator and co-conspirator in this probing into the uncertain and the unnoticed Djolifon aims to make the following offering possible:
Convene and facilitate online and physical space to instigate critical lines of inquiry, approaches and processes that trouble our current notions of activism and support individual and collective investigation(s) of other possibilities and potentialities for addressing our environmental and civilizational crisis.
Convene and facilitate individual and collective generative practices dedicated to attending to our wounds and grappling with the challenge of living and honoring all life amidst mass extinctions and organized chaos.
Mobilize resource to fund the work we set ourselves to do.
Document and study the dynamic, fluid interplay between the unfolding challenges of this historical moment and the failures and potentialities of our ways of meeting them.
Come and let us instigate the fresh forms of disobedience needed to respond to the intricate tapestry of existential, spiritual, political, and civilizational challenges that confront us. Together, let us embrace the necessity of stepping out of the comforting but limited familiarity of the status quo into the uncharted territories of radical political imaginaries in our individual and collective investigation(s) of what else is possible in response to the multifaceted crises of our time.
~~~
Words and photos by Mariam S. Armisen