Depression Voucher
What comes after defeat?
Georgia O’Keeffe, “Ladder to the Moon,” 1958.
My book is coming out this year. But to be honest, it’s been hard to feel too excited. Often, it seems like the world’s ending. I lost my job and have been furiously freelancing ever since to try and stay afloat—all while LA erupts in flames, relatives get sicker and sicker, and Gaza is relentlessly bombed. Trump won again and this time he seems to have more power than ever. Political depression is all too common.
What do we do after the pain of defeat? Right now we are sitting and stewing, bitter with every right to be. What can animate us back into being--into striving for change? Or have we lost the will? In the wake of our reactionary election and the Left's scattered forces, a variety of strategies may help us move forward. The changes required are not small, nor are they insignificant. The way forward requires the worst thing of all: sacrifice.
The vibes are rancid. Not just bad, but rotted, as in, they must be pulled out by the roots. Tricky to do when everyone is turning into a reactionary, a dimestore revolution of irony, individualism, and petty grievances over the word "woke." The political optimism of Bernie Sanders, MeToo, Black Lives Matter protests and uprisings, and gay marriage hasn't gone as everyone's hoped. Instead, major regressions and losses have occurred. Sincerity is out. The politics of love Marianne Williamson argued for are out. Healthcare is also out. Everyone's waiting for the world to collapse, to fully burn down the way Greta Thurnberg has said it will. This was supposed to inspire action. Instead, everyone's watching out for Number One joking about dancing in the ruin.
The turn to reactionary politics (anti-minority, anti-socialism, pro-elitism, pro-eugenics) manifests in a variety of ways. It holds that individuals are more responsible for their actions than major political institutions. The State failed to address Covid and everyone has turned on each other rather than on the State. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t demand better from one another, merely that many of us have a common enemy.
Reactionary politics believes that minorities have overtaken institutions and are oppressing majorities. Big Woke! Big Gay! Big Trans! See also: xenophobia, anti Critical Race Theory, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Palestinian sentiment. Individuals alone are held in high regard, either as saviors or agitators. We want heroes and demons, not coalitions. We're too different. Instead, let the Left fight amongst ourselves instead of creating allyship across differences. We're too afraid to be vulnerable. To be misgendered, misunderstood, misheard--even if there are valuable class alliances and social gains to be had by such cross-cultural currents. Self-interest is back in a big way. We see this in the proliferation of therapy-speak, boundaries, and the desire to make money above all else. People are ready to cross boycotts because what does not crossing a picket give them? Solidarity?
I'm not sure the Left knows what solidarity means right now--in terms of what it has to offer us, in terms of an erotics of the Left, or in terms of building new institutions.
What do we have right now? In the media world, very little. Even Leftist magazines are publishing the same old voices and pushing out dissent, mirroring the Democratic party itself. The same friend group, the same interests, the same neoliberal attitudes toward labor, xenophobia, and minorities. Only occasionally tossing an op-ed or tokenizing piece to the others. Never real jobs or real editorial leadership. Perhaps that sounds familiar. Such a media microcosm is indicative of larger movements and mainstream party politics too.
We need an erotics of the Left to move forward. Political depression is a luxury when we’re fighting for bread and roses. We need principled stances and collective action. Utopia takes effort. Whether you believe in fighting for a better Leftist party or want to burn it all down through protest, this requires work. The word’s become horribly muddy over the years–of course–but it should, ideally, mean something. Not to mirror Kim K’s notorious “Nobody wants to work anymore” but, we must turn away from individualism and learn mutual interdependence. This means learning how to ask for, receive, and give help. It means learning how to jump in and help before being asked.
Between boycotts for Palestine (McDonald’s, Starbucks), Union pickets (Starbucks, Amazon), or the many people protesting for Luigi Mangione and against the organized abandonment of the healthcare industry—there are many ways to get plugged in. Many ways, in fact, people are already plugging in. The question is how does one start? Not everyone may be able to unionize and some may feel that protests are futile. I would question that framing (I think pushing at the world from all sides is important) but I understand wanting to feel useful. There are too many people isolated and depressed and not enough people volunteering at their local soup kitchen or organizing for a Leftist candidate. In New York, Zohran Mamdani is already gaining mass support for his Socialist policies. Chi Osse has already won major victories concerning tenant’s rights. Such candidates aren’t only in New York—there’s State Rep. Zooey Zephyr in Montana and State Rep. Ruwa Romman in Georgia. These are only some of the candidates who’ve gained national attention. We need people plugged in on every scale—picking a cause and beginning the work is one way to fight back against encroaching fascism. If you aren’t doing the work, get out of the way. If the work, for you, means fighting against book bans, help someone run for library boards–look up Mariam Kaba’s For the People project. Go to board meetings. Or, if abolition is your pursuit, join a program that empowers people living behind bars through Empowerment Avenue, Black & Pink, or Books Behind Bars. Yes, of course, you can donate. Sure. But that’s not the same thing as giving your time and energy. It is easy to feel fear. It is much harder to advocate for abortion rights or hormone replacement therapy when these things have and/or may become illegal depending on your state. None of these are endpoints.
Leftist organizing will require dialectical thinking and practice, the kind that isn’t just compiling reading lists or donating your bad feelings away. We will all, whether we want to admit it or not, be called upon to take stances. Already educators and protestors are being arrested for protesting Zionist repression or cop facilities in Atlanta. They’re being charged with terrorism. We will need to link arms in the coming days, not let others be hung out to dry.
Disruption will continue to be a strategy employed by Leftists. Civility is a losing battle. I won’t stare into the eyes of someone who doesn't believe me to be human and humor them. I won’t quote-tweet them either. Playing on their turf isn’t a fun little childhood game in the sandbox. It’s dispiritingly grotesque. Certainly, the answer is not tenderness for tenderness’ sake alone. Hope without action is naive. Grit requires more than mere patience, believing things will change comes with a responsibility to make it so.
Do we need a party? Do we need the state? This all depends on what kind of idealized world we think we live in versus the one we want to live in. The answer, regardless, is to be plugged in. To prioritize life over inaction. To continue to believe that things are worth doing even when it doesn’t feel like it. Famously, feelings are not facts.
I’m not convinced electoral politics will save us. Nor can we stop and start at making soup for our neighbors. We must all bring our ingredients like Stone Soup for liberation. Even that word, liberation, has become something dirty. A watered-down, nearly meaningless vocab word with no fixed coordinates. No one is coming to save us. We must create, on a smaller plane, the solutions we want to see on a larger level. This is the fractal, emergent strategy adrienne maree brown speaks of. It’s easy to dismiss some Leftist thinkers as idealists, but any amount of change will start with fantasy, an element of play, dreaming.
Coalition building is necessary to accomplish anything large. After Bernie’s defeats in 2016 and 2020, many wondered if radical politics had a future. They do. The problem is they won’t come in the form of a hero, they will come in the form of many individuals forming groups that work to tackle larger issues. Lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of safety. Whether we look to the Black Panthers, ACT UP, the 2020 Black Lives Matter Uprisings, or the current Stop Cop City movement, all of these groups provided emotional and physical resources for their members. They allowed for diverse viewpoints as long as members shared one common goal. This did not mean certain -isms were tolerated—far from it–only that their larger goals were aligned. We must be able to talk to people we disagree with, to hold our differences gently, to not be thrown over differences in tactics. Cooperation is not a picnic, sometimes it requires fracture and repair. The Left has yet to learn how to move through such disagreements without simply creating endless new factions. It is easy to be dissatisfied, it is hard to make something anew. Too often we treat politics like religion, attempting to find the perfect mixture, the just-right porridge. No such thing exists. We must make it while holding all the contradictions of spirit that come. And no, this is not an argument to stay with the Democratic Party or to vote Blue no matter who. It is an argument for principled Leftists, not for cowardly mainstream centrists. The tent can be big but it must have longitude and latitude.
We have faced defeat before. Nixon, Reagan, Reconstruction, Bush, Occupy. The emotional register of disappointment is important to contend with, but I’m interested in how we move forward not just affectively but actionably. This requires both an individual and collective shift in our thinking. Our fates are intertwined. It can’t just be a phrase we say, we must breathe it in and out. Defeat is simply victory pointing in another direction. A farther one, yes, but a new one nonetheless. I’m not sure what pessimism gives us. Paralytic narcissism isn’t worth nursing.
Perhaps when you are next too tired to go to a meeting or action, you decide to go anyway. Or you commit to the abortion fundraiser or volunteer group you’ve been eying. Maybe roll up your sleeves and canvas, stop being afraid of answering the phone. Plug in with your local tenant union. You can go to the Books Behind Bars packing group.
Whatever your methods for resisting the right’s crackdown on comradeship are, start practicing now. In both big and small ways, individual and systemic. Believe it or not, change requires work. At least then you can say to yourself before bed that you are doing something. Isn’t that smug feeling worthwhile?
On the Red Scare x Dean Kissick event for Study Hall.
Piece on fag hags in culture for DIRT.
New review in Frieze on Scientia Sexualis.
Quick recommendation over at Metrograph.
And, there’s no pre-order link yet but my debut novel Herculine comes out this October on Saga Press. Galleys arrive later this spring.
If you want to come to an event I am moderating a book launch with Sophie Lewis for Enemy Feminisms on February 25! Come! I’m also giving a talk in San Diego a few days after that but more to come on that.