I really wish the author would define "alterity", instead of saying "we're going to borrow a term from this other author and just use it with a different meaning".
4
chobeat @lemmy.ml - 4mon
Alterity means "otherness", for some subjective definition of "other". In this case political other, meaning something or somebody that doesn't belong or can be interpreted from the status quo.
Imagine a picture of a recipe on how to build a molotov encoded in .webm, in a world where most people only have .PNG software
1
infuziSporg [e/em/eir] - 4mon
Difference also means "otherness".
If they're going to do the Tiqqunist thing and talk about "forms of life" that deviate from both the reinforced norm and its self-reifying inverse, I wish they'd at least do a better job of laying it out.
4
chobeat @lemmy.ml - 4mon
Difference, in this context, doesn't imply otherness. You can be different but fully understandable. An instance of the same idea, if you want to speak platonically. In my previous example, two images of the same thing encoded in .png are different, but not other from each other.
1
TrashGoblin [he/him, they/them] - 4mon
The writing in this is kind of insufferable ("alterity without difference and difference without alterity"), but the overall idea is good, I think. Just hard to operationalize and even harder to scale.
4
TreadOnMe [none/use name] - 4mon
It would be for one impossible to know who your allies are. This is putting the cart before the horse. Capitalists gain and control secret societies due to their control of the means of production. Secret societies did not allow them to gain control of the means of production.
Liberals conspired against the king quite openly, it is just that in the first revolution they were literally an ocean away, and in the second revolution things spiraled out of control and went farther than they had ever expected far quicker than they expected. They never actually wanted to overthrow the monarchy (the cowards), it was the monarchy's complete unwillingness to compromise with the liberals, their own actions against the new French state that demonstrated their inability to understand how the dialogue around what constituted the state had changed, and the radicalization of the people of Paris around that dialogue which forced the liberals of France to actually follow through with their laws and rhetoric or be torn from government themselves by the angry mob.
This is some ahistorical, occultist nonsense. There are more than just two ways of doing this.
6
chobeat @lemmy.ml - 4mon
The references in the article are all 19th century stuff, in the European liberation movements and Chinese anti-imperialism. There's no reference to the French or American Revolution.
2
TreadOnMe [none/use name] - 4mon
Respectfully, the author never specifically references anything, only alludes to things, which never actually historically mattered towards the establishment of successful revolutionary endeavors.
However the accusation that French secret societies were crucial to French revolutionary success is a such a well trod topic, that Marx explicitly addresses it, that communists should not conceal their aims.
What I am saying is we would have a better time looking at the most historically successful global revolution, not even necessarily communist in nature, for guidance here. All successful revolutions have one thing in common and that is that their most successful contingent did not organize in secret. That doesn't mean secret contingents may not be necessary, but that in order to have any amount of success, you have to be willing to organize in public, commit your acts in public, and resist your punishment in public if you are caught. Part of the problem is that there is no faction in the West that is willing to actually commit past the first step, they want to commit it in secret and get away with it. They overthink and overwrite, which leads to inaction.
I am including myself in that criticism btw. I recognize the deficiency because it exists within myself.
chobeat in anarchism
Alterity without difference: the non-identity of the Augustinian Left
https://write.as/conjure-utopia/alterity-without-difference-the-non-identity-of-the-augustinian-leftI really wish the author would define "alterity", instead of saying "we're going to borrow a term from this other author and just use it with a different meaning".
Alterity means "otherness", for some subjective definition of "other". In this case political other, meaning something or somebody that doesn't belong or can be interpreted from the status quo.
Imagine a picture of a recipe on how to build a molotov encoded in .webm, in a world where most people only have .PNG software
Difference also means "otherness".
If they're going to do the Tiqqunist thing and talk about "forms of life" that deviate from both the reinforced norm and its self-reifying inverse, I wish they'd at least do a better job of laying it out.
Difference, in this context, doesn't imply otherness. You can be different but fully understandable. An instance of the same idea, if you want to speak platonically. In my previous example, two images of the same thing encoded in .png are different, but not other from each other.
The writing in this is kind of insufferable ("alterity without difference and difference without alterity"), but the overall idea is good, I think. Just hard to operationalize and even harder to scale.
It would be for one impossible to know who your allies are. This is putting the cart before the horse. Capitalists gain and control secret societies due to their control of the means of production. Secret societies did not allow them to gain control of the means of production.
Liberals conspired against the king quite openly, it is just that in the first revolution they were literally an ocean away, and in the second revolution things spiraled out of control and went farther than they had ever expected far quicker than they expected. They never actually wanted to overthrow the monarchy (the cowards), it was the monarchy's complete unwillingness to compromise with the liberals, their own actions against the new French state that demonstrated their inability to understand how the dialogue around what constituted the state had changed, and the radicalization of the people of Paris around that dialogue which forced the liberals of France to actually follow through with their laws and rhetoric or be torn from government themselves by the angry mob.
This is some ahistorical, occultist nonsense. There are more than just two ways of doing this.
The references in the article are all 19th century stuff, in the European liberation movements and Chinese anti-imperialism. There's no reference to the French or American Revolution.
Respectfully, the author never specifically references anything, only alludes to things, which never actually historically mattered towards the establishment of successful revolutionary endeavors.
However the accusation that French secret societies were crucial to French revolutionary success is a such a well trod topic, that Marx explicitly addresses it, that communists should not conceal their aims.
What I am saying is we would have a better time looking at the most historically successful global revolution, not even necessarily communist in nature, for guidance here. All successful revolutions have one thing in common and that is that their most successful contingent did not organize in secret. That doesn't mean secret contingents may not be necessary, but that in order to have any amount of success, you have to be willing to organize in public, commit your acts in public, and resist your punishment in public if you are caught. Part of the problem is that there is no faction in the West that is willing to actually commit past the first step, they want to commit it in secret and get away with it. They overthink and overwrite, which leads to inaction.
I am including myself in that criticism btw. I recognize the deficiency because it exists within myself.