66 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
66 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
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COMMUNITY
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Com-mu-ni-ty n. 1. a body of people having the same interests. 2.
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IEcol.] an aggregate of organisms with mutual relations. 3. a concept
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invoked to establish solidarity, often when the basis for such
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affiliation is absent or when the actual content of that affiliation
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contradicts the stated political goal of solidarity.
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Community, by which one obviously means more than, say, neighborhood, is
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a very elusive term but a continuing touchstone of radical value. In
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fact, all manner of folks resort to it, from the pacifist encampments
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near nuclear test sites to "serve the people" leftists with their
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sacrifice-plus-manipulation approach to the proto-fascist Afrikaaner
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settlers. It is invoked for a variety of purposes or goals, but as a
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liberatory notion is a fiction. Everyone feels the absence of community,
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because human fellowship must struggle, to even remotely exist, against
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what "community" is in reality. The nuclear family, religion,
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nationality, work, school, property, the specialism of roles-some
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combination of these seems to comprise every surviving community since
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the imposition of civilization. So we are dealing with an illusion, and
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to argue that some qualitatively higher form of community is allowed to
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exist within civilization is to affirm civilization. Positivity furthers
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the lie that the authentically social can co-exist with domestication.
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In this regard, what really accompanies domination, as community, is at
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best middle-class, respect-the-system protest.
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Fifth Estate, for example, undercuts its (partial) critique of
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civilization by upholding community and ties to it in its every other
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sentence. At times it seems that the occasional Hollywood film (e.g.
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Emerald Forest, Dances With Wolves) outdoes our anti-authoritarian
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journals in showing that a liberatory solidarity springs from
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non-civilization and its combat with the "community" of industrial
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modernity.
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Jacques Camatte discussed capital's movement from the stage of formal
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domination to that of real domination. But there appear to be
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significant grounds from which to project the continuing erosion of
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support for existing community and a desire for genuine solidarity and
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freedom. As Fredy Perlman put it, near the end of his exceptional
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Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!: "What is known is that Leviathan,
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the great artifice, single and world-embracing for the first time, in
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His-story, is decomposing...lt is a good time for people to let go of
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its sanity, its masks and armors, and go mad, for they are already being
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ejected from its pretty polis."
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The refusal of community might be termed a self defeating isolation but
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it appears preferable, healthier, than declaring our allegiance to the
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daily fabric of an increasingly self-destructive world. Magnified
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alienation is not a condition chosen by those who insist on the truly
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social over the falsely communal. It is present in any case, due to the
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content of community. Opposition to the estrangement of civilized,
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pacified existence should at least amount to naming that estrangement
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instead of celebrating it by calling it community.
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The defense of community is a conservative gesture that faces away from
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the radical break required. Why defend that to which we are held
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hostage?
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In truth, there is no community. And only by abandoning what is passed
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off in its name can we move on to redeem a vision of communion and
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vibrant connectedness in a world that bears no resemblance to this one.
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Only a negative "community," based explicitly on contempt for the
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categories of existent community, is legitimate and appropriate to our
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aims.
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