iostocracy

[iostocracy]

New Text on G/Acc

"Queerness can liberate itself, can abolish itself, can bring about liberation, but only as queerness, as the non-arrangement of the individual, only as we look at it as Insurrection."

Full text at: https://ioooo.substack.com/p/on-the-gacc-manifesto

[iostocracy]

The Queer Temperament in the Maelstrom of History

The events of November 6th inspired me to write a very short text about queer resistance and struggle, and while it was well received it turned out I was too busy and ended up forgeting to share it here, despite definitely being the kind of thing that people here would appreciate.

I did eventually remember that this site exists and I feel like this day is also a good day to share it. Remember folks, the road ahead is harsh, that is all its ever been, but you have to keep struggling, living is resistance.

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Do you plan on giving up on love?

Can you give up on love? Do you believe you can just stop loving?

Is desire preventable?

I believe it pushes through, but what about suffering? Despair? Does desire ever get tired of it all and stops, bringing you with it? It certainly does, it certainly has done so, in a particular sense. I say particular of course because this does not apply more generally, I would even go as far as saying that it cannot. Have you even somewhat as glanced at history? If death and despair were enough to stop desire forever surely we would be all gone. Yet still the flowers bloom, even through the rubble, this is evident. Even throughout all of the tragedies that have come and gone and occupied humanity’s history the flowers never stopped blooming, desire breaks through and makes life beautiful, even if only at moments.

“There is only despair, hope existing only in scattering and flight like vermin.”

Then scatter and take flight, if that’s what you can do, movement creates life and destroys the old. Despair crushes desire, castrates its potency, turns it into servile resignation and prevents life from springing forth. What brings this spring is movement and desire, so long as you keep moving, so long as you keep desiring life will spring up again, the flowers will keep blooming.

So is the general movement of the universal economy, that life brings tragedy, despair and suffering, that is undeniable, that death will never be satiated and torture will never be satisfied is but a fact, undeniable both when looking at history and the general movement of humanity. Yet, despite all of it, life pushes through, it keeps going, not just life, but joy as well, in all of the small moments. And it is those small moments that actually do matter, they carry your life, and the conjunction of all of them is what makes the large moments. Even if tyranny reigns it is part of the general movement of things that breakthroughs will happen, and people will be able to be joyous again, it is for those small moments that life organizes itself around. 

Therein lies the struggle, death, despair, and the small moments in life, all floating together in the struggle, there is no peace in life. As Machado de Assis once wrote, “Life without struggle is a dead sea in the center of the universal organism”. To live is to struggle, and this is constant, and this fact should be as dreadful as it is hopeful, because struggle is the possibility of everything. Just as tyranny presses on it also permits the possibility of new life blooming from the attrition of the conflict, reaction begets revolution just as revolution begets reaction. Of course, not to say that all struggle is the same, struggle grows harsher and softer periodically, but there is always struggle. Struggle is inevitable, struggling is the movement of life. Despair only exists insofar as there are those who believe there is an easier solution, that there is peace in life or meaning in death, it is only rejection of desire. But desire pushes through, it deterritorializes, creates new arrangements, brings about joyous encounters, it does all of this through struggle.

The queer temperament is this: There is no despair for those who only know struggle, because as dreadful as a life of struggle can be, it is also the way for meaning and for living, insurrection brings down arrangements, and then everything is different, despair has no place where dynamic movement takes place. Through all of the tyranny of history people have managed to push through, to keep struggling, to live and to laugh, to find joy in the small things, and they’ve managed to push forward. Only through throwing away despair and accepting struggle, and living in struggle, have people managed to eventually coalesce enough force to bring about change.

Do you not understand the weight of all of that? That despite everything that has happened, people have always managed to push through. I’m not speaking in macro terms of course, but I mean people more generally, living their lives, pushing through, creating meaning despite it all, this has been the case throughout all of history. Even through the roughest of prohibitions people have still managed to be queer, to live life and leave stories. What does that say about you? That you are part of the movement too, of the struggle, of life. As history shows; this life is harsh, it is not a fairy-land, but despite how harsh it was made, people managed to live. People managed to enjoy life and create moments of tenderness and joy, little fae circles doting all of space and history.

Ever since I left my childhood I have not thought that I would ever go my whole life without a great struggle, some great struggle would come eventually, the past century taught us a lot can happen in 80 years. I believe there is strength in accepting this place, even as horrid and violent as it may be, because there is strength in struggle, and in there, I would say, there is also comfort. Comfort in knowing this was always what it would boil down to; struggle, and that there was only one option: struggle.

We cannot deny ourselves life, we cannot fall into a pit of loathing and despair, reduced to resentment-filled slaves that have accepted their fate. We must struggle, there is no way but forward, no way outside but breaking through, no way to liberation without fighting, such is the general movement of life. So I ask again, do not despair, despair only serves to weaken you, to make you servile and docile, that or dead. What is necessary now is willpower, the will to struggle, you must keep going, not for anyone else, but you.

The queer temperament throughout all of history has been that of the flower that blooms even in the harshest conditions, because it desired to, it did not give up on that.

Postface

I am writing this on the day of Donald Trump’s reelection as President of the United States to the tune of an entire day of the most heart wrenching despair I think I’ve seen so far in my short life. The rise of an authoritarian right-populist reactionary is deeply concerning and that we will have to deal with whatever horrors are to come is dreadful. Much more dreadful though, was seeing the despair of so many queer people that I hold near and close to my heart, this moment is terrifying and the mood is that of resigned defeat. I don’t deny things will get bad, they will, and it’s not that I think that this despair isn’t justified, it is, but I just can’t stand seeing people with their head down, that is too painful. What struck me to write this though, was not necessity as much as inspiration, I have to justify things to myself, justify that I have to keep going, and from that did the inspiration to write these words come to me. I suppose it may have been hope that thus motivated me to write this, I had to have hope and this short text is the product of it, much less of a theoretical text, it’s simply emotional. But I don’t think it was hope, and I don’t care for what it is, what I care about is the message, and that people understand it. No matter how bad things get, do not despair, keep struggling.

Now more than any other moment is the time to fight, organize, build community and networks of people you know you can trust, do what you can to fight against your oppression and find ways outside it through organizing and community. Right now I don’t plan on staying static either, here in Brazil I also need to organize, the far-right has been emboldened globally, and this weak pathetic left will need to deal with whatever 2026 has in store and the possibility of meddling. Despite this I do not despair, I plan on seeing it through, on struggling. Despair gets you nowhere, it is now the time to act, so please, there will come a time the clouds will part and sunshine will grace us again, I want you to be there with me to see it.

“There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.” - Gilles Deleuze

[iostocracy]

Liberation and Exclusion

Just realized I never posted my text on Exclusionism here despite teasing it, oops.

"Progressive queer politics aims to liberate, but the process of liberation is not an unified one, not by a long shot, and while praxeological and theoretical distinctions exist in a multitude of different ways and divide the movement in a scattered distinction of different strategies and views, I would like to propose that the most significant distinctions divide it into only two. The progressive movement, as it aims to undo the oppressive hierarchical structures of present society can articulate itself in two ways, one which is liberatory and another which is only progressive by relative terms. This issue is more generally the issue of liberation, separatism and exclusion, where liberation here refers to a progressive movement that aims to undo the societal restrictions on the individual movement of self creation and subjectivity, and separatism to the myriad of movements that aim to liberate people on the basis of asserting the “sovereignty” of an established identity and thus basing itself also on exclusion as it is required to first establish that same identity. The former is a liberatory tendency, that frees the individual of conservative restraints on their own self, while the latter is progressive only insofar as it opposes present conservative structures, but is itself a formalisation of a conservative structure, that in relying on labels and exclusiveness prevents individual self-assertion and the free flow of self-creation. To present this in Deleuzian terms, liberation is a process of deterritorialization, while separatism and exclusionism represent a reterritorialization of the queer process.

Exclusionary politics, and a reliance on an exclusivity of certain modes of action, self-identification, and being in relation to certain identities are not a liberatory politics within the queer movement, to the contrary, what is represented then is a strictly reactionary mode of thought. Separatism, which relies on exclusion for its existence, becomes a potentializing force of reaction against queer self-expression, it encloses the queer movement into a strict delineation of being that serve to repress queerness, in engaging in separatist discourse and exclusionist behaviour one is engaging in a deeply anti-queer politics. Rather than engaging in the enforcement of labels and strict categories, the queer movement, if it wishes to be truly progressive, -that is, to combat conservatism’s repressiveness and allow the self-assertion of queerness-, cannot tolerate exclusion and separatism. The queer movement must be inclusive, but more than that it must be freeing, focused on the liberation of flows of desire rather than the assertion of labels. The issue of exclusion comes when the labels themselves are reaffirmed for the sake of liberation instead of the individual itself being liberated. The issue then turns around the axis of the term and the objective of the “progressive” struggle turns to defending it, the whole process makes the label rigid and locked, and whatever progress is attained is attained not for individuals who can be free, but for the label itself which imprisons individuals by nature. The whole process of affirmation becomes alienating, people are taken from their own queerness into being categorised and organised, progress remains in the realms of ideas, while in the material, people are shamed and repressed for moving against the decided organisation of the labels.

The issue of intra-LGBT bigotry is also one that mostly stems from exclusionism, from the enforcement of strict differentiations and barriers within queerness, it arises because it is a process of systematisation, as an exclusionist system it needs to affirm itself -as an ideal- and so bigotry becomes a tool of it. That so many exclusionists also tend to hold bigoted ideas shouldn’t be surprising when the purpose of bigotry is to maintain an exclusion and a separation. The progressive movement shouldn’t then seek to crystallise identities and affirm them as identities as its main form of struggle, but instead seek to liberate the flows of individual movement against the enforcement of strict roles and systems."

Read the rest here: https://ioooo.substack.com/p/liberation-and-exclusion

[iostocracy]

Note on exclusionism

"The issue of exclusion comes when the labels themselves are reaffirmed for the sake of liberation instead of the individual itself being liberated. The issue then turns around the axis of the term and the objective of the “progressive” struggle turns to defending it, the whole process makes the label rigid and locked, and whatever progress is attained is attained not for individuals who can be free, but for the label itself which imprisons individuals by nature. The whole process of affirmation becomes alienating, people are taken from their own queerness into being categorised and organised, progress remains in the realms of ideas, while in the material, people are shamed and repressed for moving against the decided organisation of the labels.

While bigotry is an issue that happens due to exclusionism that comes first because it is a process of systematisation, as an exclusionist system that needs to affirm itself -as an ideal- bigotry becomes a tool of it. That so many exclusionists also tend to hold bigoted ideas shouldn’t be surprising when the purpose of bigotry is to maintain an exclusion and a separation. The progressive movement shouldn’t then seek to crystallise identities and affirm them as identities as its main form of struggle, but instead seek to liberate the flows of individual movement against the enforcement of strict roles and systems."

Another excerpt from something I'm working related to queer theory

[iostocracy]

[iostocracy]

"People function on breaks, stops and kickstarts, births, deaths and rebirths. There is hardly a place for an essence here, as what exists instead is a continuous flow of change, contrasts and dynamics. There is no such thing as self-discovery, it is self-creation, you do not find an essential truth of the self that was uncovered, you create from yourself and from the changes external to you. Even if it ends up repressed, the process of becoming free from repressing is also one of change, of death and rebirth of the self."

Excerpt from something I plan to write sometime soon.

[iostocracy]

[iostocracy]

Lumpen Theory : Genealogy of a Panoptilumpenism (Part 1)

“ Terrible things happen daily of which we are not aware of, hidden under the pretense of normality and coherence of the world you and I are forced to experience. Together, but yet so far away, a digital sea of modern colonization exists. All that is hidden is understood to exist as oppression, and that oppression is but the systematic death once the inevitable misery catches up to the rowdy prosperity of the cybernetical un-friendship orders.  “

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What became projected as a refusal to expand on the different forms which the oppressed populations of the world took, the Lumpenproletariat has always been nothing more than a slur. The Lumpen  have seen their potential, actions and even existence reduced to a mere splinter of class society under the classical Marxist framework, and even more reductive under a liberal scope. 

The liberal status quo seeks to uniform these outliers, to create a non-porous, fully glossy and brand new form of governance that does not imply the existence of the faults and burdens called Lumpen. And the Marxist seeks to merely fault it for the errors of its own actions. What both of these conceptions have in common is simply their will to reduce struggle to a mere flaw, forgetting the moments and large periods in which the Lumpenproletariat took apart of, not as the subject of a movance or drive towards a narrative goal, but more-so as the undisputed net losers of the movements of the societies we trap  our thought around. The construction of a “better world” under the progressive stance implies the wiping down of the impurities the liberated subject of the  Lumpen are : there cannot be a better world for those  at the bottom of the existence of the present state of things, and the future ones if we try to be cynical. Engels retains the crown of anti-lumpen sentiment, very early on embarking in hatred towards a group he barely defined in order to assert the position of the proletariat as the unique pawn in their path of the progress of history. Nothing constructive comes from the Lumpenproletariat, and this understanding leads to conceiving them as historically “scum” and “opportunists”, friends of reaction and the status quo. The myth of the Lumpen representing the outdated populations of the early-modern urban development is something that persists nowadays. Mercenaries, crooks and “parasites” are what Engels, and then Marx, meant and explicited by the Lumpen, entities devoid of revolutionary character, outside of the glorious proletariat and most importantly, in opposition to it. In many regards, the reductionism that Marx and Engels apply to this strata of the population  is clearly tied to the events they analyzed ever since 1848 and the many abuses the working population suffered because of this undisclosed exploitative Lumpenproletariat. The vagueness of what they even imply by Lumpen at this stage makes for it to become the quick insult many cement the term as, even when Marx’s own conception evolves when Capital arrives. His true, real critique of political economy outside of the realizations he has on the conditions of the revolting bodies involving themselves in England, France and other areas of the  European theater, comes with the realization of a new concept that will be very useful following up : the  one of Lumpenization, or understood as the process that turns sectors of a viable population towards a much more precarious, fluid and non-protected existence, basically creating a larger aflux of Lumpen.

Efforts from the capitalist systems turned the varied populations of an evolving society into elements of what he saw as being the “exploitative degeneracy” that constituted the element to oppose inside his notion of the Lumpen, making it not a desirable process, but more so a subjected one with the whole entire violence of the state and capital behind it all. A scheme so simple in its perpetuation that it gets overlooked and assimilated into the “natural” processes of capital, alongside  commodity production and fetichisation. His opposition to the Lumpen is, as commonly described, political. But nonetheless, I see his opposition as coming from a severe lack of will towards a deep understanding of  outside regards, or as Ernesto Laclau would put it in this same topic, "the limits of Marxist determinism“ . In short, Marxism, as the established framework of analysis and understanding of class society guided by the proletarian socialist meta-narrative, has no room, nor want, to establish a thoughtful consideration of what the Lumpen REALLY are, outside of all value and moralistic judgement many engage with nowadays. The conditions of such a shift and change in the perspective of the Lumpen should be set, first of all, on the basis of a “non-marxist” framework, one that does not establish a subject for revolutionary progression above all other possible material analysis. 

Combating the many forms the systematic train of thought Marxism has historically represented comes in the originally Marxist realization of the end of the “labour movement”. The late Paul Mattick essentially considered the labour movement to be “dead” and non-existent in the modern times of the postwar world. No longer could the forms of organization of the working class combat capitalism the same way it once used to. No longer can the proletariat unite under the thought of Marx or Lenin in order to advance the  progression of social systems. No longer could liberation be achieved by the same old conceptions of revolution we had carried around essentially since the early Fourrieriusts. As he would put it : “The labour movement preceded Marxian theory and provided the actual basis for its development. Marxism became the dominating theory of the socialist movement because it was able convincingly to reveal the exploitative structure of capitalist society and simultaneously to uncover the historical limitations of this particular mode of production.” On this same basis, Marxism was able to grasp the concept of leading progressive revolution in terms of using a same, concrete and particular subject, one not free but alienated and exploited, with enough potential to set itself free and dissolve the forms that put it there to begin with. But no  longer can that be seen as a coherent labour movement, and the flaw comes with this essentialization of The Proletariat, the utmost important cog and at the same time, the main pawn to the creation of Marxist analysis.

With this in mind, many properly Marxist groups through the (mostly) modern history of class struggle (1960’s-80’s) have undertaken this fallacious class consideration, and taken on a Lumpen defense, one that does confront the previously mentioned un-legitimate attacks from the early socialist revolutionaries. Denning, Fanon and even Marcuse embark in the commonly found “revolutionary potential of the Lumpen”, explaining its colonial history as being the “radicals of the radicals”, a sort of unmeasured group full of revolutionary fervour, similar to what the classical proletariat can achieve if set  under the line of class consciousness. While these defenses have served as the proliferation of the term in a less commonly conceived pejorative notion of the Lumpenproletariat, they fall under the baseline that creates the issues of Marx and Engels : they create a new revolutionary subject,  this time more radical, not removed from any constructive logic in order to achieve the building up of a concise class identity. It cannot be said that this is truly the liberatory form of the Lumpen. We should in turn, consider this defense as the first kind hearted attempt to remove the monopoly of revolt from the hands of the western and white proletariat  in order to atomize  it further into greater depth. Back to the first international and the period of the mere inception of the Lumpen-Prole divide, Bakunin encountered a similar attempt, as the label he was attributed of the “Prince of the Lumpen” was a simple reaction towards what he had conceived as a preferential strategy to out-socialist the marxists. In order to defend the vague and, very un-deleuzian, nomadic peasantry of the remains of economic development in the European labour world, he provocatively took on the position of “Only the Lumpen can liberate and act towards the social revolution”. To repeat myself one last time, this is not but a change in the subject of history and a retention of the notion of the progression of history towards a being-just and not a liberatory becoming. 

The role of the diversification of the relations under the precognition of the Lumpen is one that serves a greater purpose, but once again, the Lumpen is already a liberated subject, only constrained by its own influenced volition. The repetition of the subject form instead of its abolition and liberation on a general form is nothing brand new or outstanding, and hence the proclaimed Lumpen defense of these authors remains incomplete, inconclusive and truthfully useless for a construction of the real genealogy behind the liberation of Lumpen. One group, however, embarked in the tale to liberate and act upon the Lumpen’s condition with greater notions and wider conceptions on how to approach it, this being the Japanese New Left (JNL). In reality, this wide movement of social upheaval in the Japanese islands was much more than just a grouping of pro-Lumpen students. From the Trotskyists and Maoists that confirmed the improvised parties and informal revolutionary groups at the borderlines of the control of the state, many groups seeked an avant-garde approach to acting upon the conditions of the Japanese sphere, and a revolution of Japanese culture as a whole after the fiasco of the expansion and construction of a cultural identity on the precognition of the expansion of the empire. This pre-conceptual imperialist nature to what it meant to be Japanese inherently implied a re-thinking of what groups constituted as the internal operations of the Japanese cultural machine, and those that conformed a noumena, purposely blinded and devoid of any constructive forms on which to base themselves on. The bulbous mass of deformed victims of the violence of the Imperial Japanese construction became the allies of the revolutionary groups : ethnic minorities were, for many groups of denominational variety, the main primary focus on their struggle. Doing so bought them the hatred of some more orthodox Marxist groups, claiming their “non focus on class” as being contrary to the bouillant social climate that might at the time host an actual revolutionary movement. The ethnic minorities that they sought to protect under many circumstances were grouped up vulgarly under the notion of all being Lumpen, below the Japanese worker. And under such framing, groups of students in Tokyo and Osaka claimed this aspect proudly, hailing the defense of the Lumpen into action, seeking to organise outside of the prefecture of Osaka proper the members of the Lumpen, in the case of Japan, the prostitutes, day labourers and marginalized ethnic groups that were comprised as the poster children of this movance popping up in the area. The so-called “inner colony” of the newly constructed Kamagasaki council, constituted of the Lumpenproletarian actors that constitute a majority of the activity in that area, was considered “the 3rd world inside the 1st world”. The notion here implies a heavy dose of colonial relations into the logic of the interaction with the Lumpenproletarian populations. This relation exists because of the following parameter:

Lumpenproletariat = Alienated > Proletariat ----------> sense of outside -------> colonial logic is applied for it, maintaining margin and distance with class society.

That last part remains an integral part of the actions of the JNL on the eyes of the Lumpen : the alienation due to the misery and visceral exploitation of the Lumpen from the whole of Capitalist social actors makes them a subject of the “borderlands” of class society, outside, but remaining on the grasp of the exploitation they phase. Because of this separation, they are unable to construct a destructive imperial entity, just like the Japanese proletariat, willingly or not, did. Of all the groups that appeared during this clearly intellectually fertile time in Japanese class struggle, the East-Asian Anti-Japaneist Armed Front (EAAJAF) remains as the biggest and best example of how to envision the lumpen. Many of the Marxist groups, specially those in accord with Eiji Oguma’s notion that the Anti-Japaneist movement had a clear “post-structuralist character, understanding its use of pseudo-history as realization of the “linguistic turn” ”, none of them actually continued and carried out the proposed total and radical deconstruction of a Japanese cultural identity itself, basing themselves around the “zenkyoto” form, or joint struggle committees that were used as organs that can be classically found on any other Marxist organization. On this, the Daidoji couple that founded the front did so in a non-explicitly “opposition” towards the general direction of the Zengakuren, that by then had abandoned all sense of radical deconstruction and erasure. The group held on to the stance that became the more Lumpen-friendly out of a movement that already greatly considered this sector. Their direct attacks on the Empire, whether it be via the numerous sabotages like in 1974 or simply the intellectual intention behind their collective writings and most specifically the Hara Hara Tokei, had crumbled, as Till Knaudt would say, the entirety of the still not anti-Japaneist enough New Left. Their actions are an expression of the concerns of the victims of this newly appearing virtual-colonialism that is so omnipresent in their conceptions. Basically founding an armed struggle group on the collaboration and retaliation of the Lumpen against even the workerist Prole identity seemed too far for the anachronistic Marxists of modern discourse, and even the ones at the time acting as formal opposition to the EAAJAF, but in reality is the utmost example of an action, an attitude and a thought against the anti-lumpen sentiment, and one favorizing its revolt, self-abolition and proliferation as the vector of the creative destruction they so wanted to see unfold on the Japanese archipelago. The Lumpenproletariat then follows the agitation that it is brought, not prescribed like in the case of the proletariat, and perpetually seeks the total liberation that is the lustful object of Communistic projects : a liberation from all sides of class society, an affirmation of non-exploitation.

Similarly, Deleuze, in his lectures on the State War Machine, retook this term and applied a machinic logic to the developments of capitalism he saw in the later part of his life. The “3rd world inside the 1st world” was then the 4th world, an absurd difference between the affluent perfection of the wealth created and then fetichized by the rich populations, and the misery created, not in response, but in consequence of such development. Total misery contrasted to total virtuosity of capital’s developments. As such, the 4th world is the situation in which Lumpenization occurs, one in which the machine of Capital, that we will from now on describe as “Technocapital”, perpetuates modes of production and exploitation in order to conceive a “virtual-colonial” situation. This neologism is something I have coined to describe that distance in the treatment of the Lumpenproletariat that was considered a form of colonial relationship by the JNL theorists. This relationship relies on distance and separation, all geographical, social and economical distance from class society, to the Lumpen inhabitants of its borderlands. Added to this notion, we have the central word of Panoptilumpenism, a porte-manteau word encompassing “panopticon” and “Lumpen” to define the effect that is to be understood as the self-biopolitical regulation of the Lumpenproletariat that is on itself the reason of their sense of “outsideness” and non-liberation, as a direct result from the total alienation they face and the absolute bottom of the barrel position in society that they held, and still hold, in relation to other groups. Panoptilumpenism, to be more concrete, is the genealogical perpetuating coincidence that pin-points the raison-d’etre of the Lumpenproletariat in its various forms.

Part 1 -

[iostocracy]

This is the optimal relationship configuration btw

[ Flower Bed & Burning Memory ]

[iostocracy]

Google Earth is Amazing

[iostocracy]

You ever see that one fanart that makes you go "sigh, i guess this ship really is peak"

Gift for @/FOUENlX on Twitter!! Happy Birthday:DDD

[iostocracy]

Rice cookers are fucking awesome, they cook rice