#banana discourse

[probablyasocialecologist]

To put it differently, the anxiety around bananas under socialism marks not the fear of losing bananas, but rather of losing the right to enjoy the products of capitalist exploitation from the periphery. From this perspective, the banana is the perfect fetish object, the ideal substitute phallus, and not just because it looks like a dick. The banana offers the Western worker assurance of their right in the surplus value, or alienated labor, of the racialized worker on the banana plantation. This is why, for instance, American grocery stores often sell bananas at a loss. They know that if they present people with cheap bananas, they will come in and shop because cheap bananas are part of what makes shopping in America enjoyable. When an American goes to WalMart, they do not primarily enjoy the mere access it offers them to the food they need to sustain themselves. Rather, they take pleasure in having the whole world’s labor neatly arranged for them to grab, inspect, fantasize about, and ultimately put back on the shelf because they already have some at home.

Anselm Kizza-Besigye, Banana Republics

[hoping-for-novelty]

Ok so I did some googling and some math about the banana discourse. The fairtrade minimum price for bananas is approximately 11 cent per kilogram of bananas, which is about 5 cents per pound. Given that current pricing for bananas is enough for workers to sustain themselves (albeit with difficulty), I think it's reasonable to assume that a 1000% increase in wages would be sufficient

This requires bananas to be fifty cents more expensive per pound

[lordnot]

I think what's often missed is that these luxuries are consolation prizes. They serve to placate and distract a Proletariat from their alienation from their communities and their passions, from how they sacrifice their health through coerced, largely meaningless labor out of fear of homelessness and destitution, and how outside of said luxuries they are unable to take advantage of the fruits of their labors.

And so I think leftists are reacting to the question "How would I feel if I woke up tomorrow and suddenly all these things I enjoy were gone?" when they ought to be asking "In the process of building a world where access to food, healthcare, housing, and even community was no longer linked to the whims of an employer or corporate entity, how important would access to a banana or luxury cruise be to me?"

Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we'll have to legit tell everyone we can't have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it's gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone's gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can't save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn't have been normalized to begin with.

[wherechaoswins]

Lussy: Lenis, I’m just saying… your banana is looking extra ripe today. 👀🍌 Lenis: Lussy, stop talking about my fruit. Lussy: I’m just admiring how… full it is. Very grabbable. Lenis: LUSSY. Lussy: What? I heard potassium is good for stamina. 😏

[confusedbyinterface]

If I'm understanding the vanguards of the working class on Twitter, this ad is the only reason we haven't built communism in Australia

[convertgrapeling]

I do not understand why people are seriously saying "socialists must make sure all workers can access bananas!" when bananas are famously the first thing nobody can get hold of when shit goes wrong. There is a whole song about the unavailable nature of bananas. Clearly people can survive without them.

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

I will always argue that Vox and Valentino are both verses that choose to play top/bottom parts when they feel like it, because strict binary division in that matter always gives me heebie jeebies.

I see what your doing here, trying to introduce heteronormative dynamics into my queer ship

[thelaurenshippen]

I know we love the “you only get two” triangles, but idk that I’ve seen one that is, like, the grand theory of fandom, like, you know—

you only get two. do you see my vision?

[probablyasocialecologist]

Without a doubt, if countries in the Global South committed to a socialism founded on agroecological principles, they would, in turn, put their productive capacities toward meeting their own needs, rather than growing surpluses. This is to say that Americans and other importers of bananas would have to figure out a way to meet their own demand for bananas. In a socialist future, necessary labor would be organized democratically and collectively by the associated producers, and unnecessary labor will be eliminated (advertising, consulting, finance, marketing, and all the bullshit jobs people currently do). Banana production could, therefore, be taken up in the “realm of freedom,” the part of the economy that would be managed by people in their free time. This isn’t implausible. The variety of banana that most people eat in the West was cultivated in a greenhouse in England. While some of Harris’s critics suggest that this would amount to an intolerable increase in toil, it could also be fun: after all, people in the West love to garden, forage, and cook in their free time and no one suggests automating these activities. Indeed, it’s hard to understand the aversion some on the Western left have toward manual labor when lots of them pay to spend hours exerting themselves in gyms, proudly running headlong to nowhere.

Anselm Kizza-Besigye, Banana Republics

[peachjagiya]

Hi peach, The topic I want to discuss is probably old news to you, so I hope bringing it up again won’t bother you. I recently found out that tae liked the trailer for the movie “QUEER”, and it made the hurt and disappointment I felt towards him resurface again. If this had happened a few years ago, I would’ve been giddy with excitement, but after his participation in IU’s MV, I just can’t view his gestures of support in the same light anymore.

I was in the fandom and in taekook spaces when the MV came out, and I saw the chaos unfold in real time. I'm well aware of the types of arguments that circulated and the actions IU’s company took to correct their mistake, but the damage had already been done imo. To this day, I still can’t find a decent justification for his decision (especially from taekook shippers/supporters pov, and I'm one of them).

Him choosing to participate in a project that contributed to queer erasure -essentially robbing the queer community of a powerful phrase that marked a very important moment in LGBTQ+ history- was a conscious decision to align with a system that oppresses the very people he claimed (hinted) to support.

If he were a vulnerable, struggling artist trying to survive in the entertainment industry, I might’ve been more sympathetic (though I would still question his integrity). But he’s not. He’s a very wealthy artist with immense star power. If it had been any of the other members, I wouldn’t have been nearly as hurt -disappointed, yes, but not hurt to this extent- Coming from him, it felt like a slap in the face. He dropped numerous signals that highlighted his acceptance of or solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.

If we interpret those signals as simply allyship, we could chalk this up to ignorance or prioritizing personal gain over morals. But I just can’t fathom a world where tae is queer himself and would willfully choose to participate in that project.

If you’ve already discussed these topic before and don’t feel like going over them again, I’d appreciate it if you could link me to those posts or tell me which tags to search.

Also, thank you for creating this comforting space for us taekookers and tae stans, it's like a breath of fresh air. I truly appreciate it <3

This ended up being longer than I intended, I hope it’s not too much trouble.

You've been very polite but I don't agree. I don't want to minimise your disappointment but I think you're assuming a lot of hurt for queer people and letting it cloud your argument a bit.

You know the arguments and you still feel hurt. I don't think I can do much about that.

But I have one thought: queer people are not a monolith.

Him choosing to participate in a project that contributed to queer erasure -essentially robbing the queer community of a powerful phrase that marked a very important moment in LGBTQ+ history- was a conscious decision to align with a system that oppresses the very people he claimed (hinted) to support.

What if he is queer and the idea of getting to be in a music video called Love Wins felt empowering to him? Maybe it felt freeing to nod to it. After all, he's not going to kiss a guy in the video, he can't do that. Remember the social climate he exists in... Maybe all he has is nods and winks to queerness. Maybe that's all he's able to do.

Thinking queer people should believe something about that phrase is erasing queer people's autonomy and demanding they perform queerness in a way you find acceptable. Now we don't know if Taehyung is queer but I think it's kind of a given if you're a Taekook supporter. You can't think he kisses a guy on the regular and then police how he performs queerness.

But even if he's just an ally... to rest your opinion on him on his appearance in someone else's music video that used two words that are LGBT associated feels deeply uncharitable. This guy didn't just like the Queer trailer, he liked it whilst in the homophobic military. All this support of queerness in his work surely can't be for nothing because of Love Wins. Surely. It's not a good thing to push support away. And as you say, IU's team fixed it IMMEDIATELY. Sometimes you gotta give benefit of the doubt that things were just not ill intended.

If it is enough of a problem for you though, that's your prerogative. I'm sorry you're disappointed by it.

[luckthebard]

I have no idea what corner of the fandom or discord this take emerged in, but the people with the same take all veering into "actually the other characters [read: Orym because Liam is an easy target for drastically misunderstanding his character work for whatever reason] need to ask Imogen permission to do anything because they might hurt her fee-fees" are tbh exhausting and doing Imogen as character, Laura as a player, and the concept of collective storytelling and conflict a massive disservice.

Like I'm sorry y'all don't think anyone but your faves should make decisions or have interiority and if they do they're "mean" or "manipulative" and I'm just so freaking tired of these myopic media takes that seem to stem from a weird aversion to have any kind of narrative tension.

[libraryspectre]

Hear me out before shooting me in the head, but I can actually think of several interesting (arguably mixed-media) art pieces that could be made using AI as a tool, and you know there's some art student out there who has a really funky idea we're missing out on because of the current state of AI

It's just a shame that instead of taking AI as a tool for new, interesting art, people are using it for things that could and should be done by human artists and instead producing souless output with no artistry

And if you doubt me that AI could be an actual tool/medium, here's a few ideas off the top of my head:

- a faux art gallery with a series of AI-generated images. The human artist has taken the role of "curator" and written blurbs that discuss the themes and symbolism of each piece. It's a commentary on how humans will find meaning in the meaningless

- a series where an artist has a prompt that they change one word at a time, and document how that one word changes the output. Could be an exploration of society's biases laid bare by algorithmic extrapolation - think of that post where someone pointed out that inputting "autistic person" produced nothing but images of sad young white boys

- entering a prompt that is difficult to represent literally (like the "secret horses" image) and attempting to recreate it in physical space, through photography, painting, or sculpture. An interesting practical challenge, themes of blurring the divide between the digital and physical could be explored

- a story where a writer is trading off writing each paragraph with AI, and trying to steer the story in the direction of a romance, while the entirety of the AI's dataset is the complete works of HP Lovecraft

- I don't know much about coding but I think there is an argument here for "artistic coding", where the final output is machine generated but the artist has written the code and made deliberate artistic choices in the process (a bias toward green, favoring some parts of the dataset more heavily than others, etc).

I don't buy that art made with AI is automatically not real art. Even things like "what prompt did you choose" and "what did you choose as your dataset" can be meaningful artistic choices. The problem lies in suggesting that the output is the SAME THING as a digital painting or whatever. That's like arguing a painting and a sculpture are the same thing because they're both of a raven. You can use AI as a tool to make art if you're engaging with it intentionally as it's own medium.

But, obviously, the bigger issue here is the misuse of AI for things human artists could do better and SHOULD be doing, and the unethical usage of other's work for machine learning, and the overuse of AI being so bad for the environment (I doubt the water and energy usage would be a big deal if AI wasn't being used constantly for things like google overviews and homework). I'm just lamenting on the cool art we're missing out on because Harris in Marketing wants to type "company logo bird" into an image generator instead of hiring a graphic designer

[misterradio]

discourse is crazy sometimes u just have a divisive topic that rules your dashboard both sides duking it out and no conclusion is ever reached and then suddenly u realize u havent heard anyone say anything about it in years

[sunbunnyyy]

i know i just got here, but seeing all of the laughably bad takes from both sides of the spectrum is convincing me that no, i don’t actually need to be on social media again.

[prontaentrega]

i think its weird how people bring up open veins when anyone mentions us inverventionism in latam especially when talking about operación cóndor/the cold war era coups because like. Open Veins of Latin América is a book about how economy is linked to colonialism and imperialism in latin america and it was published in 1971 before operación cóndor even started. Like it is a good book and mandatory reading for understanding the political and economic context of latam but it is specifically Not about the assassination of salvador allende (happened 2 years after the book was published) or the argentinian dictatorship (happened 5 years after the book was published) etc and if someone asked you for a book to learn about all that then open veins is not it

[hussyknee]

Def a good idea to delete theculturedmarxist’s stuff, he’s also a big-time propagandist/genocide denier type. It sucks that some tankies have gotten bigger platforms recently by strike blogging.

But yeah the banana thing is insane, I *think* the original poster was using it as an example of the fact that a more just society in the US is necessarily going to be a less convenient one because convenience often comes at the expense of (domestic and international) labor exploitation, and “non-domestic crops being available year-round” is an example of a luxury that came out of said exploitation, which is A Point (though I might’ve picked something like Amazon same-day delivery to argue it…)

But then people ran with it and made it about either How Do We Stop Big Banana Through Socialism or Here’s How Bananas Can Still Win. Both at the dehumanizing expense of now-theoretical Latin American laborers of course 🙃

Oh shit that's what's happening? Tankies coasting in on strike blogging?? Gdi.

Yeah I think that was the original point too. The thing is, that US leftists keep centering US consumer demand in everything, like the entire system of global labour and resource exploitation by multinational conglomerates, aided and abetted by the IMF and World Bank and the entire colonial power matrix, can be solved by yelling at enough people about their consumption. For people who are so obsessed with class, it seems to consistently escape them that Global North consumers are also exploited and disempowered by the same oligopolies and monopolies that pay producers pennies on the dollar and sell for prices that smaller and entry-level companies can't compete with. Even as an example, bananas in the US are priced way lower than what's profitable, just to keep a monopoly of consumers. And because so many companies in the West don't pay working class people a fair wage, they have to consume the cheapest, most convenient food stuffs. So when you talk about people reducing consumption of bananas, you're asking people dependent on the cheapest nutrient sources to bear the biggest loss.

This is exactly what we mean by "no ethical consumption under capitalism". It doesn't mean we give up on the entire issue, it means that the systems of production cannot be manipulated by consumer boycotts and individual ethics. Even if one product was taken off the shelves, whatever supplanted it would be just as unethical for some group of people. It means that the solutions need to be implemented top-down, not bottom up. Global North governments need to better regulate corporate behaviour, prioritise the well-being of workers and ecological chains involving production and transport, prevent monopolies by regulating prices, and encourage and incentivize local food supply networks. And also, as some from Colombia said in a reblog about the cocaine industry, economic stress must be taken off developing nations by forgiving their IMF and World Bank loans so that they can invest the profits from their export industries in reforming agriculture and social welfare systems.

I literally do not understand why, when people directly impacted by these conditions have clear and cohesive demands and action plans, Western liberals and leftists need to come up with these completely abstract, impractical, ego-centric bullshit to create endless discourse over. They don't actually care about engaging with activists, grassroots organizations and unions in the Global South, because that involves interrogating their own paternalism, privilege and bias, and narrows the scope for the clout-chasing dunk economy.