TOTW: Just Say No

Since I became an anarchist, November has always been a time for refusal. Refusing to vote, and making a big deal about it, was one of the ways I pushed back against the world. Even before I was an anarchist I was saying no – no to war, no to sweatshop labor, no to social conformity. Personal choices such as refusing to dress a certain way or consume substances were manifestations of a negativity towards the world, a “preference not to” that would later push me towards anarchism.

The Mary Nardini Gang talks about the importance of saying no to an anarchist politics in their introduction to Be Gay Do Crime, and I’m struck by how they connect this outward negativity to the personal and how we sustain ourselves as anarchists in the world.

“Hold onto that moment when you first called yourself an anarchist. Whatever your story, surely it was a refusal, a preference not to, saying “no.” You may not realize it, but this is the first time in your life you set a boundary with a world that attempts to erode your capacity to do so. Find that moment and that affect and hold firmly to it. Whatever else may be taken from you, they cannot take this. Let’s dispense with the tired conversation about the individual and the collective. We need each other and still each of us needs recourse to that intimately personal affect. Can we leave it at that? In the trying times, when we feel alone against the world, we will always have that initiating refusal. If we tend that little candle, we can always find our way, back to each other if necessary. The anarchist tension adapts to whatever comes next.”

As I’ve grown older in my politics, how I engage with the world has changed, and some of those boundaries set with the world have either become more fluid or I’m asserting them in different ways. But refusal and negativity still feel important to me on a basic level. And no, I’m not voting this year either.

So what is your little candle? How important is saying “no” to you as an anarchist, and how has that changed over time?

There are 20 Comments

We anarchists do spend a lot of time saying no and at this point in my life I find that a bit of a straight-jacket. I was pondering how to say what was on my mind and found some good words from Stefano Harney in the interview at the back of _The Undercommons_ :

"...refusal's something that we do because of them, what do we do because of ourselves?"

sleep

kinda frustrating, saying no to all gets tiring
so after getting tired of saying no, i don't switch and say yes
i go to sleep, then mope around, chill, and when i get energy and enthusiasm back, say no some more

i know it's very different for other anarchists, and it's okay
most people i deal with on day to day are liberals or worse and it's okay
let them build and enjoy a better tomorrow
they are plenty, capable, competent, eager
build it and they will come
what they're hype for is just not appealing to me
i bear with them, they bear with me
it's easy to put them at a distance when you say no
when it gets tiring, i sleep

in polite company, i try not to rustle feathers, not to bring up certain topics
but when i'm pressed, i say no, bracing for the reaction
and even get a weird sense of satisfaction when, pressed even more, i double down on the no
never been one to take leaps, save for few rare occasions, but i've never been one to back down
agreeable and easygoing until you find yourself face to face with the unmovable no
you may move my body for me or obliterate me
you may even contort my lips and manipulate me like an infernal puppet to mimic a yes, a parody of a yes
but you can't make me want it, you can't make me really say yes, i can't want what you want
i'll get tired of living first than i'll get tired of saying no
then i'll finally say no to everything

anarchy should always start at nothing, at the negation of everything from society to morality and ethics to politics and economics to social systems

from there you can build your own individual automony and identity, or beliefs as long as they are not being forced on others or you expect others to follow them

Yet anarchists are always telling people what they should do and how society should be

it's just you throwing gross generalizations at people you hate. Quit the sugar, and you'll feel better, more relaxed.

This is exactly why the majority of anarchists are just another version of liberal-social-anarchism at best because people are afraid of saying what anarchy is or *should* be

But that's first and foremost the result what their "anarchism" equates to in real life practices. When it's just about behaving queer and talking loud at the local lefty café, that doesn't mean much at all.

We need to figure out the context. Even if one does not say "should", he may express a kind of moral oppression. Even if an egoist says "should," he may be trying to explore a strategy. Strategy is very important in this era.

Individual Autonomy is not the mainstream value of Uncle Sam

people are supposed to both be individuals atomized, distinct from their culture, and are also to be members, part of a herd.
it's too easy and also inaccurate to say that the u.s. just promotes one or the other.

Would also be a form of politicking I'm afraid, same with "anarchists commit crime", which is why I find egoism a little more sensible and healing than being an anarchist direct-activist.

Yet I agree with the person who wrote this: both this and the last election people have tried to get me to vote, I only responded aggressively when they tried to get me to vote aggressively. Both Democrats and Republicans have done this, their argument is always the other candidate is just aweful and it doesn't take much time or effort to vote. Well, if they think that, I have zero issues with them voting, but I do think the idea of investing any time whatsoever in a liar when I dont have to is pretty fucked up.

I think that some terms carry baggage & sometimes are too broad, vague, or ambiguous. To counter that one may use plain language, more specific language grounded in your immediate context. Sometimes the effort falls short of the intended goal, sometimes people resort to using words that aim to reinvent the wheel & have their own poverty, sometimes they're just buzzwords to say the same thing that's been said ad nauseum. The baggage attached to words reminds us of the sickening repetition of the same stories. It really is nauseating, trying to use different language may clarify, but it can also be used to hide histories, to paint things as new, rebranding.

Anarchy & anarchism, despite their limits as words & as problematic historical baggage, can be a great thing to resort to & affirm as shorthand since it encompasses many "no's", ever expanding as time goes on, that many struggles approach as singular subjects, to the neglect of others, with simplistic approaches (manichean binaries, false dichotomies, essenstialist identities, teleological narratives & metanarratives, etc.). It's also great because the sickening baggage hopefully helps you avoid past mistakes by curing you of the naivety of the first adopters of those words. By discarding the term & latching on to another which is perhaps newer & less stained by conflict/history/memory, you may be merely avoiding owning up to the inevitable consequences of certain values, ideas & courses of action.

Those interested in one specific issue are not necessarily interested in another. Anarchy cuts across different issues, because the logic of domination/obedience manifested in economic, political & religious (etc) institutions, organizations, & even in interpersonal dynamics, is either at its root or is mediated by it. That is not to say that anarchy is the solution to all these problems it concerns itself with. In fact, it often doesn't manifest as (necessarily false) grand solutions, but as rejection of the false solutions proposed by others, who are often focused on single issues, or reductionist, deterministic frameworks, & coercive means.

It's also a matter affirmed values. Saying "no" to imposition of values that are contrary to yours is self-affirming. When you say "no", that is a "negation" instead of an "affirmation", but it's not a mathematical cancelling. Saying "no" is not the absence of a "yes", it's not a void, it's setting the boundaries of your-self against someone else's. Saying "no" doesn't need to imply a "negative" connotation as in a dreary pessimism.

The lack of a proposed program does not need to imply a lack of imagination, but the recognition of complexity, of the limits of your capacity & spheres of influence, & of values that are against instrumentalizing others to serve your visions. Anarchy is the recognition that you'd like to be free under any circumstance, historical & cultural context, not the guarantee that you will be. It's also the recognition that others are like you, & that this will lead to many different conflicts, as well as cooperation, that may manifest in many ways. Our current context, for some time now, pits lovers of freedom against States, corporations, churches etc. & all the things they'd have to offer. That's not to say that anarchy merely exists to oppose these things, but they're among the big things currently in the way.

An unnecessary analogy: rock climbers climb rocks not because they're going somewhere, but because they enjoy it. Anarchists enjoy life, they're not the vehicle nor the path of history, they enjoy movement, freedom of movement, the joy of motion, for its own sake, not because they're "going somewhere". If they get tired, they rest so they can do it again. To translate not-literal analogy: if anarchists say "no" they're defying obstacles to free motion, not expecting they will cease to exist. Implicit in every "yes", there are endless "no's" of rejected alternative possible courses of action.

It's always more easily to say no than to be one. Like Zizek, posturing in the media doesn't make him more radical.

On the other hand, it is easy to confuse Hegel's negation with Nietzsche's negation. The affirmation and negation of dialectics actually come from different stages of the same thing. For example, the development of bourgeois democracy to a certain stage produces a negation, which in turn leads to the emergence of a new society. Or, in the view of dialectics, there is an object, which conforms to the law of inertia, but the acceleration and the law of inertia are "contradictory", which shows that the object is constantly surpassing the original state, so as to reach a new state. An arrow is static, but it is contradictory, because it is "in one place and another at the same time", so the arrow is moving.

Dialectics is nonsense. It basically kills Heraclitus because it pretends to think about the movement of objects, but it doesn't think about becoming. But it's easy to confuse. Just like some people in China (the industrial party) think that "modern society must be protected". It is easy to associate Nietzsche's affirmation. But in fact, it is a manifestation of Hegelianism. Like a donkey, it thinks that the lofty value and vulgar life of modernity must be protected, so it is actually fascism. Similarly, Nietzsche's negation is opposite to Hegel's negation.

In fact, in our time, Hegelianism is coming back, just like some "social anarchists.". In the past, direct democracy was based on class struggle. Now, the so-called "communism" has become a direct social democracy (like David Graber). This is totally reactionary. It's like the remake of national syndication on the eve of World War II.

This is not to say that we should go back to the age of innocence of the left - the words of "back to the past of the left" and national democracy are two sides of the same coin - but that there is a need to rethink more radical thinking and practice, and to launch fierce criticism.

Don't engage, don't explain yourself unless you want to. You are free to think as you do without explaining it. We don't explain why we are hungry, thirsty, tired, happy, in love etc unless you want to. Don't get drawn in. No authority but yourself.W

I like to get lost. I lost my way in the forest, and then I met the shit. This is life and anarchy!

We might appreciate running into each other in one of those forests.

I live for that moment when I don't recognize where I am, am not immediately clear on which way to go, especially when I didn't start with a destination in mind. The tingle in my belly, the heightened awareness of elements that offer guidance but impose no mandates. The quick, almost unconscious or intuitive assessment of danger in self or within range and what to do about it. A tabula rasa moment - possibilities and obstacles to be discovered. Especially the shit.

It starts with a saying YES to knowing and trusting and loving yourself enough that you can say NO to those who want to direct and control the whole damn journey.

Add new comment