Edouard Glissant: Postcolonial Theory Can Help Occupiers Fight:

Theoretics from Postcolonial Writers can be helpful tools for the current Occupy Movement in Western Nations. Edouard Glissant of Martinique has some significant strategies that could enhance the need for society’s necessary mental alterations. With a fresh expansion on the definition of history and self-reflection, we can expand our parameters that the corporate elite and mass acceptance hold us to. 

Edouard Glissant emphasizes the ‘enmeshment’ of history. Through the opening between threads, we can re-write history from a multiple voice and not merely limit history to only be written via the winners of wars. “From the tracks left yesterday and today, mixed together,” we can begin to understand that the Cold War was not merely just those nations favoring Democracy versus those favoring Socialism. Our understanding of the world through post-World War II politics was never in actual reality Western Capitalism versus Soviet-ism. The Cold War was a limited definition of history, but in truth it was where colonialism attempted its best to suppress the rising needs of human beings in far off regions with alternative lifestyles, ideologies, and beliefs, but who had natural resources, profitable exploits and a labor force easily usable for the next century gains.

Why bring the Cold War into all this? In a recent interview between Tariq Ali and the film director Oliver Stone, Tariq Ali reminds us that, “History never goes away. History is always present. You may not know it, but almost everything that happens is related to something in the past. You cannot understand the present otherwise” (Ali).  While most of us have been brainwashed to think the Cold War was merely stopping the spread of communism worldwide, it was not. It was a struggle of – Occupying – and the forces of the corporate elite pushed market value interests into every corner of the globe for oil, tin, rubber, water, minerals, cheap labor, and more.

Glissant states in his Caribbean Discourses, “The struggle against a single History for the cross-fertilization of histories means repossessing both a true sense of one’s time and identity: proposing in an unprecedented way a revaluation of power.” 

History is always present. However, limiting ourselves to a single definition of history, whether reflections on World War II or the Cold War, ignores the majority of the human race and their genuine ambitions for human dignity and respect after the colonial era, which did not end during World War II nor during the Cold War. Waves of independent movements have been shattered in the last seventy years.

Along with the need to enmesh history with that of the larger diverse voices of the globe, Edouard Glissant empowers the need for Opacity. This quality of making the body and mind impervious to rays of false light obstructs the negative elements that attempt to limit definitions to refined one-dimensional textbook answers. He supports the need to keep perspectives, insights and accepted norms hard to understand. A blurry spot, like Helene Cixous’ use of incomprehensible reflections, maintains a semblance against false definitions. Opacity, like Enmeshment, assists in the re-evaluation of power. 

Glissant states: “There is a contradiction between lived experience through which the community instinctively rejects the intrusive exclusiveness of a single History and an official way of thinking through which it passively consents to the ideology ‘represented’ by its elite.” This lack of comprehension is strength, not flaw, “Ambiguity is not always a sign of some short-coming” (Glissant). Mainstream media has for the longest time in the United States assisted in the passive manufactured consent.

The Opacity of the Occupied Movements allows the definition to continually be open to change and growth. When media and foreign policy experts limited the civil unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya to the terminology ‘Arab Spring’ they anticipated that the movements had a clear historic beginning and a clear historic ending. In a wider understanding of History, these events in such nations are far from over. 

Just this week, protests in Cairo have gotten more and more intense. After getting rid of Mubarak but keeping the military in power was only an inevitable delay to the continuation of the outcome needed to break from the power structure that limits democracy. Libya’s challenges have only just re-started after the end of Gaddafi. Now the blurriness of the road ahead will be just as challenging as capitalists seek to gain dominance over a larger public domain.

Democracy’s bottom line is people. Socialism’s bottom line is people. But Capitalism’s bottom line, whether it be in the hands of the government or private interests, the bottom line is profit and segregation of the haves, the have-less, and the have-nots.   

Glissant proposes: “The question we need to ask will not be ‘Who am I?’ but rather ‘Who are we,’” and the important thing is not the reply but the question. It is a question that will require no active reply. It is not the negation of history when one assumes an answer. The answer is always changing and never universal. 

Another great Postcolonial writer, Ngugi wa Thiongo from Kenya, suggests the notion of ‘decolonizing the mind’. What the Occupy Movements need to express especially in western nations is our own ‘decolonizing of the mind’. In Thiongo’s novel Wizard of the Crow, he emphasizes “breaking the Totality where man and women must fit within the Western ideal” of consumer capitalism. Numerous times throughout the novel, characters are faced with a mirror where they have to come to terms with the perceptions they have of themselves and then in order to transcend, they must go beyond the individual’s self and the world that he knows of. Some characters sought illusionary solitude, and others sought political protest.

Unconnected to Thiongo, but still applying to his novel, Glissant states, “The relationship between history and literature is concealed today in what I call ‘the longing for the ideal of history’ … this obsession with finding the primordial source toward which one struggles through revelations that have the peculiarity of obscuring as well as disclosing” (Glissant).  

We are not single beings in a single enigma; those who are caught up in the closest proximity to the capitalist ideology have the hardest time looking in the mirror. Occupiers need to ‘decolonize the minds’ and going beyond the park matures our protest to a new nonviolent organizational level beyond romanticizing history (as with the original tea-party in the Boston Harbor). Many of us are doing just that in the opacity of the moment and in the movement. Next we need to send that message outwards to the passive masses to begin understanding a great enmeshed history beyond the borders and within the borders of the US, and beyond the notion that ‘we are what we are’ is unacceptable if limited to how the elite define us since their gains from World War II do not encompass the depths of a larger occupying notion: beyond economics, beyond borders, and beyond accepted perceptions.  

OCCUPY WALL STREET: Now Going Beyond:

In every organized movement there is a time for solidarity, sharing information, discussing the dialectics, and nurturing the group’s identity. One of the next big hurdles of the Occupy Wall Street protest as well with any fresh new movement is to expand beyond the inner circle. Organizing the voices so that the multitude of ideas speaks beyond the park. Going beyond the park involves introspection, expression, and activation.

At times in the park, one may find that they are discussing the similarities and the shared energies of those around them, and this is a great way for us to overcome our alienation. Yet perhaps we get frustrated at why the larger center of the population is too comfortable in their luxuries and more so comfortable in their lack of luxuries these days. In the park the conversations begin to feel as if we are a collective of understanding, outside the park up the streets of Broadway and Times Square, and up the east and west side of Central Park, over into the suburbs in Jersey, too many remain naïve and distracted to realism.  How can we expand past the park and bring in more diversity and a more shared-drive away from passivity?

In R.D. Laing’s Divided Self, a pivotal psychology study in the 60’s, Laing talks about overcoming ‘ontological insecurity’, which entails overcoming depersonalization and overcoming ‘engulfment’. This is where the activist reinstates: “I am arguing in order to preserve my existence. I am not arguing so that I have the pleasure of triumphing over you.” This is not a competition of who knows more information. It is a will to preserve our survival on this sinking ship of capitalism. We must start with introspection, looking into ourselves to overcome.

In Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender, Butler, from norms to politics, reflects that “norms seem to signal the regulatory or normalizing function of power, but norms are precisely what binds individuals together, forming the basis of the ethical and political claims” … teaching unacceptable restrictions and historical reinterpretation is necessary; “Our bodies relate us against our will from the start. I deny this to preserve my existence” (Butler). Overcoming restrictions to the norms of the body, Butler denies the accepted norms to preserve her sense of self.

The introspection that Laing and Butler suggest, clearly separate from one-another, allows us to look at ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically to suggest perhaps what we have limited ourselves to and what society has limited us to is not enough for me or you to reach a healthier higher potential. The psychologist Karen Horney emphasizes that if we do not overcome our personal neuroticisms, then our neuroticism will control us. We must overcome the petty distractions that divide one another and our society. 

Caitlin Hewitt-White has discussed that “there seems to be an assumption at work that if we are fighting the ‘system’ that is oppressive, then we are somehow ‘non-oppressive' by virtue claiming to be ‘outside’ of the system. None of us are immune from the grasp of patriarchy, racism, and homophobia. The implications of thinking that we are immune can dangerously affect participation” (Hewitt-White). We are products of the system too. We have to learn to reflect before acting in order to know which action may take us towards the healthier outcome: the path of the tortoise or the path of the hare.

This reflectability helps us also through modifying our language as William S Burroughs emphasized expanding and altering our language will allow us to speak and to deny our impulse to normalization tactics. Not just restraining to correct one another’s grammar, but to add new inflections so that we stop to think about the message being said. “The first stage in such an evolution is the dissolution of boundaries: geographical, psychic, and physical” (Burroughs). We must exceed our sense of citizenship to go beyond thinking merely patriotism. Our problems are global now and we must be responsible beyond the limits of borders and language. We must exceed the limits that have indoctrinated our mind to thinking within someone else’s elite imposed parameters.

Education is a significant tool to introspection and activation. Bell Hooks in an interview with Cornel West implies: “I think that the major dilemma is the way professionalization within the academic limits those of us who want to speak to broader audiences” (Hooks).    

Deborah Rosenfelt puts it, “Education is the key to social change… Schools can become vehicles for indoctrination … I want to stress this problem of bias because scholarship is supposed to be as bias-free as possible. We will look at all questions and issues from as many sides as we can think of” (Rosenfelt). Her point is that teachers may be significant voices in our education but we must all question our teacher’s, the good ones and the negative ones, we must question our teacher’s assumptions, just as much as we must question our own assumptions, because we are all products of our system. “Skepticism is essential to continued growth and a balanced perspective” (Rosenfelt).

Grace Lee Boggs nurtures this introspection with reflecting outwards; “We urgently need to stop thinking of ourselves as victims and to recognize that we must each become a part of the solution, because we are each a part of the problem.” She continues, “We need much more than reform. We need a paradigm shift!” We need a shift in our educational paradigm and a shift in our own mental paradigm.

Some suggestions for this paradigm shift, Charles Hampden-Turner promoted in Radical Man, include: 1) Promoting anxiety tolerance, dialectic and synergy. We need to learn to tolerate our anxiety of the unknown, and realize that we do not need to control every situation and every outcome. The current anxiety does not need to be solved in an immediate fashion and the instability allows us more time for self-reflection and self-interrogation. 2) Integrating feedback; if we can share and extend our reach and gain feedback from continually diverse outlets, we will be able apply constructive feedback to current and future projects. 3) Snatching meaning from the absurd. By being incomprehensible at times, in a Helene Cixous fashion allows us to challenge our limits to concrete. We do not need to make demands or place a leader at the frontline. Having absurdity on our side allows us to not be limited to determining definitions.

   

Being able to accept comfort in the unknown and the abstract leaves an open potential that is not common in the conformity of those who need constant determination. “Developing men and women must rebel against some features in their environment and transform incoming messages into personal, meaningful synthesis. Conformity and obedience have crippling effects on development” (Hampden-Turner).

Historically, activists in the 1920’s and 1960’s left the academic world and entered jobs within the factories to educate the working class. Activists who want to awaken the working class could get jobs in schools, construction, and other personal unexpected occupations to begin hard discussions with those Americans that are too busy working to know what is going on outside conformity.  Bell Hooks emphasizes that through critical listening and reflecting, we begin to teach our selves and others to transgress. Transgression is an important tool for the challenges we face.

As a movement, Occupy Wall Street must expand and broaden its base or fear atrophy.  Activation can be as simple as going to local open mike-nights, bring prose to override the self-loathing poetry… Get a job as a teacher and encourage students in a way that does not prepare them for a standardized test, but prepares them for questioning and critical thinking… Expose students to history outside of the textbook… Crash self-help group sessions and lead the discussion away from self-gain to community power… We need to be more than just echoing parrots…  When a homeless man begs on the street in uptown for cash, direct them to Wall Street telling them there is food and shelter there.

Practice sit-ins. Go to homeless shelters. Go in groups on the subway, in restaurants, in stores, and on corners of the street and create intellectual discussions between your selves and in a way product-place the Occupy movement for those listening. People are always eaves dropping on other people’s conversations, and if you discuss the economy, politics, news and activism, we are sure to get people to hear something.

One doesn’t need drugs as in the 1960’s to alter one’s perspective. It is not easy to establish responsibility within the masses and the youth’s self-seeking pleasure principle. Crossing social and personal boundaries into communities we may not normally walk through will tamper the system.  We must remain open. Openness, honesty, as well as overcoming the reactionary quick fix that creates violence, flexible organizing are important, and finally having the maturity to recognize that it is okay if we do not know all the answers will allow us to keep growing.

  

The WORLD BANK and the DJINN of Development:

The mythological djinn, also known as the genie in the lamp, is a classic folklore character with magical powers to grant all those who summon him to get their most cherished wishes made real. The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries. The hidden meaning behind the myth of the djinn was that after the individual made his wishes there would always be an underlying flaw in the contract that created more harm than benefit. The thin line of agreements and unexpected outcomes of the World Bank loans can very easily be compared to the djinn’s tale.

When a nation chooses to accept a World Bank loan, the conditions for the loans require governments to strictly embrace the Neoliberal political economic ideology, which allows corporations from the wealthiest countries to take over the financial and commercial trade decisions. Many common suggestions that the World Bank proposes for governments are to set up dams, move the city center, build stadiums, construct roads, privatize water sources, and numerous other tactics. When financial experts from wealthy nations go to developing nations and suggest to them how they can build their wealth quickly they ignore environmental risks, cultural depletion, and sensitivity to quality of life outside the monetary value.

In many ways, the quick road to development is as malignant as the djinn’s granting of wishes. Dam projects as seen in India have caused massive amounts of displaced citizens. First the dam floods a valley where indigenous groups have lived for centuries and when the lake is formed, those who once used the rivers freely for generations find the land now privatized and their basic human need for water unaffordable. The Yacyreta Dam in Argentina, the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala, and the Manantali Dam in Mali are just a few World Bank funded dams that have had sharp social and environmental reprecussions.

In developing nations as in Bolivia and Ghana privatizing water supplies devastated local groups. In country’s like Malawi, where the majority of the population cannot find basic needs, food and clean water is scarce, projects that built a stadium and moved the city centre of Lilongwe were only beneficial for a small minor percentage of the population compared to projects that could have reached out further to the public’s needs. Deforestation in Brazil has led to massive flooding and environmental degradation.

Yet the significant financial repercussions from a developing nation accepting a World Bank loan is that the country is in perpetual debt. This fairytale of happily ever after becomes a never-ending story of trying to raise enough funds to pay back loans that most developing countries cannot possibly balance making large payments and sustainably, while being socially accountable, develop at the same time. So corners are cut and the poor populations are the first to be neglected, displaced, or swindled. A good wish that goes significantly wrong, especially to those who are considered expendable to the government and the rich.

In conclusion, if the djinn of the developing world were to have never granted loans to developing nations in the first place, most likely those large-scale global ecological and social crisis would have been avoided, developing nations would have resorted to their own grass-roots and self-reliant choices, and would not have borrowed when they couldn’t have afforded to do so. Be weary of what you wish for. Develop with hard work and not the quick easy fix, and do not trust a djinn in a shiny gold lamp even if it sounds like a good idea.     

  

Ukrainian Activists: FEMEN: Feminist Storm:

One of the key activists groups making notoriety this year has been the Ukrainian FEMEN. This group of radical female voices has recently made the headlines going to Italy and protesting Berlusconi and the Pope. Earlier in the year they reflected solidarity with the women in Saudi Arabia, who pushed civil disobedience through driving automobiles where it is forbidden for women to drive. FEMEN made headlines again this year when they protested the controversial trial against the former Ukrainian female Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

FEMEN is a unique activist group that has challenged the authorities continually this past year. What makes the activist group stand out most is their shocking tactic of protesting topless. For a feminist group, this can be seen as contradictory. But in deeper analysis, this very tactic could be why they have made so many headlines in the world press.

Regardless of fighting topless, the Ukrainian activists have a message. They want to stop sexism and the objectification of women not just in the Ukraine but also from Saudi Arabia to the Vatican. Like Code Pink, they refuse to be ignored during political debates and spectacles. Perhaps FEMEN utilize their bare essentials to strip away the false image those in power parade around.

Does protesting topless strengthen or weaken their cause? From Norman Mailer to Erica Jong to Susan Sontag, the body in the 21^st Century as in any century prior is a distraction. The tactic here seems to be a tool to enhance attention to their causes. In the Ukraine where prostitution and sexism have been on the rise since the ideological change from Communism to Capitalism, the activists are using their bodies to shock the masculine establishment from merely looking at women for pleasure. They are fighting the macho male image with their own sort of She-Hulk reflection, a defiant stance. While Vladimir Putin can run on the beach bare-chested to show off his manliness, these activists are reflecting their own equal opportunity to push their aggression and anger towards a sexist system.

Perhaps the reason FEMEN fight topless can be compared to why the Zapatistas in Mexico fight with ski-masks. The native groups associated with the Zapatistas from Mayan descent during their defiant acts against a manipulative government wore ski-masks in order to be seen. When they aren’t wearing masks, they have continually been ignored. The government and elite disregard them as primitive and able to be pushed aside. So the Zapatistas stood in solidarity with masks to overcome the disregard. Perhaps the FEMEN activists, tired of being ignored as clothed women, disregarded for their gender in making decisions regarding politics and their own body, chose to make noise without any flashy dress or humble attire.

Tired of the expression ‘be seen but not heard’, the FEMEN activists, whether in aesthetic and 'a priori' or literal statements, use the tactics that they feel suite them best because it is an extreme expression of discontent that goes beyond flesh and the superficial cultural bias of gender, which gets in the way of hearing one another to overcome corruption and manipulative obstacles. They make those in power uncomfortable this is because those in power must either cover them up for indecency or face their own indecency in their treatment of the opposite sex.  

Inevitable Iran: Catch-22 Nuclear Ambition

The edge of the glass towards conflict between Iran and its enemies is getting closer and closer. News this week has Israel callously considering bombing Iran. The US propaganda machine is pushing for the conclusion of the Ayatollah regime. The Catch-22 for Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions have led to a no doubt that they cannot turn back now because other signifiers in historic context reflect any which way but lose.

Iran has been in the US oil interest eye and government foreign policy since the 1970’s revolution that surprised the western hegemony. Before the multi-faceted revolution, the Shah was America’s favorite oil dictator. Before the Ayatollah usurped the face of the revolution to merely extremism, the revolution had diversity and alternative potential. But like Stalin and Napoleon, the leadership that followed suffocated the very potential of new opportunities.

Fast forward to the post-9/11 world where the chicken-hawks of Bush and Cheney pushed the US into unprecedented wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Since the first air strike into Afghanistan, Iran had to be at the edge of their alertness. With the following entry into Iraq, I would say that Iran had already anticipated that if they wanted to maintain a secure safety-net they had to seek nuclear weapons. Why?

Firstly, any country with a hostile military invading two countries that border it in the north and the southwest would be very agitated. For example, if some army were to have invaded Canada and Mexico, the US would not just patiently sit in between a rock and a hard place. Iran’s neighbors were being crushed with weapons from a foreign power with no anticipation to halt attacks until oil fields and natural resources were divided up to Halliburton and other corporations. 

The only true reason the US military went into Iraq was because those at the very top clearly knew due to the heavy sanctions and past sales to the very dictator that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons. Unlike in North Korea and Iran, Iraq's nuclear ambition was never as transparent. That is a given.

Secondly, if Israel, Pakistan and India all have nuclear weapons and the international community was unable to stop them, why would Iran be any more of a threat than even say China and Russia or the US for having the weapons? Isn’t one of the key Amendments in the US, the right to bear arms? The right to seek a weapon for self-defensive measures seems praise for the American way. This defensive mechanism saved China and Russia during the Cold War so that the US did not bomb them as done onto Japan. Clearly double standards are apparent. The parent and teacher that says ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’ leads through example, never through words, and the message is taught through the action. So Iran is not ignorant and can see that countries like China and Israel were able to acquire the power, which once received stopped outside interest from overriding into national sovereignty.

Thirdly, Iran cannot turn back from seeking this power at this point for two key reasons: two lessons learned from Libya. One, after 9/11 Libya sought to negotiate with the United States and dismantle its nuclear ambition. In a 2006 Amnesty International Report, the organization noted the strides Gaddafi had made in working with the US and Italy to change its image from terrorist supporter to international poster child of change. Eventually we would learn he was outsourcing torture for US renditions, as Wikileaks noted. The lesson Iran clearly learned, don’t change your tactics because your aggressors will not be genuinely friendly.  That is where the second lesson from Libya has played out.

If one negotiates and changes their tactics, there are no assurances. The oppressed opposition in Iran is eager to have more human rights, more civil rights, and more basic freedoms. As in Libya, the first sign of unrest and instability would be a key opportunity for the Western powers to enter in and destroy the national hegemony. Though the support for the freedoms and democratic hopes of the people are the political rhetoric for assisting Libyan and Iraqi people, those with the real power in the corporate elite truly only want the oil resources.  If Iran changes its tactics now, they would only allow speculators to find propaganda to enter.

If Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons, the US and other nuclear powered nations would not protest. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship that oil interests can deal with. But Iran is too independent, just as Libya has been.  

Iran has everything to lose if they seek nuclear power, and they have everything to lose if they do not seek nuclear power. The Iranian people want to overcome oppression. The supportive humanists in more open societies want democracy and justice to prevail.  The capitalists are greedy enough to want to find any means necessary to reclaim the control over the oil under Iran’s soil that they once had at their fingertips under the Shah. This Catch-22 only gives Iran an inevitable conclusion. It is only a matter of time how history will be played out. Most of us hope that the changes will be achieved with the least amount of violence as possible. 

Overcoming Alienation:

It is very easy to isolate oneself at this time and avoid necessary issues that affect all walks of life. From population boom to global warming, from economics to stagnant politics due to corporate fear of a healthy evolution without the need of capitalism, we are in a roadblock in society and coming to terms with what is actually happening in the world, not just in the United States, but everywhere that has now been extended into the postmodern world is mentally challenging. Alienation is a way in which individuals avoid involvement, and it is a means in which the power structure eases the opposition, leaving power strong and individuals lost in a sense of hopeless cynicism. Alienation is a distraction, which is avoidable through practice.

Quite often to avoid the outside world, people resort to technology, and technology is getting more and more sophisticated to keep people isolated. Though many individuals listen on their headphones, iphones, cellphones, and more for distractions or they watch the same shows on television or cinema, this bond between us is still rather superficial because we are still alienated from our true expression. It is a secondhand experience. The secondhand experience of watching on a screen or listening to a recording rather than in real life activation, only gives partial fulfillments. We have grown to like our solitary solution.

We may be unaware that this form of alienation still has the element of technology from a corporate source dictating to your subconscious that these are one’s only choices.  Our choices are being limited through the technology that we use to escape. Prior to the 20^th Century two significant figures come to mind who had dealt with alienation in quite different ways: Walt Whitman and Karl Marx. Rarely today do we see such figures with presence, physically with their thick bulging beards, and mentally with their reflections on life.

In Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, there is a famous section noting “Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,” and while 28 men bathe joyfully beside the shore one-woman alone way in the distance cannot join them. She emotionally yearns to join them. She even visually in her imagination places herself in the crowd of men actively bathing. She wants to join them but is limited. Her social role, her location, and her own mind limit her from running to join the group. She could have defied all limits and faced the backlash, but she could not take the leap in the same way that Rosa Parks in the 20^th Century refused to go to the back of the bus.

For Walt Whitman poetry was a means for individuals to overcome their isolation and share with their common neighbors the emotions and yearnings that they think only they can understand and no one else. Yet the bonding power of poetic theory is revolutionary in the sense that reading out loud one’s internal voice shares the resemblances that we have in common, which we would not know we have in common, if we do not share our voice. Limiting one’s listening through technology creates a one-way transmission: television, radio, etc. However, reading aloud or talking out in a group setting allows multiple transmissions.      

Karl Marx was aware of the limits of the industrial capitalist society, where the bottom line for society is production and profit. In such a limited bottom-line dimension, humanities and human rights are only luxuries for those who can afford it. In a Capitalist society, there will always be the haves and the have-nots. In Whitman’s poem, the have-not is the woman, who is watching the men from the shore. In reflection those countries where capitalism is the most extreme and most demanding, individuals are the most alienated from their fellow men.  Alienation is the leftover parts of man that the production mechanism of society cannot fully profit from.

In the 20^th Century, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze’s work expanded on where society has evolved since Marx’s knowledge of alienation began. They note in their work, particularly in Anti-Oedipus, that capitalism controls people in three significant ways, through 1) politics, 2) economics, and 3) subjective control. In regards to politics and economics, the corporate elite controls who has the political power and who controls the movement of money. The third notion is the very fact that our Subjectivity can be controlled through how we learn to see ourselves. Far too often today in the 21^st Century, we reflect on our personality through the clothes we buy, the brand names we consume, and the music and movie label we akin to.  Associating yourself with such means of capitalist control, whether we are conscious or unaware of the matter, we are still being controlled through dictation. “I’m a PC, or I’m a Mac, or I am a Pepper (Dr. Pepper)” can still leave us highly alienated from other aspects of human potential.

In a parallel reflection to Guittari and Deleuze, bringing in Marx and Whitman’s sense of alienation where poetics and revolutionary theory mesh together, Herbert Marcuse characterizes how individuals have been limited through the current social contract; “Individual’s awareness of the prevailing repression is blunted by the manipulated restriction of his consciousness. This process alters the contents of happiness. … With the control of information, knowledge is administered and confined. The Individual does not really know what is going on; the overpowering machine of education and entertainment unites him with all others in a state of anesthesia” (Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization)

This joint ‘state of anesthesia’ is what we see today in a generalized apathy towards politics, the mass acceptance of consumption to the point of degrading the environment and degrading our own bodies, and we are not using our senses to protect ourselves anymore. We are not using our eyes or our ears to really see and hear what is happening, and when we do see it or hear it, we accept the hopelessness around because we have been restricted consciously of our options, as Marcuse has said, through our education and our entertainment outlets. We become cynical and alienated masses that have been passively lead into a great hole. The corporate elite wants you to retreat, like the woman on the beach in Whitman’s poem, and just fantasize about escape and true happiness, rather than embrace a higher sense of reality. You tend to be limited in options if you cannot afford to pay for material luxuries. But the material escape, the financial escape, is only a part of the anesthesia process. Real happiness is beyond this alienation and confined limitation imposed on us.     

Julia Kristeva calls this learned sense of helplessness and hopelessness as the ‘maladies of the soul’. This symbolic castration of our intellect and our social means of communicating within groups to overcome our alienation requires hard questioning of the world as we perceive it. In parallel, Lyn Hejinian, uses poetics to alter our perception, in her book The Language of Inquiry, she notices, “When the term realism is applied to poetry, it is apt to upset our sense of reality. But exactly the strangeness that results from a description of the world given in the terms ‘there it is’, ‘there it is’, ‘there it is’ that restores the realness to things in the world and separates things from ideology” (Hejinian). An evolving poetics is also a poetics of scrutiny, and we must not only speak out to those in power, but have the ability to scrutinize these false ideological controls in our life that make ill-logical sense. For example, when we look at money, we say “is this just paper; is it really more important than the blood I bleed to earn it, spend it, and consume it?”  

Using poetic inquiry like Lyn Hejinain or Walt Whitman is one solutionary step to take. Using philosophical questioning like Julia Kristeva and Karl Marx is a similar yet different solutionary approach. Both solutionary approaches require using one’s eyes, ears, and critical thought. These steps bring us closer to a revolutionary process to move away from the stagnant alienation that we face in today’s world.  Speaking out loud and sharing your emotions and reading poetry, letters, singing, or dialoguing breaks up the monologue our technology feeds us from its one-way transmission.

On a humanist psychological level, Carl Rogers brings a third solutionary step. He emphasizes in his On Becoming a Person, an individual must move towards a trust in one self, move towards an acceptance of others, accept the unpredictability of life, increase openness of experience, and take risks. Such movement away from defensive mechanism of isolation and movement towards the pole of openness, self-actualizing allows one to come closer to an inner self that has not falsely been determined through limits of fashion and the stage-directions picked up from camera and screen branding.

Today more than at any other time in history the tools that the corporate elite use to maintain control over the vast population locally and now globally are ever more complex with technology at their fingertips. However, that very same technology is at our fingertips as well, as we share our poetic, psychological, political, and philosophical insights. We have the tools imbedded in us to revolt, but we have to now sink deep inside our alienated consciousness and find them. We must continually ask hard questions, reflect on our observations in poetic and philosophical ways, and seek active ways to communicate with each other beyond the computer and beyond the shores.