truthdig | In the worlds of politics and nonprofits intersectionality has become
a sneaky substitute for the traditional left notion of solidarity
developed in the process of ongoing collective struggle against the
class enemy. Intersectionality doesn’t deny the existence of class
struggle, it just rhetorically demotes it to something co-equal with the
fights against ableism and ageism and speciesism, against white
supremacy, against gender oppression, and a long elastic list of others.
What’s sneaky about the substitution of intersectionality for
solidarity is that intersectionality allows the unexamined smuggling in
of multiple notions which directly undermine the development and the
operation of solidarity. Intersectionality means everybody is obligated
to put their own special interest, their own oppression first – although
they don’t always say that because the contradiction would be too
obvious. The applicable terms of art are that everybody gets to “center”
their own oppression, and cooperate as “allies” if and when their
interests “intersect.” What this yields is silliness like honchos who
run the pink pussy hat marches telling Cindy Sheehan earlier this month
that their women’s movement can’t be bothered to oppose war and
imperialism “…until all women are free,” and the advocates of this or
that cause demanding constant, elaborate performative rituals of those
who would qualify for “allyship.”
The nonprofit industrial complex, funded as it is by the one percent,
loves, promotes and lavishly rewards intersectionality at every turn
because it buries and negates class struggle. Intersectionality
normalizes the notion that the left is and ought to be a bunch of
impotent constituency groups squabbling about privilege and “allyship”
as they compete for funding and careers, not the the force working to
overthrow the established order and fight for the power to build a new
world. Even Hillary Clinton uses the word now.
Afro-pessimism is a term coined by Dr. Frank Wilderson at UC Irvine, and a nappy headed stepchild of intersectionality. Afro-pessimism, to hear Wilderson tell it is the realization that black people have no natural allies anywhere, that we are born with ankle irons, whip marks on our backs, bulls eyes on our foreheads and nooses around our necks. Blackness, he says is “a condition of ontological death,” and the dead have no allies, at least among the living. Wilderson is at least honest. He freely admits that afro-pessimism leads nowhere and offers no answers to any strategic or even tactical questions. Wilderson’s shtick is that of an old man throwing word grenades and he seems not to care much where or how they explode, as long as they do. Whatever works for him, I guess.
Afro-pessimism is a term coined by Dr. Frank Wilderson at UC Irvine, and a nappy headed stepchild of intersectionality. Afro-pessimism, to hear Wilderson tell it is the realization that black people have no natural allies anywhere, that we are born with ankle irons, whip marks on our backs, bulls eyes on our foreheads and nooses around our necks. Blackness, he says is “a condition of ontological death,” and the dead have no allies, at least among the living. Wilderson is at least honest. He freely admits that afro-pessimism leads nowhere and offers no answers to any strategic or even tactical questions. Wilderson’s shtick is that of an old man throwing word grenades and he seems not to care much where or how they explode, as long as they do. Whatever works for him, I guess.
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