A spectre is haunting the streets ....
October 31, 2018 8:47 PM   Subscribe

Socialists Must Reclaim Halloween, China Miéville "a celebration of the chaotic social over the orderly individual, an intuitive solidarity with those called monsters, and a principled refusal to be afraid of the dark." posted by the man of twists and turns (14 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh hey, earlier this evening I saw a 'gravestone' in a front yard with "here lies Capitalism" written on it.
posted by aniola at 8:49 PM on October 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


not exactly Marxism or Socialism but my first experience of anything resembling Halloween came when I was four years old and living briefly in Ireland. But it wasn't Halloween there -- it was Guy Fawkes Day, lots of kids bombing around wearing masks, bonfires, effigies being burned, some fireworks. I loved it. Blow Parliament the fuck up.
posted by philip-random at 8:55 PM on October 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


previously
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:11 PM on October 31, 2018


Me: Oh sweet! I love China Miéville! His stories weird.

Margaret Cohen: .. a notion of critique moving beyond logical argument and the binary opposition of a phantasmagorical staging more closely resembling psychoanalytic therapy, privileging nonrational forms of ‘working through’ and regulated by overdetermination rather than dialectics... a dehierarchization of the epistemological privilege accorded the visual in the direction of that integration of the senses dreamed of by Marx in The 1844 Manuscripts….

Me: [Backs away slowly, closes tab, decided to retake quiz on what Sex and the City character I am. (Maybe this time I'll get Samantha!)]

And that is why capitalistic consumerism will win every time.
posted by Telf at 9:36 PM on October 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


If you’re not rational and materialist, you’re not socialist. If you like chaos maybe you’re an anarchist, if you like rebellious magic spirits, maybe you’re some kind of pagan; socialist, you are not.
posted by Segundus at 1:21 AM on November 1, 2018


The Witch And Occultist Caucus would like a word with you (and some of your hair)
posted by The Whelk at 2:35 AM on November 1, 2018 [9 favorites]


If you’re not rational and materialist, you’re not socialist.

Eh. Dialectical materialism is kind of dumb and limiting, and possibly not super "rational", from the explanations I've read about it. One can arrive at correct or reasonable conclusions using invalid reasoning though - it's just that the conclusions are correct for different reasons. Personally, I define socialism by its conclusions (taxonomy of different forms of labor, different socioeconomic classes based on that, description of the relationships and potential relationships between classes, etc.) which are then applied going forward, not by the specific method. As a pure mathematician, I totally understand and sympathize with wanting a new and different term to separate that from the specific methodology that was used by Marx et. al.. But if the bits that I've read are accurate and not too incomplete, the term socialism has pretty much always referred to the application of Marx's conclusions about how economics works socially, and he himself would have described his specific methodology using other terms?
posted by eviemath at 4:42 AM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Scooped! And Spooked! I was actually looking at these self-same articles while I was compiling the horror movie FPP.

The LitCritGuy appeared on this episode of the Antifada podcast to talk about the intersections between the Gothic and Marxism, and I thought the hosts asked some really insightful questions, especially about how the Gothic as an aesthetic can be/has been employed by reactionary political forces. If we accept the concept of Gothic Socialism/Marxism, we also have to identify & acknowledge that a Gothic Fascism exists, and because of the transgressiveness and taboo-breaking nature of the Gothic, it can be sometimes difficult, even for the creators of a particular work, to recognize the political messages embedded in their creations. They specifically address stuff like Death in June and Joy Division as "problematic faves" of Gothic culture.

That said, the Gothic partly arises in literature as a bourgeois reaction against bookended social forces of, on the one hand, the authority & power of Aristocracy, often aligned with the Church (your Draculas, your evil monks, your haunted abbeys etc), and on the other hand, the faceless, dehumanized masses of workers (reflected as the animalistic, corrupt servants of the aristocratic monsters, often explicitly racially/ethnically othered, which would later evolve into zombies and Lovecraftian figures) that made their lives possible. Artists embracing elements of the Gothic would give an alternate lens on reality that could subvert Bourgeois values and outlooks.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 6:28 AM on November 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


The recent issue of Jacobin has a couple Halloween themed articles, in addition to the one linked above:
* Reading Marx on Halloween by Mark Steven
* Witches and Class Struggle by Silvia Federici
posted by eviemath at 7:40 AM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Sign me up, I first learned about systemic racism through Halloween. When we ran as a "mixed" pack, we got much less candy from White people s houses. As a white kid, it was spooky! To watch people s attitude toward me change based on our pack.

And also very quantifible, verifiable, in response to the person who stated that this approach wasn t materialist enough for socialism. That s a strange argument.

You better believe that nine year old kids were keeping close account on which houses were holding, which were holding back, and precise reasons why.
posted by eustatic at 8:22 AM on November 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


If you’re not rational and materialist, you’re not socialist.

Maybe not a capital "S" Socialist. But about four seconds of googling gets us to ... Christian socialism. No mention of Halloween festivities however.
posted by philip-random at 8:47 AM on November 1, 2018


. . . the Right’s strange appropriation of trick-or-treating

Not strange at all - I love it, but contemporary US Halloween is an intentionally instituted, infantalized pantomime of passive consumption.

In its immediate pre-importation-from-the-rural-UK form (where the trick in "trick or treat" was very much a real threat), it effectively acted as a social safety valve for class antagonism, and a reminder of class interdependence. Urban elites here, fearful of the industrial working class and with the balance of power (including, importantly, the police, schools, churches, and a mass-produced popular culture) squarely on their side, deliberately replaced the anarchic, pagan, proletarian gate-stealing-and-rotten-cabbage-throwing version with something much more passive, ahistorical, and non-threatening between c. 1900 and WW2.

Look at any US city newspaper in these eras, and you'll find articles about wealthy people wringing their hands and demanding police action to stop "hooliganism" on Halloween (and also on Thanksgiving and Christmas, which also used to have strong, class-flavored bacchinal aspects) and articles about public institutions offering "wholesome" alternatives. Halloween as we know it is a reactionary, conservative creation.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:36 AM on November 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


a principled refusal to be afraid of the dark.

halloween is entirely wasted on people without the skill or ability to be afraid of the dark. and I am sorry to learn that Mieville is not too good for Jacobin, as I would have expected him to be based on nothing at all.

and "reclamation" of halloween is for those too timid and mealy-mouthed to just up and claim it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:16 PM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Just went through Halloween in a little neighborhood in France. The kids were dressed particularly gruesomely and banged on our kitchen window until we opened it up. They demanded candy and one tried to wrest the bowl from my hands when I brought it out. It was legitimately scary. When the anti-capitalist revolution comes to France, the children will be well trained.
posted by rednikki at 2:02 AM on November 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


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