Dr. Bayo Amokalafe asks how can I stray from usefulness?
December 15, 2023 10:28 AM Subscribe
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed on the podcast For the Wild on the subject of Ontological Mutiny. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe - Nigerian-born living in India, a “recovering” psychologist, writer, and speaker on such wide-ranging issues as whiteness (which he describes as the way we organize and are organized), neurotypicality, violence, animism, anticapitalism (as a project of capitalism), post-activism and more.
A quote from a recent lecture by Dr. Akomolafe:
To be seen is to be surveilled/
To be surveilled is to be useful/
To be useful is to be imprisoned/
To be imprisoned is to be stuck
Dr. Akomolafe asks us to consider the breaks, fissures, openings, and cracks where we can stray from usefulness.
More links to Dr. Akomolafe's work:
To Think in Ricochet: On Violence (via his website)
YouTube link: Reflections on Democracy and Belonging
YouTube link: The Art of Repair
More links to Dr. Akomolafe's work:
To Think in Ricochet: On Violence (via his website)
YouTube link: Reflections on Democracy and Belonging
YouTube link: The Art of Repair
I understand what he’s trying to get at, but “let climate change destroy civilization” (and “just let the zombies bite you”) are a hard sell. Yeah, maaaaybe what comes next might be better, but I’d prefer my kid NOT grow up in Mad Max world. It seems too close to accelerationist thinking for my comfort.
posted by rikschell at 12:30 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by rikschell at 12:30 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've been meaning to put together a post about Akomolafe for a long time, now I don't have to! Thanks for this... highly recommend his book These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, a truly mind-expanding read.
Also recommended: I, Coronavirus: Mother. Monster.Activist. (there's a non- Scribd source for this somewhere probably but then you'd miss out on Jon Marro's illustrations) - truly incredible piece of theory/fiction. But there's lots to dig into at https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/writings
You could say that there is a very superficial resemblance to certain strains of left (or unconditional) accelerationism in his thinking but he's coming from a very different place. On a basic level it's about questioning the reality of the solidities we cling to and welcoming uncertainty as opportunity, rather than threat. But that's an oversimplification - his writing is very difficult to summarize briefly.
"When a crack appears in the mighty wall, the only thing scarier than letting it grow unbridled, the only thing more worrisome than allowing it breathe, is sealing it up – for the thesis of the crack is to call into question the form we’ve assumed, the nobilities we cherish, the stories we assume to be true. The crack is the monster’s gift – a reminder that the fixity of the postures we take on often prove more dangerous than the threats we presume to withstand."
posted by remembrancer at 4:09 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also recommended: I, Coronavirus: Mother. Monster.Activist. (there's a non- Scribd source for this somewhere probably but then you'd miss out on Jon Marro's illustrations) - truly incredible piece of theory/fiction. But there's lots to dig into at https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/writings
You could say that there is a very superficial resemblance to certain strains of left (or unconditional) accelerationism in his thinking but he's coming from a very different place. On a basic level it's about questioning the reality of the solidities we cling to and welcoming uncertainty as opportunity, rather than threat. But that's an oversimplification - his writing is very difficult to summarize briefly.
"When a crack appears in the mighty wall, the only thing scarier than letting it grow unbridled, the only thing more worrisome than allowing it breathe, is sealing it up – for the thesis of the crack is to call into question the form we’ve assumed, the nobilities we cherish, the stories we assume to be true. The crack is the monster’s gift – a reminder that the fixity of the postures we take on often prove more dangerous than the threats we presume to withstand."
posted by remembrancer at 4:09 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I realize that this is a podcast not a rigorous discussion, so some leeway should be given, but, I found Young's refusal to seek any sort of clarification or ask any meaningful followups to be aggravating. Work in postmodern thought employs a lot of phrases that are very good at suggesting a sense of depth but bad at transmitting meaning. Phrases like the "economy of intelligibility of modernity," "subjects of unspeakable arousal," "communicate with furniture," and "occupy the monster" are certainly evocative, but it's really hard to know what Akómoláfé actually means when he says stuff like that.
And also because it is a podcast, I'm not going to engage with the meat of the philosophy. I'd have to read a lot more of it to do that intelligently. His position on paradigmatic capture, at least, seems interesting (though I don't know that it's entirely new).
However, when asked to comment on the creation of spaces for the purpose of excluding/combating fascism he gives the long analogy to zombies the gist of which seems to be that maybe letting zombies bite us might spur us to transcend our limits. Which if taken as a straight analogy suggests that incorporating fascist thought (not simply confronting it) might be good for us.* I'm all for collapsing false dichotomies and shaking up paradigms, etc. but that seems like maybe not such a good idea.
*(This is what I mean by saying that the metaphors and analogies can get in the way of clarity. And it would have been nice if Young had asked him to explain whether he means for us to embrace or confront fascism (and how).)
posted by oddman at 8:19 PM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
And also because it is a podcast, I'm not going to engage with the meat of the philosophy. I'd have to read a lot more of it to do that intelligently. His position on paradigmatic capture, at least, seems interesting (though I don't know that it's entirely new).
However, when asked to comment on the creation of spaces for the purpose of excluding/combating fascism he gives the long analogy to zombies the gist of which seems to be that maybe letting zombies bite us might spur us to transcend our limits. Which if taken as a straight analogy suggests that incorporating fascist thought (not simply confronting it) might be good for us.* I'm all for collapsing false dichotomies and shaking up paradigms, etc. but that seems like maybe not such a good idea.
*(This is what I mean by saying that the metaphors and analogies can get in the way of clarity. And it would have been nice if Young had asked him to explain whether he means for us to embrace or confront fascism (and how).)
posted by oddman at 8:19 PM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
I feel you oddman about the danger of terms that refuse to be defined, and also I felt very strongly that I could understand these ones you mentioned. The problem as I see it is less the speaker, and more that there's an additional implied framework beyond postmodernism, that of mysticism. These metaphors are all empty containers to be filled with your own experience or grieved at in their lack of fittedness to what we "know" or think we know.
Perhaps it is that today is the 750th anniversary of Mevlana Rumi's wedding night, but the concepts of the cracks felt very much like the idea of mukkabele in the Mevlevi sema ceremony, where the dervishes bow to one another across an invisible chasm between the manifested and unmanifested worlds. I also connect it up to the concept of patch assemblages in Anna Tsing's book about Maitsutaki.
I didn't hear a lot about "doing" in the external sense of the word, more about the resilience of doing whatever it is we're doing in recognition of the limits of our individual grasp. I think it does operate under the implicit assumption that we are all trying to improve the state of the world. Not a good assumption for the doing, but I think it's a good first step for the being.
If you want to wander further down the rabbit hole, I've been grazing a bit on the recent collaborations of Jon Vervaeke, who is approaching the idea of a metacrisis through a framework of the western history of philosophy. There's one he did on hyperobjects (you need to listen for about 7 minutes to get the gist of the proposal) recently that I've only absorbed about a tenth of, but have found useful to pushing beyond my own fussiness/hopelessness about climate change. I see connections between Amokalafe's "unspeakable arousals" and the fractal concept of "attractor" that Vervaeke and Hall go into.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 8:02 AM on December 17, 2023
Perhaps it is that today is the 750th anniversary of Mevlana Rumi's wedding night, but the concepts of the cracks felt very much like the idea of mukkabele in the Mevlevi sema ceremony, where the dervishes bow to one another across an invisible chasm between the manifested and unmanifested worlds. I also connect it up to the concept of patch assemblages in Anna Tsing's book about Maitsutaki.
I didn't hear a lot about "doing" in the external sense of the word, more about the resilience of doing whatever it is we're doing in recognition of the limits of our individual grasp. I think it does operate under the implicit assumption that we are all trying to improve the state of the world. Not a good assumption for the doing, but I think it's a good first step for the being.
If you want to wander further down the rabbit hole, I've been grazing a bit on the recent collaborations of Jon Vervaeke, who is approaching the idea of a metacrisis through a framework of the western history of philosophy. There's one he did on hyperobjects (you need to listen for about 7 minutes to get the gist of the proposal) recently that I've only absorbed about a tenth of, but have found useful to pushing beyond my own fussiness/hopelessness about climate change. I see connections between Amokalafe's "unspeakable arousals" and the fractal concept of "attractor" that Vervaeke and Hall go into.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 8:02 AM on December 17, 2023
Akómoláfé's latest, "Why I Sang in the Dungeons: A Prophecy to End the Year 2023".
posted by remembrancer at 12:54 PM on December 27, 2023
posted by remembrancer at 12:54 PM on December 27, 2023
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