#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CANADA #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Literary chronicle: "Defend yourself. A Philosophy of Violence" by Elsa Dorlin (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 I stumbled across Elsa Dorlin's book "Defending" by pure chance while reading at

an independent bookstore in Chicoutimi. Published in France in 2017 by La
Découverte editions, I liked this work of philosophy and I am taking the time to
write this column to briefly present its point of view which might interest you.
For me, who have practically no academic background in philosophy, the book
seemed quite erudite to me, but it still kept me spellbound because of the
author's astonishing ability to link her explanations with multiple historical
examples. It's a militant book and it raises a lot of questions that call
militant circles to a reflective posture.
More specifically, Dorlin calls on movements that challenge systems of domination
to question their relationship to violence, that is, "what one does in / of /
with violence[Dorlin 2007, p.164.]". As dominated political subjects, we
experience violence in ways that go well beyond physical beatings (but also
include them). One could say, for example, that submission to the injustice of
the parliamentary circus, or even electoral partisanship, is violent since it
contributes to this social order. When we resist this violence or when we come
out of this state where our own power to act becomes foreign to us (dirty
care)[IDEM, p.177], the dominants, to defend themselves, have a whole prerogative
of devices legitimized to do violence to us until we disappear. We can retaliate
by using violent or pacifist means, but as the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre
explained, even in "non-violence", this form of action represents a violence done
to the dominant by its manifest refusal of submission.[IDEM, p.209-210]. This
means that we cannot escape violence if we take into account the unequal social
relations that run through our society. Dorlin looks at the political movements
that have chosen to defend themselves. These questions, in all their complexity,
are a thousand leagues away from the reductive discussions opposing the so-called
non-violent and violent means of struggle. The book goes through a range of very
interesting descriptions including: the disarmament and resistance of slaves and
Aboriginals in the context of colonization, self-defense practices among the
Amazons or the British Suffragettes, the resistance in the Jewish ghettos and the
recovery of forms of self-defense by the Zionist State of Israel, the
legitimization of racist lynchings in the heart of white America, the break with
the non-violence of the Black Panthers, the debates raised by the self-defense
practices of communities homosexuals and trans people in the United States, as
well as the infiltration of security policies into social movements.

Going on the offensive is sometimes the best defense according to the
philosopher. His analysis reminded me of an incident that took place during the
blockade of the Parc des Laurentides as part of the day of action on May 1, 2015.
On the viaduct that leads to Route d'Hébertville, a group of locked out of the
region's dealership garages (CSD) then came face to face with one of the
directors of the dealership corporation in his car. The union order service of
the blocking had intervened on the spot to force the revolted locked-out-e-s to
move away from the car of this employer's architect of the conflict, one of the
longest lock-outs of the Quebec history (nearly three years). There is reason to
question this coercive role exercised by the security services, which forces
compliance with laws clearly to the advantage of the dominant and which
stigmatizes the actions of resistance in their own ranks. Constraining,
pacifying, removing the means to exercise direct action in order to overturn the
balance of power, even in a symbolic way, contributes on the contrary to
legitimizing the claims of equality in the collective negotiation of labor
legislation in the province. We have to admit that puncturing a tire or even
overturning the car in question would have been a very minimal form of violence
compared to all the violence suffered by the working-class families during this
long dispute in which the employer party continued to reap the profits while
striving to stifle any fo Such a gesture of resistance would at least have opened
the possibility of a reversal of the relationship of domination through which the
locked-out represented a submissive subject, victim of a conflict, without means
and constrained by legality, by the police. and even by their own union to
inaction in the face of all the violence that has affected their environment and
their community. Such a gesture would at least have opened the possibility of
transforming them into real actors and actresses of the situation to break the
chains of exploitation. Dorlin opposes a politics of rage, which allows the
actors and actresses of a situation to emerge from passivity, with a politics of
security. She writes: "the promotion of a security pact and its incorporation
into certain militant agendas therefore had the ultimate consequence, not only of
whitewashing state violence[as well as employer violence in the previous
example], but also of predetermine modes of contestation and coalition, to create
a certain type of militancy, a form of protectionist self-defense, harmful
because articulated to a trapped emotional cartography[IDEM, p.146]". The
political subjects of the dominated, whether workers, the unemployed, women or
LGBTQ+, racialized and Indigenous communities have historically been subjugated
by masters and the institutions under their control in such a way as to
unteaching them to fight, to individualize, internalize and depoliticize their
experience of domination. This passivity on the part of the dominated guarantees
the preservation of the world of the dominant.

Dorlin is also critical of activist circles who make the safe space an injunction
to remain in the security of one's self. She observes there an insidious control
of the contestation which brings always more forms of security in the very
intimacy of the small groups and the exercise of forms of power in between
oneself. The precarious forms of trial and DIY justice, which aim to avoid
relying on the dominant justice, come, according to her, to contrast with the
imaginary of social transformation of the groups, disorient the processes of
social awareness and exhaust and disengage the activists. and activists. For
Dorlin, who again advocates a politics of rage, it is rather necessary to return
to the basics of the open confrontation of domination, that is to enter into
conflict with the problems and their systemic roots rather than seek to avoid
them. "The question is not to be safe in a fantasy in-between, but to build and
create territories from which to politicize, to capitalize, from the rage to
declare and lead the struggle: 'Show me your power and I will feel proud. June
Jordan calls for the creation of other forms of community, united not on the
basis of a reassured subject, but on an enraged commitment to combat[IDEM,
p.149]". On the contrary, she sees in insecurity the terrain of commitment and
the collective resumption of power by activists. "The more one protects oneself
against insecurity, the more one exhausts the power of what a 'community' means,
solidary, united, from which to draw power and rage; the more we achieve a form
of biopolitics on the scale of struggles, a biomilitantism[IDEM, p.150]".

Gastro-Martineau

Reference: Elsa DORLIN. " To defend oneself. A philosophy of violence", Éditions
La Découverte, Paris, 2017, 251 p.

by Collectif Emma Goldman

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2022/12/chronique-litteraire-se-defendre-une.html
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