The Brotherwise Dispatch – VOL.2, ISSUE #5, DEC/2010-FEB/2011
One must be ever wary and on guard against the apparent ‘common sense’ mentality which mistakes temporal determinism as the driving force behind human affairs. Another year of the Gregorian calendar has come to an end and the accompanying social euphoria which builds to a crescendo only to be released on the eve of December 31st is extremely difficult to resist. This annual divine comedy proves irresistible even to atheists, agnostics, materialists and secular humanists, whose culturally conformist actions clearly betray their rhetoric of independent thought as they eagerly submit to the will of an all-powerful ‘Holiday Spirit’.
Such euphoria both feeds off and contributes to a variety of necessary illusions which allow advanced neo-liberal capitalist power to thrive unchallenged as the standard bearer of globalization. Among these necessary illusions is the dogmatic belief that time has somehow supplanted praxis as the prime mover of human progress. In other words, avoiding one's responsibility for bringing about social change by blindly trusting that things will automatically change for the better if enough time goes by. For example when someone expresses frustration for the continued existence of racist injustice, they often say "I can't believe this is happening in 2010", as if the passing years have more effect on alleviating injustice than any actual human struggle.
This past year, human rights abuses by American neo-colonial police again inspired postmodern lumpenproletariat riots as a necessary response to the structural-inert oppression they face. This time riots took place in Oakland, California as a result of the execution style murder of Oscar Grant which was captured live on video. Oakland, as the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, has a very unique place in the history of Black liberation struggle and it is because of this historical significance that we are publishing an excerpt of REGINALD MAJOR’s classic work of Black liberation theory, A Panther is a Black Cat to better understand the [[philosophical context of revolt and the revolutionary avant-garde consciousness]] which animated the Black Panthers.
Again, making the mistake of using time as sole measure and indicator of progress, one would think that protesting and rioting in 2010 would be more advanced and effective than protesting and rioting which took place in 1965. Such has not been the case, and with that in mind, it is with a sense of urgency that we revisit the Los Angeles riots of 1965 in an essay written by the Situationist International entitled [[The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy]].
As the murder of Oscar Grant and the ensuing riots bear witness, while we have unprecedented access to more technology now with which to document such continuing human rights abuses; what remains inaccessible to us is that existential reservoir of human agency and spiritual revolt which would inspire much more relevant forms of emancipatory praxis than the dead end choices of protest-as-ritual event and/or spontaneous rioting. Oakland wasn't the only place where social unrest broke through the advanced neo-liberal capitalist continuum this past year, there was also resistance in Canada, Greece, France and England. What can be learned from these incidents? More importantly though, what can be done to build unity and solidarity amongst those who are carrying out these rebellions?
Be sure and check out our INTERVIEWS & EXCLUSIVES this issue, as philosophical heavyweight [[LEWIS R. GORDON]] goes toe to toe with us in another round of our BROTHERWISE FIVE interview series. Our interview delves mainly into questions explored in Gordon’s now classic, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences, a work which remains extremely relevant when taking into account the nature of oppression and human suffering still faced by an overwhelming majority of the world’s population.
peace,
A. Shahid Stover – Editor-in-Chief