Between Earth and Empire

John P. Clark

Description

Between Earth and Empire focuses on the crucial position of humanity at the present moment in Earth history. We are now in the midst of the Necrocene, an epoch of death and mass extinction. Nearing the end of the long history of Empire and domination, we are faced with the choice of either continuing the path of social and ecological disintegration or initiating a new era of social and ecological regeneration.

The book shows that conventional approaches to global crisis on both the right and the left have succumbed to processes of denial and disavowal, either rejecting the reality of crisis entirely or substituting ineffectual but comforting gestures and images for deep, systemic social transformation. It is argued that a large-scale social and ecological regeneration must be rooted in communities of liberation and solidarity, fostering personal and group transformation so that a culture of awakening and care can emerge.

Between Earth and Empire explores examples of significant progress in this direction, including the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, the Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, indigenous movements in defense of the commons, the solidarity economy movement, and efforts to create liberated base communities and affinity groups within anarchism and other radical social movements. In the end, the book presents a vision of hope for social and ecological regeneration through the rebirth of a libertarian and communitarian social imaginary, and the flourishing of a free cooperative community globally.

Sujets

• Left-libertarianism
• Confederation
• Dialectic
• Socialism
• Anarchism
• Ecology

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629636658
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This book is a compass, polarized in the superlative subtropiques of the Gulf Coast, orienting cardinal points in the landscapes of the Zapatistas, the Black Panther Party, the Kurdish freedom movement, and West Papua. The diamantine dialectics of freedom breathing through the pages of this book will be a decisive factor in the final battles between earth and empire, between evolution and extinction. Which side are you on?
-Quincy Saul, cofounder of Ecosocialist Horizons and editor of Maroon Comix
John Clark s book is a measured manifesto. It is a must read for any activist or scholar concerned with the alternatives to capitalism s ongoing war on nature.
-Andrej Gruba i , coauthor of Living at the Edges of Capitalism
Whether in Rojava, where women are fighting for their people s survival, or in the loss and terror of New Orleans after the Katrina flood, Clark finds models of communality, care, and hope. Finely reasoned and integrative, tracing the dialectical play of institution and ethos, ideology and imaginary, this book will speak to philosophers and activists alike.
-Ariel Salleh, author of Ecofeminism as Politics
Clark presents very sophisticated philosophical concepts in a style that is quite comprehensible to the general public. Each page sheds new light on our age of planetary turbulence and demolishes all pseudo-truths about it.
-Ronald Creagh, author of American Utopias
John Clark s Between Earth and Empire is a guide to that which is obvious yet confoundingly obscure-namely, that models of social organization based in care and cooperation are infinitely more constructive and mutually beneficial than those based in competition and conquest.
-Alyce Santoro, conceptual/sound artist and activist

Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community
John P. Clark
2019 PM Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-648-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949077
Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA.
LA TERRE
Contents FOREWORD By Peter Marshall PREFACE Some Basic Concepts INTRODUCTION Lessons from the School of Radical Change (Notes of a Slow Learner) PART I EMPIRE VERSUS EARTH IN THE NECROCENE 1 Ecological Thinking and the Crisis of the Earth 2 How an Anarchist Discovered the Earth 3 Education for the Earth or Education for Empire? 4 The Summit of Ambition: The Paris Climate Spectacle and the Politics of the Gesture 5 Against Resilence: Hurricane Katrina and the Politics of Disavowal PART II ANOTHER WORLD IS ACTUAL 6 Homage to Lacandonia: The Politics of Heart and Spirit in Chiapas 7 Lessons of the Rojavan Revolution 8 Papua Merdeka: The Indigenous Struggle against State and Corporate Domination 9 Power to the Community: The Black Panthers Living Legacy of Grassroots Organization 10 From the Movement of Occupation to the Community of Liberation PART III THE AWAKENING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 11 Another Sun Is Possible: Thoughts for the Solstice 12 Do You Know What It Means? Reflections on Suffering, Disaster, and Awakening 13 Buddhism, Radical Critique, and Revolutionary Praxis 14 Rumi and the Fall of the Spectacular Commodity Economy 15 Regionalism and the Politics of Experience PART IV POWER TO THE IMAGINATION (FIFTY YEARS LATER) 16 In Search of the Radical Imagination: Two Concepts of the Social Imaginary 17 The Spectacle Looks Back into You: The Situationists and the Aporias of the Left 18 Happy Birthday, Utopia! (You Deserve a Present) 19 Carnival at the Edge of the Abyss: New Orleans and the Apocalyptic Imagination POSTSCRIPT Oikos and Poesis: On Earth and Rebirth APPENDIX Emergency Heart Sutra ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Foreword
by Peter Marshall
This is a timely and relevant collection of essays and articles first published elsewhere, but it also contains new work, forming a coherent whole. The author John Clark is a sincere and authentic man, widely read and traveled, putting theory into practice, who offers in this compelling book his acute powers of analysis as well as the condensation of his life s experiences, all written in a lively and accessible style.
It finds a source in the joy and the suffering of the author, in particular the catastrophe and devastation left by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans, where he dwells and where his family has lived for twelve generations. Not only was his daughter s house destroyed, but also his son went missing. Since leaving university teaching, he has helped set up La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, which works for social and ecological regeneration. Under different noms de plume, particularly that of Max Cafard, he has also been a Surrealist who has entertained and awakened the minds of his readers and changed their lives.
While being a bioregionalist who cares greatly for the city of New Orleans and Louisiana, he does not advocate a narrow localism and patriotic regionalism but would like society and the state to be turned into a community of communities, founded in a strong sense of place yet caring for the Earth as a whole. Indeed, human beings are embedded nature, not separate but an integral part of the Earth. Like most Americans, he has grown up and lived for most of his life in a society of advanced capitalism that is obsessed with mass consumption, self-image, egoistic individualism, and the immediate gratification of inflamed desires. It has a widespread belief that possession will bring happiness. Most of its population, searching endlessly for personal wealth and power, are ready to be led by charismatic or authoritarian leaders and to succumb to the technological megamachine.
He is rightly aghast at the disappearance of natural biodiversity and the coming of the sixth mass extinction. It would appear that we are entering not only the Anthropocene, a geological period during which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and environment, but the Necrocene, the Age of Death, in which Empire works inevitably against the Earth. There is clear evidence of a global ecological crisis, but political leaders and corporate managers fail to recognize it, let alone do anything. They blindfold themselves as they move toward the abyss of extinction, if not for themselves personally then for future generations.
Most already know the real dangers of climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, the diminution of drinkable water, chemical pollution, and the destruction of ecosystems but do not wish to change their lifestyle radically. They are in a state of disavowal, if not of serious denial. The best that the global political class, for instance, could do at Paris was to make a voluntary agreement to try to limit climate change, demonstrating the optimism of shallow environmentalism, when a radical and immediate break with former habits is required in order to save the biosphere and life on this planet.
But Clark is not pessimistic. He argues for a reversal of the suicidal course of history. There is therefore a deep need to increase an awareness of biodiversity integrity and to overcome climate change, to address what humans are doing to the planet that supports them and other life. The walls of the school and university should give way to a liberating form of education involving the community and grassroots social movements. Only in this way can learning become a transformative experience to take off the shackles of illusion and cleanse, as William Blake said, the doors of perception. Certainly, this book contributes to that process.
Out of the present crisis there arises an alternative. Clark is heartened by the increasing awakening of consciousness and awareness. Another Sun is possible. Another world can be created, here and now, beneath our feet. Out of the disaster, both personal and social, he finds salvation in the Beloved Community based on an economy of the gift, mutual aid, and solidarity.
As a professor of philosophy and author, he is capable of abstract thinking and standing back and observing, well aware of past history and present dilemmas. At the same time, he is a deeply engaged thinker who participates in social and ecological experiments. He is deeply concerned about the condition of the oikos , our home, and uses both the logos , rational thought, and poesis , poetic thinking, to make his convincing case.
He lives on the edge in New Orleans, between land and sea, between North America and Latin America, Apocalypse and Survival, Heaven and Earth. He lives in a liminal city, on the threshold of the American Dream and the Corporate State. It is a city where the collective consciousness can erupt through the everyday reality of advanced capitalism, where grass can push up through concrete pavements, and the surrounding jungle can absorb the temporary buildings erected by humanity in the face of the unknown and mysterious. As the Mardi Gras shows, it rejects the Protestant ethic with its emphasis on hard work, sexual repression, and stiff upper lip, in favor of pleasure, play, sensuality, music, and dance. Where one stands like stone, the other flows like water. But the city shouldn t really be there, surrounded by swamps and marshes, built on sandy loam, in the delta of the mighty Mississippi River on the Gulf of Mexico.
Clark describes himself somewhat ironically as a slow learner, but now he appears as a truly radical thinker and activist, a communitarian anarchist and ecologist. He has gone beyond the social ecology of Murray Bookchin to forge a deep critique of modern corporate capitalism and the authoritarian and domi