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subcutaneous

subcutaneous@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 11 months ago

Deepening political imaginations.

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subcutaneous's books

Currently Reading (View all 21)

Jules Boykoff: Beyond Bullets (Paperback, 2007, AK Press) No rating

Focusing on a variety of movements for political, social, and economic change in the US, …

The First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution are often retracted, if temporarily, in the name of national security. Supporters of this logic reason that in moments of national crisis, unity should be the tune of the day, and those who refuse to sing along—dissident citizens and others— are dangerous denizens who are jeopardizing national security. Suppressing the actions of these people is thus seen as more acceptable by the general public. State suppression is rationalized rhetorically in ways that emphasize exceptional, perilous circumstances.

Beyond Bullets by  (Page 26 - 27)

Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Najib, Anni Kanafani, Steven Salaita: On Zionist Literature (Paperback, 2022, Ebb Books) 5 stars

Translated into English for the first time after its publication in 1967, Ghassan Kanafani's On …

I stopped reading this because of the anti-Jewish historical distortions. Strident opposition to israel & zionism is good; along with the project of deploying literary criticism on the cultural front of a liberation war, it's what drew me to the work in the first place. But Kanafani insists on assimilationist understandings of alternative Jewish politics—rather than suggesting methods of self-determination that don't reinforce colonialism, or just saying nothing if he doesn't have any alternatives—& whitewashes arab & islamic empires' long track record of oppressing Jews & countless other peoples. I'd guess this flows from the pan-arabism that produced the PFLP, but maybe someone more knowledgeable about his intellectual development should speak on that.

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PFLP: Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (2017, Foreign Languages Press) 3 stars

The following document was published by the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine in …

The basic aim of the Palestinian national movement is the liberation of Palestine. This aim cannot be achieved except through armed struggle and a protracted popular liberation war. If we lose sight of this fact, a great deviation will occur in our party and political action. There is no way of building a Palestinian national movement for the masses except through fighting and the masses’ awareness that the demand for organization, mobilization and political activity aims at escalation of the fighting—their only road to victory. Conversely, there will be no continued escalation of the fighting except through the mobilization of the masses with the object of furnishing the requirements of the struggle, protecting it and supplying it with successive ranks of citizens to ensure its persistence, continuity and the escalation of its effectiveness. This dialectical relation of coalescence between the fighting and political action constitutes the right criterion for our work.

Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine by 

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PFLP: Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (2017, Foreign Languages Press) 3 stars

The following document was published by the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine in …

The political organization of the Front constitutes in general a spontaneous extension of the organization of the Arab Nationalist Movement, so that the petit bourgeois structure prevails in it. The continuation of spontaneous growth without planned effort will result in confining our organization mainly to Amman and the towns, with some subsidiary extensions to the rural areas and camps.

Our organizational programs must aim at placing our most efficient leading elements in the camps and villages, and it is therefore necessary to carry out a comprehensive survey of the rural areas and camps and then to concentrate heavily on these areas. Also, it is necessary to pick up the rising young elements in these places and to build them solidly in theory and organization so that most of our leading members will have a revolutionary class allegiance. The presence of hundreds of members and leaders in the towns while we have no connection with many villages or with some camps and labor concentrations, however few these concentrations may be, indicates that our organizational growth continues to be spontaneous, that our revolutionary view of things is not clear and that there are no effectively directed revolutionary plans emanating from this view. These hundreds of members and leaders must be deployed effectively in accordance with an organized plan to penetrate into the truly revolutionary concentrations so that after a time we will find ourselves before a solid political organization based on the poor, the toilers and the downtrodden who are determined to revolt, too main [sic] in their revolution and to stand firm in the face of every challenge. In this way we are assured of the revolutionary character of our organization, our political organization becoming a real support for the fighting cadres, providing them with the required revolutionary combatants, furnishing real protection and effecting complete fusion with them. Political organization based on the petit bourgeoisie and the intellectuals whose roots do not extend to the villages and the poor urban districts cannot provide the fighting cadres with the required combatants or constitute a protective support for the fighters. Furthermore, it may in fact become a burden on the fighting cadres, aiming through its connection with the armed struggle at obtaining moral privileges, formalities and superior positions of leadership, besides forcing upon the armed struggle the manifestation of personal and tactical conflicts and disputes that are sometimes concealed behind verbal conflicts having no connection with actual fighting problems.

Naturally, it is not our intention to have a political organization that is closed in the face of the petit bourgeoisie, but to have an organization whose basic material comes from the workers, the peasants and the poor to ensure the organization’s strength, steadfastness, discipline and conscious practical direction towards the battle and fighting problems. In this case, such an organization is capable of mobilizing and recruiting within its ranks the revolutionary sectors of the petit bourgeoisie without falling victim to its hesitancy, vacillation, indecisiveness and lack of application.

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Ignatius: Fist Full of Concrete (2023, Long Leaf Distro) No rating

This zine -- sub-titled "Some Thoughts Towards Insurrection" -- collects several recent essays by Ignatius …

to realize the war at home risks consequences. It requires a refusal of the world that is far more explicit than most are willing to engage in. I feel that for many, it is a fear of the consequences such a positionality risks that keep them from realizing said positionality, despite their professed politics pointing them in that direction.

Fear is understandable, this type of conflictuality is terrifying and if one didn’t occasionally feel afraid I’d question if they understood what they were getting themselves into. We shouldn’t be ashamed of fear, but when one frames reactions based in fear as analysis for others to act upon, fear becomes cowardice.

Fist Full of Concrete by  (Page 29)