i realised the other day that i have had some published writing in the past few months that i failed to promote to you, my eagerly-anticipating subscribers. It’s a good job i am not attempting to make a career as a professional writer or i would be out of work by now.
Most recently, i wrote for Ebb Magazine about class struggle and the Non-Aligned Movement. Whilst the obvious impulse behind this piece was discussion about the war in Ukraine and what it means for international politics, it also reflects a more long-term interest on my part in deepening an articulation of class within anti-imperialist politics, and what that might mean for organising in the so-called ‘united kingdom’. It is well-observed in some circles that western ‘leftists’ are often let down by a failure to engage with, or even an outright hostility towards, developments in the global south. At the same time, it is also obvious that struggles against imperialism in the periphery will differ drastically from the shape that our struggles must necessarily take in the belly of the beast. i would even suggest that the tendency of some social democrats and Marxist Leninist towards brands of ‘patriotic socialism’, ‘progressive patriotism’, or whatever label you want to give it, reflect this attempt to accumulate third world visions as raw material for first world opportunism.
As i reflected on in my last newsletter, this relationship of valouristic parasitism, akin to what Joy James calls ‘the captive maternal’, is also key to the theorising of nationalism by figures like Subcommandate Marcos, spokesperson for the EZLN, and representative of the reopening of the national question in the post-Soviet era. My attempt in the article to draw Communist struggles in Nasser’s Egypt into conversation with the New Left in the uk and its ambivalent relationship to the historic waves of mid-century decolonisations is, i hope, of more than merely historical interest. i would suggest that these ambivalences continue to haunt our current phase of struggle, and understanding them is key to understanding class composition for the next phase our struggles take. You can read my article for Ebb here: https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/multipolarity-then-and-now
Back in April, i had the privilege of reviewing Marsh-River-Raft-Feather, co-written by petals and clarissa alvarez. i found this immensely hard to write, both because i am unused to the format of a book review, much less a poetry review, and because Marsh-River-Raft-Feather is so far removed from the grammars of what passes for academic or literary criticism.
The marsh is movement, informed by Black-indigenous ways of being-knowing, beyond analysis that might “desire to hold onto category”. These movements - bubblings, echos, murmurations, ripplings, shimmers - are clearly not reducible to language and its grammars, and Marsh-River-Raft-Feather delights in language as somewhere to play, rather than a communicative b/order.
The whole book is formed through a erotic playfulness and a leisurely resistance to grasping-knowledges, producing a different kind of writing, open like music, to be participated in, not studied. In my struggle to review it, Marsh-River-Raft-Feather suggests i give up struggling. You can read my attempt here: https://phasmidpress.org/the-empty-set/review-marsh-river-raft-feather
i began writing this newsletter as a place to put writing, and a way to encourage me to write, outside of the formalised channels that govern so much writing today. i do not want to be a journalist or an academic, and i do not want to play publishers’ games for them. The fact that so much of what mainstream outlets, journals, and presses are putting out now seems like so much dross for the fire feels like justification for this, but it’s hard to take consolation in that when i actually write very little myself. This is only amplified by the fact that the combination of work with having a life outside work takes up so much time that i rarely seem to want to take up that time with writing. i don’t believe cultural work and wage labour are mutually exclusive (thank god), but spending all day selling an idealised performance for one public does put me off polishing up fragments of my speech for another one. Ultimately i would love to claim to write with movements, collaboratively, as one dimension of a movement beyond capital and its demands, to make a new culture. i don’t think i can honestly say that right now, but a girl can dream, right?
In the meantime though, i have to pay the bills, and tbh i’m kinda struggling. So i have made a ko-fi account that i will now be linking at the end of each substack. i resent this as something resembling a step towards professionalisation, a jolt of cynicism against my own dream of a different public writing, but it’s just a realistic assessment of where i’m at right now. i don’t demand anything of anyone, i know money is hard for many of us right now. But if you get something from these substacks, ‘buying me a coffee’ would definitely be appreciated. You can do that here: https://ko-fi.com/ignatz_maria
That’s all for now. i hope to have some new writing ready for you soon.
ignatz x