APPLE JUICE WRITES

The task set forth by Audre Lorde is to create interdependencies of mutuality and shared support as systems of overcoming the patriarchal world in contrast to occupying oneself with “the master’s concerns.” These systems of interdependency view difference as dialectic, difference as ways of forming new knowledge. This goes hand-in-hand with the XF call for synthesis vs mere analysis. Lorde’s “define and empower” can only come about through the privileging of the dialectical materialist method. Since the digital is always already material, one must respond to it in like, any other ways would be ungrounded, unmoored, and mere reaction. XF observes: “Systemic thinking and structural analysis have largely fallen to the wayside” in favour of fragmented insurrections, such as that which was suggested by CAE. CAE argues that systemic change is impossible, so coordination for such a change is futile. CAE calls on independent non-hierarchical cells, the organization of which is to be built on trust, and for members of each cell to have a variety of skill-sets. In my opinion, this way of organizing seems inclined for a sort of post-apocalyptic dystopia, in which communication and coordination with others outside of one’s local community is impossible or unsafe. However, as we know, global capital is global and organized as such, so any attempt at affecting it must be done in the same manner, through the coordination of a global community. CAE suggests there is no materiality to the digital, though this response may be an analysis from a particular point in time, when “information” was not viewed as physical in the same way.
An idea that brought up by CAE that sparked my interested was their initial use of the term “nomadic.” I have been thinking of nomadic systems, nomadic ways of relating and living vs settled ways of relating and living to space, land, material objects, and other people. This isn’t the direction they went, but it is something I’d like to continue exploring.

week one