i see a lot of art filled with plants, like, in the american art scene there seems to be a kind of general movement towards and appreciation of ruined structures being overtaken by nature. offices full of dead computers and leaves. walls with ivy. old factories crawling with new growth. a symbol of degrowth, of new futures that devour and reject colonial modernism, of a refutation of the tyranny over land. it’s a nice sentiment.
but consistently im noticing something odd, which is that over and over the plants depicted in art are very familiar – they’re houseplants. pothos. monstera. calathea. zamioculcas. plants growing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong climate, a mishmash of unrelated folks with far-flung origins symbolizing “natural” retaking of the modern world.
plants, specifically, that are directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. from northern africa. from southern america. from india. plants that were collected as curios during periods of direct imperialism. plants kept as trophies, plants sold at high prices. plants that are “exotic”. that are beautiful. that are high-value. plants whose people got no payment for their capture.
they’re the plants people in american colonial territory, who lack access to native plant community, see most often – that is, other than “weeds”. and so when these artists reach for the pure idea of plant, the concept of nature, these plants are their only blueprint. dragging with them all of the baggage of hundreds of years of empire.
it’s incredible how much this changes the messaging of the image. dreams of ecological participation stained with a creeping theme of alienation from their native biosphere. the thumbprint of colonialism, clear as day. a hopeful vision of the future, kneecapped by its own symbology. hundreds of individual artists so alienated from their own ecosystems that even their fantasy of participation with nature is inextricable from colonialist trophies. trying to imagine reclaiming the world.
America’s anti communist efforts managed to capture their internal leftist movements in a bubble that they willingly remain in because they see their pro western conditioned views as “real leftism” while going outside of the bubble is “tankie”. Never developing into a real threat to american power internally. It’s so effective that it’s a narrative control that is self operating, creating it’s own reactionary response to anything that coincides with what american empire is also against. The anarchist in the USA would sooner burn the work of lenin than allow a liberal to read it all while congratulating themselves for disposing fascist literature. Perfectly docile.
I really don’t know how to go about fixing this mindset of no nuance, no modern analysis of our material surroundings, just fear mongering about events from a century ago and how it is destined to happen again no matter what.
Hyperfocusing on theoretical correctness at the expense of taking action to actually build socialism and advance the consciousness of the masses is ultimately an ultraleftist error which benefits liberalism more than it helps the revolutionary cause. Having correct theory is of course critically important, but the purpose of theory is to be applied. Sometimes building socialism requires us to agitate in ways which are even contradictory to a correct theoretical understanding. For instance, it is objectively incorrect to say that imperial core tax dollars “go to” imperialist war when the reality is that imperial wealth comes from imperialist exploitation enabled by war, but unless you can fit a complete Marxist explanation of imperialism into an agitational poster, it’s often more practical to simply say that tax dollars shouldn’t go to imperialist war when your goal is to raise anti-imperial consciousness in the imperial core. It would be different in, say, an educational setting where you have regular people sitting down because they want to learn the Marxist understanding; in this instance, it would be wrong to give them merely the quick agitational reasoning for standing against imperialist war. This is a particularly important issue when it comes to fighting for divestment from Israel, which is a very immediately necessary and ongoing struggle. I have personally seen many people actually be swayed into taking or supporting real action against Israel by the argument that their tax dollars should not support genocide, such that this technically incorrect argument has actually produced positive material change. It is unreasonable to expect and demand slogans or quick agitational points to reflect a 100% correct Marxist understanding of whatever it is you are sloganeering for or against, and it is the hallmark of those who are more interested in being correct than in defeating the enemy.
made it awkward last night when I got overly defensive of cannibalism’s relationship to prions
like it was basically just the once incident in Papua New Guinea and the cannibalism didn’t create even create the prions. you don’t get prions from eating people you get it from eating prions. however, people who have prions are a great source of prions, so by its nature it does have a tendency to linger in communities that practice funerary cannibalism
