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librarycards · 3 months

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I’ve seen a lot of discourse about Aaron Bushnell and madness, with reactionary genocidaires saying it is madness, and leftists saying it is not madness but principled protest. In my mind I am thinking about madness and sanity under empire, thinking I am surely mad and wondering why anyone is trying to be sane. If you have the capacity, can you share your thoughts on the madness of this moment, or point to others who have shared those thoughts?

you have very much captured the spirit of what i think! there's that common aphorism that goes something like, 'if this world is sane, then of course i'm mad' etc. etc., while i think this doesn't fully capture the specific genealogy and politic of Madness as contemporary scholar-activists understand it, it does provide a quick & effective explanation of Aaron's (z"l) decision to make the ultimate sacrifice in support of Palestinian liberation.

it isn't useful to understand his choices as solely Mad (in terms of an embrace of opacity and nonsensicality/illegibility - in fact, quite the opposite, he took pains to be explicit and serious as to his reasoning and methodology so that u.s. media discourse would struggle to obfuscate it [even though they still are]).

however, it *is* useful to use a Mad conceptual framework for some elements of Aaron's choice, and as a means of understanding pathologized forms of protest –– not only suicide, but med strike, hunger strike, etc. these forms of protest, as many have said, are designed to distress onlookers. they are designed to push against the bounds of the common[/]sensical, to gift us with possible alternatives to, you know, getting a police permit and marching in circles, AND, to the complacent, grease the stopped-up gears of their own imaginations. because Aaron did what is, in many ways (even to those of us who have attempted suicide before) unimaginable: he died. we have not yet died. he died yelling "Free Palestine." he died, and lived his last moments with a degree of moral turpitude, courage, and singleminded commitment to a cause that few will ever achieve, and yet one that –– as Aaron himself acknowledged Palestinians must muster every day.

here is where Madness comes in: Aaron acted as a linker of worlds: between that which many usamericans, and many others who have never undergone military siege/genocide, find exists outside the realm of the imaginable. a world that many would prefer to pretend does not, can not, could not exist. a world from which hegemonic media would have "us" (white americans/others in the ~western world~) believe could never exist, not least because our own military hegemons (with Aaron, until the other day, as one of their sentient weapons) protect "democracy" –– that is, the supposed exceptionality/exemption of the "(white) u.s. citizen" from terror, from sociopolitical Madness, from the absolute violence of settler colonialism. Aaron, in short, brought that unimaginable violence home. he forced us to reckon with the brutal truth of martyrdom, here. as someone on here mentioned, he used his status as an airman in what is perhaps the most effective weaponization of privilege i have ever seen. he killed a soldier, and that soldier was himself.

of course media is leaping and will continue to leap on this as evidence of extremism, of dangerous insanity, etc. etc. in radical movements. always has been. read The Protest Psychosis. the idea of insanity has been used by basically every state power to justify disposal, because it's convenient: by claiming one is insane, you also claim all of their appeals to reason are the result of their insanity. this is called anasognosia. it's a cute little trick. it isn't new. the best way to approach this is to maintain two things: one, that Aaron's choice was rational given a clearsighted understanding of the scale of genocide that's currently taking place. AND, to question those –– leftists included! pro-pal folks included! –– who uncritically cite 'mental illness' as the reason for Aaron's suicide.

this is not because Aaron wasn't what some would call "mentally ill" –– i don't know him, i do not live in his head. the point is, it does not matter if he was diagnosed with anything or not. it does not matter if he was already suicidal or not. it does not matter if he had tried to kill himself before. none of it fucking matters, and attempts to reduce this act to the result of a mad(dened) mind is to distract from the political project he pursued. he performed a politically Mad act, to which his imagined internal pathology was irrelevant. he broke consensus reality, even if only for a moment. he linked worlds. Palestinians felt it. that is what matters.

so, how did he connect worlds? he did something Mad. it is useful to understand suicide as a Mad act, so long as we are careful not to fall into the pathologizing traps that exclude suicidal people as interlocutors outright. he showed many of us, activists included, what we could be doing - the lengths to which it is possible to go in support of liberation. he did not, and i am not, encourage/ing everyone else to kill themselves. self-immolation is effective, in many ways, because so few people do it. we need to stay alive to continue the fight. however, Aaron tore the fabric of the reasonable, the possible, and the legal (consider the pigs who approached his burning body with guns) to disrupt a collective consciousness that would rather move on, equivocate, forget, tune-out. that is Mad. Madness is necessary in our movements, all of them.

#ask #anonymous #palestine #madness #settler colonialism #colonialism

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depressedgarbages-stuff · 2 months

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All tiktoks of the situation of 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 I saw today (Tue, Apr 09.):

https://www.tumblr.com/intersectionalpraxis/747120803212066816/elderly-palestinian-couple-looking-at-their-former?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747134938038599680/this-is-what-palestinians-had-started-doing-as?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/totallynotcensorship/747132133181718528?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/newsfrom-theworld/746847991688740864/the-writings-on-the-walls-of-al-shifa-hospital?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nezreblogz/747096900794302464?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nezreblogz/745933166829813760?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/barbossas-wench/747026918706233344?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/746959155730022400/donate-to-a-tale-of-resilience-building-hope-and?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/politijohn/746650237301637120/same-day?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/i-am-aprl/747129897909190656/some-screenshots-of-beautiful-smiles-from-the-food?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nezreblogz/747064644460544000?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747136309076918272/not-surprised-that-paul-kagame-would-do-this-given?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/746963214450950144/donate-to-help-ruaa-and-her-siblings-evacuate?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nezreblogz/747099050988519424?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/nezreblogz/747062849587806208?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/i-am-aprl/745520404449394688/every-outfit-was-a-life-a-story-a-child-who?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747133670319669248/a-place-without-a-door-and-uncle-give-me-a?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747139147026907136?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747133360729702400?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747139888616521728/airman-on-hunger-strike-at-white-house-over-gaza?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/sayruq/747138487739875328/huge-developments-in-the-war-in-gaza?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/soon-palestine/747005642848567296?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/t4tnalu/746307197665951744/image-id-youre-only-done-talking-about-palestine?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/violottie/747145154411020288/today-marks-half-a-year-of-palestinian-genocide?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/soon-palestine/746198740136869888?source=share

#gazaunderfire #gaza genocide #gaza strip #free gaza #gazaunderattack #gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #free palestine

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