Knowledge producers and direct action
Just a warning: this one is a bit out there. Though I have a suspicion more of this type of writing will follow. Maybe play along and see where we end up? ❤️
As knowledge producers—researchers, writers, thinkers, philosophers, artists, designers, engineers, storytellers, scientists, and the like—we have grown accustomed to our place in the current system. Many of us obey capital, or at least remain somewhat docile on its leash.
Yes, some of us step out in solidarity with those who produce material goods or provide essential services. We rally for better pay for delivery drivers, we petition the government to recognize our library staff’s organizing efforts, we #deleteUber and skip the Frito Lays. Some of us even whistle-blow or stand firm to ensure that #techwontbuildit.
But is this enough? Is it enough to stand in solidarity with frontline workers dying for lack of PPE? Is it enough to stand in solidarity with protectors of sacred headwaters? Is it enough to simply respect the picket line? Is it enough to contribute to the strike fund? These these fights are crucial and we must support them. But as producers of knowledge is there perhaps more we can do?
Where is our direct action?
As shown by the current moment — the climate and covid-19 crises, shortages (and manufactured scarcity) of materials like lumber, microchips, insulin, and PPE, growing piles of un-repaired e-waste and unrecycled plastics, and a dearth of cultural material that represents the great diversity of humanity — we’re experiencing a depressing variant of the age-old tragedy of the commons. We’re suffering from a profound lack of imagination.
We lack imagination because we lack the needed generative, foundational knowledge. We lack the spaces in which to develop, exchange, and apply this knowledge for the good of the community.
Imagination is something that feeds on ideas. New and radical ideas sprout in minds fertilized by other ideas, older ideas, enduring or decomposing ideas, divergent ideas. The well fed mind contains and produces knowledge. Knowledge is worthless unless applied, and it is best applied when shared with others. Knowledge is a commons. Shared knowledge is a community garden in which our mutual futures take root.
We each have instant access to more human knowledge than most humans before us could have accessed over their entire lives. But we don’t own (or has access to) some of the most important knowledge, it’s locked up. Even Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, our public libraries, only get the scraps (not the mention the forces that vie for control, overt or otherwise, of these commons). In a world where knowledge is power, we’re missing enormous amounts of knowledge.
The production of new knowledge happens beyond reach and out of view of most people. Even those of us involved in the production of knowledge only have access to our own corners of the process. We have our field, our discipline, our domain, our areas of study.
We need to seize the means of knowledge production. We need to redistribute the wealth of human knowledge locked behind IP agreements, and trapped within research labs, and tortured by think tanks, consultants, and lobbyists. We need direct action of the knowledge workers.
The group that’s been described as the vectorial class tightly controls the production and distribution of generative, foundational knowledge. Where the capitalist creates physical walls around the means of production and forces labor to produce their commodities, the vectorial class locks up our knowledge and controls the distribution of information. We are thankful that they do this, because it’s how we get paid, which in turn is how we survive.
And so, a provocation: as knowledge producers, where is our direct action? Where can we do more to produce for and contribute to the community? Where can we take away the power that capital, the vectorialist, the current system, etc., holds over the production and application of knowledge?
Here I have taken an intentionally naive point of view: there are many people out there doing exactly what I suggest that some of us are not.**
I recently wrote a thread about community knowledge production in which I shared related thoughts and provocations. This one is more pointed, perhaps a bit more radical. Both are addressed to myself as much as anyone.
As a response to my own provocation, I have created a space to collect projects, groups, collectives, co-ops, and individuals, that are indeed forging new paths in knowledge production (including direct-action-ish knowledge projects). It’s open for contributions, and I’ve added a few to get things started. I would love to see your contributions.
