Reading Group Week 23
I feel like my reflections this week are a little more meandering and self-serving - rather than, like, a coherent essay for other people to read and understand. I'm not exactly apologizing for it per se, but please don't get caught up trying to decipher something inscrutable or circular if it doesn't make sense or doesn't resonate with you.
Hello, and welcome back. I want to thank you for being here with me, especially as this past week, and the past few days, have been... exceptionally stressful and difficult.
We're continuing Riot. Strike. Riot by Joshua Clover.
If you can, please consider donating to The Sameer Project - proceeds from the Workshops 4 Gaza bookshop partner, Open Books Emporium, go to The Sameer Project to try to keep Palestinians in Gaza fed and alive during Israel's ongoing imposed starvation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Reading
This week we're reading chapters 1 & 2.
| Week | Date | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | June 16 | Introduction |
| Week 2 | June 23 | Chapters 1+2 |
| Week 3 | June 30 | Chapters 3+4 |
| Week 4 | July 7 | Chapters 5+6 |
| Week 5 | July 14 | Chapter 7 |
| Week 6 | July 21 | Chapter 8 |
| Week 7 | July 28 | Chapter 9(+afterword) |
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Reflections
Chapter 1: What Is a Riot?
The riot is, in [Gilje's] telling, always and everywhere illegitimate, which might not surprise us but for the initial claim that it has served "to persuade owners of the legitimacy of the laborers' demands." [...] [The strike] is always pacific and always within the law—this despite the long stretches of history during which even the meekest strike or "combination" has been illegal, and against the countless examples of picket line struggles and other forms of violence.
Badiou's recounting, inversely, is admirably explanatory but inaccurate. That is to say, he provides a recognizable social context for riot as opposed to other forms of action, a periodizing claim, and he is prepared to accept the riot as serious testimony about historical transformation. There are nonetheless vagaries in his historical survey, which derives somewhat arbitrary periodizations of French history [...] arguably accurate for his native country, it matches little if at all with the tendencies of history elsewhere. Moreover, any given riot of political significance (a "historical riot," in his typology) appears as a practically determinationless event, outside of time. The quants give us too much causality; Badiou too little.
I'm not sure that I agree with Clover's reading of Gilje's definition of "riot" ("any group of twelve or more people attempting to assert their will immediately through the use of force outside the normal bounds of the law"). I do think I agree with some of the issues that Clover brings up, but my reading of "outside the normal bounds of the law" doesn't seem to necessarily draw a value judgment on it ("always and everywhere illegitimate", as Clover calls it).
Maybe I'm nitpicking a bit because I realize that these aren't really the vocabulary words I care about when I'm thinking about how to define what a riot is. When I think about what a riot is, I gravitate to what it does. Maybe in some sense I'm kind of gravitating toward a teleological interpretation of riots?
(Is that even the right word? Let's say for the sake of my self-esteem that it is.)
What I mean is that I'm thinking about what the purpose of a riot is. What do riots accomplish that other mechanisms don't satisfy?
Taking bits and pieces from Clover's analysis, admittedly not really doing my own firsthand reading of the stuff he references and cites (and, uh, I should do that), I keep thinking about how riots seem to fill a need that isn't being met or acknowledged by other mechanisms and structures in society. Food riots in England in the book; the stonewall riots against police violence in 1969; recent riots against ICE and violence in the US.
People seem to riot because something (markets, the state, ???) has pushed those people into a crisis (often an abject existential crisis), and there's no way for people to deal with that crisis. When such a crisis looms, people forcefully push back - ignoring the insufficient rails and structures put in place to adjudicate (for instance) police violence against LGBTQ people (as in stonewall), to try to renegotiate the state of things.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure if I'm as determined to get to the bottom of the question of "what is a riot" in the way that Clover is. I think my answer is that I'm open to whatever definition someone who wants to riot assigns to it.
I'm sorry for constantly bringing work into this reading group, but I've thought a lot about what people mean by "AI", and I've even written about it (you don't need to read it; you already have all the context you need for this digression). I don't think a useful definition of AI is predicated on the components that go into it; I think a useful definition of the thing we're talking about when we talk about AI is the constellation of disparate projects, systems (human, silicon, whatever), and ideas that all seem to be drifting (or racing) in the same direction.
Okay that's enough of a digression, how this connects to riots; I think tactics, compositions, demographics, and many other things about social movements change over time and across geography. Like I think that's not controversial to say. I also think that the oppressive systems we bristle and grind against find ways to innovate over time, and oppress people in new ways. I think tactics naturally should change to reflect what we're facing.
I think that the undercurrent or the shared thread of all of these riots, rebellions, and other movements that Clover seems to be talking about in chapter 1 seems (to me) to be that these things deal with some failure of the system (whatever that system is) to get people a thing they need. If that sounds vague, it's because I'm a coward. But also because I know that my own horizon has grown over the last 5 or 10 years; I recognize more things now than I did 10 years ago. If you had asked me to list all the things that people might riot over, or the ways that people might riot, then I might have embarrassed myself. Okay, I would have embarrassed myself.
(As an aside, Taylor Lorenz has an article in Teen Vogue about young people protesting against ICE in Roblox? I still need to read it. Sorry for passing links without reading the articles first!)
I hope it's fair to say that Mahmoud Khalil was one of the early prominent cases of ICE abducting people. I think people turned to lawyers, to the immigration and other jurisdictional processes, and even turned to senators and congressional representatives, to try to set things right. Over time, those congressional representatives got arrested; the senators proved to be bigots themselves; courts lacked the ability to enforce rulings, and the other arms of the state continued to work to dislocate Khalil from his family. And the abductions continued. Rümeysa Öztürk and myriad other students who fled the country rather than risk being jumped while walking to or from school or work.
All this is to say that by the time people in LA started forcefully moving against ICE agents, and against Waymo for providing law enforcement with data, and against collaborators with ICE both proven and suspected... I think you don't need to be super generous to say that we had gotten to a point - and I would argue we still are at a point - where whatever mechanisms and processes we are told we should avail ourselves of to make things right... simply don't work.
Recently SCOTUS issued a ruling that the government does not owe immigrants a "... 'meaningful opportunity' to tell officials what risks they might face being deported to a third country." The promise of having one's day in court, of being able to chip away at the case for your guilt (or at least to affirmatively demonstrate your innocence) moves further and further away. A recent Government Accountability Office report disclosed that at least 70 people deported by the US government through ICE between 2015 and 2020 may have been American citizens. Per the report:
ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens.
All this is to say that, if you were surrounded by ICE on the street or in a parking lot, even if you're an American citizen, it would be understandable if you were reluctant to let the process play out. Mahmoud Khalil spent 3 months in a prison about a thousand miles away from his wife and newborn. That seems to be one of the brighter outcomes.
So what is a riot? It's the natural outcome of a failed system that denies or steals something from people that they consider to be a basic right. That might be food, safety, freedom, or whatever else, right?
This reflection really meandered off track, huh? Sorry.
Chapter 2: The Golden Age of Riot
... we should not lean too heavily on the magic of "price." To insist on the distinction is to neglect that the zero of seizure is a price, too; it stands in relation to the total funds available to meet basic needs. Within the context of the market, direct expropriation finds itself on the same continuum of a redistributive struggle for survival as does demanding a lower cost of grain.
It matters little, to return to an earlier theme, whether the rioters possess thoughts of world markets, distant conflicts, the tightening mesh of global space. They have a practical task that arises within these, from these, and takes part in them regardless. The participants cannot stop turning toward these things, which haunt every horizon.
I'll write more about this and maybe share it later; I wanted to put a pin in these ideas about riots, destruction, and demands for expertise and knowledge.
I also want to solicit thoughts, if you have any, about this idea of "setting the price to zero" (sort of turning the idea of price negotiations on its head), as well as his response to the idea that people resisting an unjust system are obligated (for instance) to have perfect awareness of every level and every layer of complexity of that thing, when a practical day-to-day agenda lays itself out for us just the same either way.
Share your thoughts
I want to hear what you're thinking. If you'd like to chat with the Signal group chat, I'd love to see you there.
Otherwise, let's chat on Saturday at 12pm ET, during the weekly video call.
Next Book
Our next book will be... I'm not sure yet. If you have strong feelings, please let me know in the signal chat, on bluesky, or on twitter.
Okay, that's everything. Looking forward to hearing from you (and seeing you on Saturday, if you can make it.)