[-empyre-] to brazil with love

[Irina Contreras]

Hey sorry i am replying individually rather than bulking them. they seem to come to me late or something....like i see replies before i see what came b4.
Anyways, I think its important too to distinguish movement building that takes place day by day rather than building up to marches and such. I am sure we already all know that but I just wanted to distinguish the two.
Because, I think that one of the things that happens when you work daily in the states is that you realize there is consciousness. But I can see how going to march gives people the feeling that the us is just total apathetic-pathetic- ronald mcdonald style.
i have to say that i think the reason queer women of color or muslim women as you suggested say they aren't interested in politics is because their lives (my life for one) is inherently politicized. Everything we do is political. Getting out the door and trying to get to work without a car while your dodging whistles, people telling you that youll love it when u are slurping on their cock (btw, not making that up...just happened this weekend) makes everyday part of my decision to think about what I do micro and macro hugely important. and then people ask me about how i feel about obama and while you can imagine why that would makes someone feel violently ill....
and as far as claiming feminism, i feel like ive seen really amazing dialogues around such within the last few years...cara baldwin where are you????
but yes i would agree that there is a bizarre structuring of peoples lives around wto but that the other side of that is that for those there it really did indicate that they could live in such another way. 
Paz,
Irina


--- On Sun, 6/1/08, lotu5 <lotu5 at resist.ca> wrote:

> From: lotu5 <lotu5 at resist.ca>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] to brazil with love
> To: poopstarr at yahoo.com, "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Cc: archivocaminante at yahoo.com.ar
> Date: Sunday, June 1, 2008, 9:22 PM
> >>>>> From: Eduardo Molinari
> <archivocaminante at yahoo.com.ar>
> ...
>  >>>>> what is to "erotize
> politic" today?
>  >>>>> what are the connections between body
> and ideologies today?
>  >>>>> what is the political dimension of
> the body today?
>  >>>>> to erotize politic for me is only
> possible when incarnation
>  >>>>> happens.
>  >>>>> then you can "feel" the
> political actions, also the enemy ones.
> 
> 
> Well, I seem to have provided some answers of my own to the
> questions 
> below without knowing you were discussing them!
> 
> As for people being afraid in the states, YES, I think so,
> but also 
> distracted. I think that most often in my interactions with
> people they 
> feel disconnected from politics, like they can't make
> any change 
> politically, so "why waste your time?", and
> really people are distracted 
> too, and find politics boring. I too find most political
> marches and 
> rallies and movie screenings boring, I admit!
> 
> I always find that whenI leave the US though, people in
> other places 
> seem more engaged with politics, like there is a history
> and a culture 
> of political engagement, so there's already a built-in
> assumption that 
> politics matters, while to most people in the US politics
> is seen as 
> something foreign, until voting time comes around.
> 
> As a teaching assistant in a university, this is my most
> common 
> experience, that even queer women of color or muslim women
> will say 
> straight to my face "I'm not interested in
> politics. It has nothing to 
> do with me." Although, I teach art classes, so maybe
> its a commentary on 
> artists, or on college students or on my particular city.
> Or I've had so 
> many women in my classes say adamantly that they are not a
> feminist, as 
> if they were afraid to be seen as feminist. But again,
> maybe a 
> commentary on who is interested in studying art, and
> hopefully they felt 
> differently after my class!
> 
> This idea of incarnation and feeling actions is
> interesting, because 
> I've heard many people I know, friends, describe
> experiences in the 
> alter-globalization movement as transformative, and they
> seem to 
> structure their lives around politics after these
> experiences, but 
> they're often the moments of being in a huge crowd with
> thousands of 
> chanting people, sharing sweat, or being traumatized by
> rubber bullets 
> and tear gas, or running together in a black bloc, or being
> hit in the 
> head with a police baton, these are the moments that I feel
> people 
> describe as transformative and they are absolutely embodied
> moments that 
> you "feel"!
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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