[-empyre-] Shadows in the Dawn

[Johannes Birringer]

dear Alan and all

am reading an interesting book on migrants from East Africa to Madagascar; primatologist Alison Jolly actually calls them
 "accidental pilgrims" (the lemurs) --  which I found a fascinating term for that evolutionary crisis which was also an ecological one,
affecting what was to become Malagasy Republic, the red island, drifted off the main continent, over millions of years ago, 
and the lemurs raft-tripped over, looking for a safe place in the wild.

Alan asked whether US American might be in a bubble, at this time (?), i am not sure i can answer that, and I fear i can't speak
for anyone in other areas of the world where things are peaceful and bucolic, or precarious and contested, where people make do, or move or are forced
to flee or seek survival; I doubt there is a global effect, as you called this debate --  that sounds presumptuous to me, arrogant,
but you can call me naive, it's just that i can't be engaging paranoia or apocalypse. You (Alan) and I did moderate the debate on ISIS
here a few years ago, and I think it was a misguided debate perhaps (I had no direct experience or knowledge of ISIS, so had to
fabulate). 

But then again, Simon might argue there can no misguided reaction even if in disgust? "no immanent critique: 
the truth (of the opposition) will not puncture the bubble (of the consensus"  - it seems Simon you have given up on the left, and yet
as Alan argues, of course there are reactions and there is constant re-organization, and in that latter sense, we will, if we can, struggle,
or be on the raft. I see no room for "Larmoyanz"  (don;t know the english word for this).

on the activist side, i guess it starts always locally, and again, it seems to me if one were to speak now of one's reactive oppositions,
one comes across (Alan, you made a strangely interesting point about the résistance) as self-romanticizing, does one not? Friends
marched, i didn't. yes, did go to black lives matter rally on campus two days ago, debated race/ethnicity and an "attainment gap" they have discovered
for black and minority students in the west London university (and UK wide) where I work, yes, found out today from the union about the re-organization
management are doing on us, sending out at risk notices, cutting, dismantling, and so forth. so there will be more talk, surely, on
re-organizing ourselves?

regards
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab