http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html
Thoughtful people find this censorious hyperpragmatism alienating and can drop away from organizing as a result. But that's not the only problem. It's important to encourage better thinking, says Jiramanus, "so hippie-to-yuppie doesn't happen again." As she points out, without an analysis of what's really wrong with the world - or a vision of the better world you're trying to create - people have no reason to continue being activists once a particular campaign is over. In this way, activist-ism plus single-issue politics can end up defeating itself. Activistism is tedious, and its foot soldiers suffer constant burnout. Thinking, after all, is engaging; were it encouraged, Jiramanus pleads, "We'd all be enjoying ourselves a bit more."
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Yes, this is exactly the point.
This is a fine essay which, unfortunately, brings to mind some of my own experiences as a person with a love of useful theoretics speaking and working with those who see no need for analysis. Ever.
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As the essay states, the resistance to theory is seen not only in more self-consciously radical activist circles, but also among mainstream do-gooders. It is, to be sure, a cultural phenomena.
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A few years ago I was invited to participate in a program (funded by one of the large philanthropics) designed to provide computer training to 'underclass' youth. The funding source was NPR worthy but many of the organizers were serious activists of varying levels of 'radicalism'.
Teachers were supposed to 'empower' (when will this word be stricken from the synaptic record?) students to go out and get jobs in information tech. A pragmatic goal which no one argued with.
Several of us believed however, it was just as important to instruct students in the underlying social theories guiding the way computers - the ultimate command and control tech - are put to use. The credit reporting system for example, contains in actionable code, certain ideas about class, race, residence and behavior which a combined systems and social theory analysis would reveal. Databases, to cite another example, viewed properly, can be studied both as software objects and as a reflection of the desire to categorize, monitor and control people and things.
Many other rich opportunities for deep analysis are available.
My colleagues and I were very excited about this approach, which would've gone beyond merely giving students the ability to configure Windows 2000 or Linux servers to help them understand the place of this technology within the larger capitalist maze. Why not combine theory and practice?
Unfortunately, our activist leader saw zero value in these ideas and insisted the right-now goal of achieving the benchmark of graduating poor students from "computer boot camp" outweighed in value any effort to provide kids with a more comprehensive education about this deep subject.
All efforts to inject analysis and history into the proceedings were frowned upon as being "off-message" and a waste of time. There was a great deal of heat generated over this.
It would've be esay to place the blame upon the shoulders of the big foundation. It was clear however, that many of the hard-core community activists were uncomfortable with theory and far too deeply in love with crisis-based social action trapped in a hammer-to-nail focus on the immediate moment.
These are good people, but the stubborness in the face of ideas is disturbing and does indeed often end in burnout and action fatigue.
DRM