Editorial Dialogues #9 feat. A. Shahid Stover

The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#9, SEPT-NOV/2013

BROTHERWISE DISPATCH - So how does it feel to be described as “an outlaw philosopher baad@ss from New York’s radical Black leftist intellectual underground”?

A. Shahid Stover - Man, that’s just a blurb for my next book, you know how that goes. Well, it’s definitely an “underground” scene, that’s for damn sure. Gone are the days when Black liberation praxis was outwardly, though often begrudgingly, recognized as spearheading a global anti-imperialist vanguard. We are still coping with the ideological consequences of an extremely thorough hegemonic counter-revolutionary blowback by Empire-as-western imperialist power, which has been tremendously effective in stifling any attempts at fundamental social change outside of globalized neo-liberal capitalist paradigms. However, I think that’s also what makes the cultivation of emancipatory discourse a whole lot more valuable at this particular socio-historical juncture.

Just be prepared for thorough disinformation campaigns from reactionary liberals, neo-conservative eunuchs and mainstream media pundits though. The truth is, whenever you don’t ‘brownnose’ established power or have any fear about confronting western imperialist oppression you better be prepared to be called a whole lot worse. For example, look at what’s happening right now to Cornel West and Tavis Smiley who have jumped off the ‘white’ liberal/Black hyperbourgeois Democratic Party bandwagon and are now admonishing Obama for functioning as a mere Black figurehead of Empire. Every ‘house negro’ with an Ipad is taking shots at those brothers for daring to speak out against global injustice and advanced neo-liberal capitalism. And as Black people, it’s actually fortunate to just merely be a target of disinformation alone, for within the context of a western imperialist continuum, ‘race’ reveals the Real of structural-inert violence against human ‘being’, a violence which often otherwise remains a normative anonymity of Empire.

There’s actually a good story related to that comment which originated at the LEFT FORUM a couple years back when The Brotherwise Dispatch organized a panel on Black Liberation Theory. The panel featured Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Kazembe Balagun, as well as those global media rebels from BW MOVING IMAGES Iyanna Jones and Usavior Washington. I remember just as the panel was about to get underway, we were enjoying the comraderie and still shootin’ the sh*t a little bit, we started messin’ with Kazembe, who actually is a formidable radical intellectual in his own right, about being a ‘Black liberation-Marxist heartthrob’, or something like that, because of his popularity with a whole cadre of young women activists in attendance who knew him because of his consistent anti-patriarchal grassroots work as co-director at the BRECHT FORUM. Later on, Daryle and I were still vibin’ on how intense and productive the panel discussion was and that’s when he dropped that lyrical gem on me and now it’s part of LEFT FORUM lore. He still likes to front like he doesn’t remember saying it, but it’s all good.

On the real though, for Daryle to make a claim like that as the chief spokesman of ONE PEOPLES PROJECT, it’s definitely appreciated, especially because he’s a fellow comrade in the struggle against global injustice and someone whose anti-racist/anti-fascist activism I really respect. It’s probably more sincere coming from him than some literary gatekeeper or pious academic mandarin. Although at the same time, knowing Daryle, that’s his own unique way of giving me a hard time about my dense philosophical prose. I’ve never been accused of belonging to the ‘keep it simple’ school of thought. I truly believe the reader must be challenged; be they friend or foe. In other words, I’m not watering down a muthaf*ckin’ thing.

Still, I don’t really get too carried away with all that because to be honest, gettin’ props or any kind of praise etc. is just like cigar smoke; enjoy the aroma to the fullest, but never inhale. I still have so much more work to do with regards to my own radical intellectual endeavors and as anyone who is involved in cultivating insurgent perspectives from which to confront Empire-as-western imperialist power will tell you; the odds are stacked tremendously against us. We’re constantly outnumbered by a bewildered herd, outgunned by western imperialist apologists and very cleverly misrepresented, if not altogether ignored by mainstream media.

As such, that “outlaw” or insurgent aesthetic which accompanies radical intellectual engagement, an aesthetic which is even more existentially pronounced for radical Blacks, can be very real. Although for some ‘the Academy’ can provide a refreshing and necessary shelter, for independent intellectuals like myself who dialogue with ‘the Academy’ though not actually part of it, there is no shelter. Your writing is all you have, meaning that you get by and support yourself doing whatever you gotta do, in whatever gig you can find, just grindin’ it out and then you still have to find the time to write, which is a very particular and demanding form of engagement with the world. That’s why you can almost always find me early in the morning writing at a coffee shop or café before I start my daily grind. That’s also why ‘leftist intellectual underground' networks which exist in most global imperialist metropoles, at the cultural margins of established power and socially sanctioned institutions, are so important for cultivating and sustaining the vitality of emancipatory thought as uniquely embodied in grassroots intellectual engagement by the postmodern lumpenproletariat.

BD - What exactly do you mean by the ‘postmodern lumpenproletariat’?

AS - By postmodern lumpenproletariat, I’m referring to a specific subjectivity indicative of those outsiders who find ourselves at the margins of a western imperialist continuum; either by conscious choice and insurgent commitment or by objective oppressive circumstance in relation to established power.

It’s important for me to clarify here that by postmodern I’m referencing postmodernity as a specific socio-historical situation which underscores our contemporary global structural transition away from the primacy of the nation-state, especially in the sense that the nation-state is no longer the ultimate horizon of fundamental social change. This ambiguous global situation where you have the collapse of the emancipatory narrative of the nation-state coexisting with an as of yet unrealized potentiality for a new socio-historical locus which might transcend the limitations of vulgar nationalist tendencies, this is what I mean by the postmodern situation, which obviously has tremendous philosophical and theoretical implications that are usually dealt with as the postmodern condition. For instance, I would argue that while Lyotard and Baudrillard deal with the postmodern condition, Jameson and West deal more with the postmodern situation. Although it’s merely a slight discursive difference in emphasis between postmodernism and postmodernity, it makes a world of difference with regards to the theoretical implications and philosophical thrust thereof.

Basically, until sedentary nationalist thought is transcended by a genuine geonationalist consciousness which might lead to the development of a socio-historical unity of purpose greater than the nation-state itself, we remain under the overcast skies of postmodernity. Let’s not forget that modernity, as imposed and informed by western imperialist power, is intricately wedded to the nation-state as both the condition of its possibility and its ultimate horizon.

As has always been apparent in the neo-colonial world and which is now even becoming more and more apparent in the hyperbourgeois enclaves of the West through austerity and globalization: the nation-state can no longer serve as an effective or ultimate guarantor of basic human rights in the face of advanced neo-liberal capitalism as ratified by Empire. Newton clearly foresaw this dynamic when he began working towards a more ‘intercommunalist’ perspective of emancipatory praxis right before his tragic and infamous split with Cleaver over the direction of the Black Panther Party. In a very real sense, Newton’s ‘intercommunalism’ helped lay some necessary theoretical groundwork for much of today’s emergent geonationalist potentialities of global revolt.

In any case, a battered husk of modernity remains which is no longer globally functional as a context for emancipatory praxis and yet it continues to maintain an almost purely formal and traditional hold on the socio-historical imagination as far as what might be possible with regards to a new and more just ordering of the world. Certain strains of postmodern discourse which deal with the collapse of the grand narratives that inform modernity, unfortunately also tend to simultaneously dismiss the socio-historical praxis of western imperialism which made such narratives possible, as well as ignoring the structural-inert residue of imperialist praxis as politically embodied in the modern nation-state.

And so in the context of postmodernity as informed by a specific global structural transition away from the primacy of the nation-state, you have specific hyperbourgeois subjectivities arising amongst those who cling to the false security of modernity as an absolute paradigm from which no change, growth or deviation is possible. However, you also have those who embrace the potentialities of this contemporary global ambiguity which provides a new impetus for radical social change, especially among those populations for whom modernity merely reified a consistently lived experience of ‘objecthood’ and dehumanization. It is amongst these ontological outcasts from which a postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity arises as a consciousness, as a lived response which contains vast potentialities for geonationalist insurrection against that advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization which is endorsed by Empire-as-western imperialist power.

Now the idea of an actual lumpenproletariat was first conceptually introduced by Marx who meant to identify those outside the boundaries of standard ‘class’ analysis, those who exist in a marginal relation to the means of production and hence of very little importance or revolutionary significance according to orthodox Marxist theory which posits the working class or proletariat, precisely because of its relation to the means of production, as the primary site of emancipatory agency.

With Fanon all that changed, in that the lumpenproletariat were no longer considered supplementary to revolutionary struggle, but THE fundamental factor, the very ground and raw material of emancipatory human agency from which to initiate revolution-as-decolonization praxis against western imperialist oppression.

What’s very often overlooked in the recent The Wretched of the Earth ‘translation wars’, between Constance Farrington’s classic emancipatory version and Richard Philcox’s underwhelming postcolonial version, is that the most important translation of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was carried out by the brothers and sisters of the Black Panther Party who didn’t even speak a lick of French. That’s right, the translation of Fanon into emancipatory praxis by Newton, Seale and Cleaver remains the most significant translation of The Wretched of the Earth to date.

In Newton’s early writings he recognizes similar patterns in relation to structural-inert oppressive power between Fanon’s lumpenproletariat and the ‘brothers on the block’ who occupy every neo-colonial ghetto in America. However, it’s actually Cleaver, beginning with Soul on Ice and then in “On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party” and “On Lumpen Ideology” who really fleshes out the theoretical and philosophical implications of lumpenproletariat subjectivity. Cleaver does this, almost in anticipation of postmodernity, by ontologically expanding lumpenproletariat subjectivity beyond just the ‘brothers on the block’ to include all those “who have no secure relationship or vested interest in the means of production or institutions of capitalist society” as well as those who have been left wanting by western imperialist paradigms of capitalism, socialism and even ‘third worldism’(or what is now called postcolonialism) as embodied in the modern nation-state.

As such, postmodern lumpenproletariat consciousness draws its strength from the socio-historical borderlands and ontological margins of a western imperialist continuum by those who find ourselves in a position to rebel based on either an existential proximity to oppression itself, or from an epistemological proximity to the truth about such ongoing oppression. Marcuse actually elaborates on this very premise in “The Problem of Violence and The Radical Opposition”. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that some strains of postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity have definitely grown out of the burnt ashes of what used to be called the New Left.

I do want to re-emphasize however, that postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity is more representative of a lived experience of ‘being-in-the world’ than a purely ‘scientific’ and objective class distinction. As such, this position to rebel doesn’t imply a deterministic relationship to emancipatory struggle. As Fanon noted, the lumpenproletariat are prone to “spiritual instability”, as such, if their potentialities for revolt are not realized, they can be just as reactionary as any member of the hyperbourgeoisie and sometimes much worse, which is why they at the very least need to be accounted for when considering any venture towards human liberation praxis.

BD - After reading your first book, HIP HOP INTELLECTUAL RESISTANCE, it becomes very clear that the range and overall direction of your work deals with so much more than just Hip Hop culture; going forward though, do you think it’s still important to maintain a Hip Hop aesthetic?

AS - No doubt, sure it’s important, but even more so than that, it’s actually inevitable. My work will always be informed by a Hip Hop aesthetic because Hip Hop exerted such a tremendous social influence and culturally informed my generation’s lived experience as we came of age in the late ‘80s and on into the‘90s. So it’s definitely something I embrace, and yet, even those of my generation who don’t explicitly embrace the influence of Hip Hop culture in their writings are still, by their very rejection of it, making a statement about it and ultimately acknowledging its influence none the less.

As Black people, our human ‘being’ is situated within a western imperialist continuum which we have no control over. As such, that existential freedom of rational soul which characterizes our human condition isn’t about an innate ability to control the world around us, rather it’s about the constitutive responsibility to create ourselves out of and sometimes even against whatever socio-historical context we happen to find ourselves immersed in. The neo-colonial ghettos of an advanced neo-liberal capitalist society provided oppressive socio-historical conditions against which we unleashed waves of artistic transcendence from which Hip Hop emerged as an aesthetic and cultural phenomenon.

Hip Hop culture is not some static source of eternal principles however, much has changed, and as such, the Hip Hop aesthetic which predominates today doesn’t actually reflect the self-constitutive originality, existential rawness and rugged unapologetic irreverence towards the normative standards of established unjust power which I remember quite fondly during my youthful days as an eMCee. We actually took pride in Hip Hop culture as a big middle finger to the status quo; so much so, that we got a little carried away and for a time many of us actually thought that Hip Hop culture was the revolution itself, or at least the catalyst which would bring it about.

Nowadays, there is a ton of literature that claims to represent Hip Hop culture and a whole lot of relatively recent academic work which approaches Hip Hop culture as a serious ‘object’ of study. However, no one is focusing on the aesthetic rebellion inherent in Hip Hop culture which cultivates original insurgent potentialities from which to confront modes of western imperialist oppression and racist dehumanization as inherent in advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization.

In other words, my book contributes towards developing a Hip Hop aesthetic of artistic transcendence and cultural resistance as opposed to the much more popular development of a Hip Hop aesthetic of cultural assimilation and economic exploitation.

This interview is part of a series of ongoing dialogues taking place between The Brotherwise Dispatch Editorial Cipher and our Editor-in-Chief - A. Shahid Stover.