Something I found striking in reading the conclusion of this book was the different forms of reparations Patel and Moore outline. In order to end the capitalocene, they suggest not only reparations in the form of cash (which is something that has gained a lot of popularity recently in light of the Black Lives Matter movement that also relates to the idea of paid housework touched on in cheap care), but also in the form of land and resources. I read a post a while ago, I think from twitter, which stated that so-called progressive ideas like socialized healthcare are actually more centrist when you consider the massive shift necessary to live in a post-capitalist society. They also touched the repossession and redistribution of buildings and land as a move that would be more aptly called "leftist" than single-payer healthcare. For me, this book put into stark relief how resistant the world and the United States are to ideas that are even marginally hinting at a reality that doesn't serve the ecology of capitalism.
Another phrase that caught my eye was "global fascism". I would have loved for Patel and Moore to go further into detail about this concept and I would be interested to see what others have to say on the matter. From my perspective, we have been living in a fascist society for a long time, with military power, coercion, and genocide being the primary tools the global North has used to colonize and exploit the lands and bodies of the global South and other subjugated populations like the majority of women. I personally have been focused on what I thought of as the rise of fascism in the United States, but have come to find that no, this isn't a new phenomenon and, time and time again, I am realizing what we are currently experiencing is actually a symptom of a fascism that has spanned the entire capitalocene.
I also found the correlation between misogyny and the plow was a surprisingly reasonable example of how all of these concepts interrelate and continue to affect people at the intersections of all these issues.
I'm still mulling over some of the details of the book, imagining future conversations I might reference it in. But I'm excited to discuss it with the rest of the class.
Excellent observation here regarding the lack of critical imagination at work in reform proposals. I also found the book to be one that pushes readers to think bigger about what is necessary now or even what is "fair."
ReplyDeleteRegarding Patel and Moore's concept of Global Fascism I did some digging after our discussion in class yesterday. The authors borrow the term from the Cultural Studies critic Paul Gilroy who defines fascism in a way heavily influenced by Foucault's biopolitics: the deployment of disciplinary technologies at the scale of the body and the central role of the state in orchestrating the production and reproduction of those bodies. It's a powerful article on the potential of "new internationalisms" that are detaching ideas of sovereignty away from the state and from its nationalist biopolitics. Find that article here: http://rajpatel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ThirdWorldQuarterlypatelmcmichael2004.pdf
The example of the plow is a crucial one for thinking about the intersection of scales that are necessary component of the critical geographic method. Keep it with you as you as a model as you begin your own analyses.