philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
Anarchists should stop seeking justice as the foundation for their politics.
The legal system, the so-called justice system is a mockery of the living traditions that used to bind the patriarchal peoples, gathered together through the thin bonds of blood. Justice, for them, has always been The Right To Punish The Transgressor.
And here, what is the Right?
We know Sovereignty; head of the body, power and responsibility necessitated within.
On the one hand, that the head is responsible for the body, and that there can be only one head... ane on the other, more personal scale, just that no one would fault them for it. They would not be considered to be transgressing anyone else's laws.
So, justice? A world where the wronged rule as righteous fist against the wrong? The wronged is only discovered after. Are the transgressors not wronging the traditions? And is that not what we see at play?
There are traditions and transgressions.
Imbued with histories and powers unique to each.
And is that not the basic freedoms each anarchist desires? The freedom to transgress the past, the history that determines us in law, in schools, in the very layouts of the land we are born into. And The freedom to build our own traditions, our own history, our own community, the ways we want to, which, for many of us has been a transgressive break from the communities and traditions we were raised in?
To mend the world.
That remains the only goal I can see.
And I dont think it possible to plan the mended world, only to let it live.
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@Parasite what i am cautioning against is using justice as the reason for your politics... like, believing "a 'system' is anarchist if its the one which produces justice"
a lot of people talk about anarchist philosophy as if there is some failure if an unjust action is "able" to occur "without balance/oversight/etc"
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@Parasite i shouldve said, i dont disagree with what youve said. i apologize for not acknowledging that.
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@exiliaex yah I can see one direction of that, but I think my own political framework is at its roots an ethical one, if not solely beholden to “justice” as the end all be all of that line of reasoning/being. I arrived at anarchism precisely because it most closely mapped the system of responsibility/care/justice I value(d). Obviously there is no world in which attending to those ideals is hierarchical/suffused with centralized power/etc so the politics/ethics are kind of mutually reinforcing, while *a* mutable concept of justice (again in part) kind of is the reason for my politics
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@exiliaex wholeheartedly agree about the second part, however. The idea that anarchism could ever encompass the kind of totality that would render *unjust* acts obsolete is a nonstarter
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@Parasite yeah; i definitely feel like my political framework is inherently intertwined with my more base ethical beliefs, but i suppose i'm more critical of the concept of justice itself. what it implies about the forms of living we can become with one another, and what tends to come hand in hand when other people speak "justice." It so rarely stops there.
to me it always seems that Justice, even when spoken by those who claim to be anarchists, quickly morphs into "the right to force others to behave in a way i find acceptable" by The Right of the Community, the Right of The People, the Right of the Norm against the deviant and transgressive. Justice as the status quo enforcing itself as radical and "restorative."
this certainly isn't universal or anything; i suppose i just have a tendency towards thinking that "the fulfillment of justice is its abolition"
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@exiliaex Yeah 100% if that’s the trajectory of justice then that’s right out the window for me. It’s also why I harbor a lot of sympathies for nihilist/no future-ism critiques via someone like Lee Edelman, just not to the extent that ethics writ large becomes a self-defeating prophecy
philosophy; justice, tradition, transgression
@exiliaex I don’t necessarily see justice as an ethical endeavor strictly tied to the legal system, though that’s its dominant means of being articulated. Certainly there is a long anarchist tradition of ethical engagement, particularly in both holding a mutable set of moral ideals and in exacting some kind of recourse for any number of individually inflicted or structurally egregious actions.