Who lives the activist life? Walker, Rogers, m
In practice - in an actual activist life - this thread is founded in two personae that have arisen later in the life, as things got really tough: Walker and Rogers. What Walker and Rogers are practically concerned with are the skills and literacies of altering the RoP that give pattern to this ceaseless weaving of forces of the heart-mind . . into intentions, into actions, in-here in §3 the economy of attention and intention, out-there in §1 the material economy . . so that what we all intentionally make is . . the end of suffering . . the creation of the common weal . . the futures of all the unborn children; so that this becomes the continual common work of all.
This is the deepest substance of a #labourprocess perspective on economies and knowledges, cultural formations and the transformation of powers. It’s where the rubber hits the road. It’s the string of the bow that launches arrows of intention.
The commitment to ‘labour process’ and the making of a world of commons - a common-ist world - is older than Walker and Rogers. This is the commitment of ‘m’. m is simply the person who lived the activist life, for decades - committed to theorising and practising, to organic intellectual seeing and doing, to libertarian socialist activism - before Walker and Rogers insisted on developing (or were enabled to develop, mostly by awful accident, and a little by wise intention) their distinctive insights and literacies.
m - and the people close to him - surely could have done with the developed presence of Walker and Rogers a whole lot sooner. However, we’re speaking of an actual life here; lives don’t run like that, to schedules. And yet, this Walking thread is here under the intention of shifting that balance . . in the fullness of time.
More than metaphors, less than a choreography or an itinerary
Please don’t assume that Walker/Rogers/m are being offered as ‘how it is’, as a model or some kind of universal, and please note there’s no implication that Walker or Rogers has ‘got it right’. These happen to be the forms in which skill, need and insight arose in an activist’s life, and furnished the ground of necessary ’theory’ for that person’s necessary practice of literacy in that body, in that life.
But you may not have Walker, m, Rogers. The ones who handle the FoP RoP in your life may need to be different - simply because you necessarily stand in a different material relation with history and the world . . we do live in a pluriverse, not a universe! We do stand in places.
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If the work that is at your core is not design and constructs and language (as with m) but is craft or care or the green fuse or community . . you will not have m, you will have someone else in that place of class geography and mutuality and skill.
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If you are a person of colour or female or your physiology, anatomy or limbic chemistry is off-piste . . you will nor necessarily have melancholic unbelonging vagrant Walker as your emotional stormcock - though you may. But whoever you have, they will be your engine, as Walker is.
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Your Rogers may not arise as Rogers did, but rather . . out of your people’s songlines, a religion, the deep engagement of your culture with natural stuff . . whatever: all the strands of Hawken’s Blessed Unrest are Rogers’ roads. Your Rogers may not have arrived yet. But until s/he hatches and deepens, your m will heave boulders daily up mountains or swim in a sea of un-done work, and your Walker will drain you into the sands of despair or put you in bondage to a tribe of no-one’s choosing.
You may not have Walker, m, Rogers. But whatever you have in their places will furnish the inescapable base of your own theorising of your own practice, and your own training ground in the production of alternative RoPs of heart-mind. In that sense only, this trio of personae is offered as a model for this kind of literacy work in the landscape of #emotional-institutions. Part-map, part-travelogue. More than a metaphor, less than a choreography or itinerary.
Activists and the long march home
Until there’s more assembled here, the clearest place to see what Walker, Rogers and m are up to is Activists and the long march home - Class geography, conviviality, melancholy territory, available print-on-demand and eBook at <https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1295273>. This is volume 3 of a series, Humble Origins, which explores from various places and in various modes the making and surfing of an activist life. Its companions - volume 2 (Every place is itself) and volume 1 (All roads lead to Halifax) - can be found in the same online place.