A LIVING BODY IS IN THE FIRST INSTANCE A BODY THAT CAN BREATH.

ACHILLE MBEMBE NOTES AS I LISTEN TO HIM

FANON WAS PREOCUUPIED WITH HOW MADNESS (or LA FOLIE) TAKES A POLITICAL FORM

COLONIALISM AS A FACTORY WHERE MADNESS IS MANUFACTURED

MADNESS FOR LACAN - the relationship btw madness and freedom (madness ultimate consummation of freedom) - madness as freedom

To be free is to be mad to simplify it.

Most faithful companion to freedom.

On the other hand madness is the limit of our freedom  (DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE)

The moment (our age) is Fanonian

NOW: >> People are looking for another form of political existence.

People are not interested in reconciliation

People are not interested in “democracy” 

People are interested in radical irruption in South Africa

The reactivation of archives: resurgence or emergence of revisiting Black critique to Afro-pessimism and queer theory.

DECOLONISE SOCIETY

The return to two thinkers Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon -  have become subjects of new modes of reading.

The rise of activist practice. Language of confrontation and protagonism. 

2 Re-articulation of the political.

Emotions and affect are being re-intergrated in the political process.

The importance of LIVED EXPERIENCE.

Strategies of violence, redistribution of violence.  

3 Language of opposition. It explicitly rejected conventions of reason.

It is matter what kind of pain have you undergone.

An entry ticket. Which allows to make claims.

4 Forms of political activism.

Moral outrage. The past is no guaranty anymore

Moral authority derives from one’s willingness to  draw a line between past and present. Either you win or you loose. There’s no middle ground.

WHAT ACHILLE MBEMBE IS TRYING TO MAKE;

THE POLITICS OF VISCERALITY.

Something that is bodily, organ-based.

Emotional and instinctive response.

Many different responses body can give in many situations.

Vital energy is at stake.

Suffocation caused by pain. 

WHAT I’M SUGGESTING IS: what we see taking shape in the world is the politics of viscerally.

w/ PAIN, ANGER, GRIEF, FEAR, OUTRAGE.

Who’s the subject of this new kind of politics.

He or she inhabit a frustrating body. A body is a home.

A subject that is unable ( a body that is unable) to shout because of the horror inflicted by the various structures of power.

A feeling of choking. A question of suffocation that is all over Fanon's text.

I cannot breath is all over Fanon's text.

A LIVING BODY IS IN THE FIRST INSTANCE A BODY THAT CAN BREATH.

The path to madness begins to attempts of suffocation.

Why is this kind of politics taking place in South Africa now?

The face of poverty is still Black.

A living example of a student  (Chumani Maxwele) The University of Cape Town who emptied human excrement on the statue of  Cecil John Rhodes PC - a British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa, who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. His gesture unleashed a chain of reactions.

Why did you that? why the statue? a journalist asked.

He says: "The simple answer is that I was bringing the shame and disgust of black people at the history of Rhodes…

You know that most of the time we the black students of UCT along our academic life….try to run away from the black shame and the black pain and try to emulate whiteness. 

Because of the filth way Rhodes treated us. 

The fist question this kind of politics raises is?

The violence of the subaltern.

THIS IS CALLED RETRIBUTION OF VIOLENCE. 

How do we go beyond Sartre to read Fanon properly.

Self-love. How do we reconstruct it? How do we reach beneath the skin?

LIVED EXPERIENCE. The types of wounds that have been inflicted upon us.

Are there any other grammars to articulate suffering?

THE POLITICS OF WAITING.

The catastrophe is here. There’s no pointing in waiting.

To wait is madness.

What we have is a shift. New strategies of TEMPORALITY.