Following up on the threads of my previous argument, laying out a critique of Marx’s humanism that approaches the problem from mystic spirituality rather than poststructuralist theory, I want to explore how an understanding of mysticism might help us generate a new kind of political ethic. An ethic that decenters humanity, particularly the rational and autonomous/sovereign humanity that modernity naturalizes. An ethic that provides for the undoing of the Heading of capital(ism), not by providing Another Heading, but by providing the Other of the Heading. An ethic that dissolves the fundamental logic of capitalism.
Mysticism & Marx, I
Note as of November 2020: This essay and its sequel were written around the time I started a PhD at the University of Minnesota. I was Muslim at the time and wrestling with the shortcomings in Marxist thought that I was coming up against. It doesn’t reflect my current thought very well, but these ideas were important in my intellectual formation.
#MeToo
hashtags never sit well with me. i always feel the urge to sand them furiously, to wear down the jagged edges until they fit neatly in my palm and don’t cut so deeply. but i recognize their power within the sphere of social media, especially as a tool to weave together experiences that would otherwise have sat isolated. typing out #MeToo, as much as it hurts to lance the wound(s) i’ve let fester quietly so long (too long?), connects my experience, my pain, to others’ stories.