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Trudging through the anarchist word swamp
Feb. 7th, 2006 08:41 amFirst of all, over 100 comments on dayplanners? I had no idea you folks cared so much. For the record I still haven’t found my Slingshot so I made a provisional datebook out of a small blank notebook that fits in my back pocket. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maeve66 has graciously promised me a new feral Slingshot soon.
But I also think it’s funny that over 100 people commented on the Organizer and no one really discussed Slingshot the zine. I have a long term relationship with it myself due to my particular anarcho-circumstances, but imagine many of the folks who use the Organizer, never read the magazine, and may never even have seen an issue.
When the first issue of Slingshot came out in the mid ‘80s, I* was working on a similar college-based, anonymous , anarch-ish, pre-computer, cut and paste, free, political zine. We were in a very geographically isolated area and the daily arrival of other like minded zines really was something that made us feel we were part of a movement larger than ourselves. Slingshot felt like a sister publication even if couldn’t totally get behind some of their articles.
But now it’s like the granddaddy paper of the wingnuttist faction of the anarchist "movement". Which is funny really, because they actually print some of the best articles in the anarchist press.** I appreciate that they will print articles they see as important tot their community even if they are written by non-anarchist radicals. Certainly, they try to have longer, more investigative and theoretical articles than almost anyone in the anarchist press, which generally consists of articles that are either we’re-friends-so-we’ll-print-your-badly-written-press-release-unedited or sportswriter-style accounts from riots around the world. (Ever notice that, like the Weekly World News, the reports of the most surprising and revolutionary actions always seem to take place somewhere obscure where it would be hard to substantiate the events.)
One of the main points of Slingshot seems to be that in order to read it, you really have to want to read it. I mean, it’s ugly. Maybe not as ugly as some other zines, and maybe even a little cleaned up over the years, but certainly not very accessible unless you’re part of the counterculture already or looking for a way to be part of it. Trust me, I don’t often agree with Fred Woodworth of The Match, but his analysis of the readability of anarcho-zines was one thing that he got right., His tracing of the degradation of quality of certain graphics from SDS to the present as they got photocopied and lost more and more print resolution was actually kind of hilarious, especially because I was guilty of that in my zine days.*** Hell, when we first went to using computers (in 1987 or so) we insisted everyone use different fonts so that it kept the "style’ it had from all of us previously typing out articles on out own typewriters.
I go back and forth on issues of subculture and politics. Subculture can’t exist without distancing itself from (however it views it) regular society. This can create breakthroughs in theory, provide incredible community, spur change by making the implicit explicit and just be plain fun. By its nature though, it easily turns to elitism and vanguardism. And a political movement that thinks of "those people" as stupid, especially when some of you/us were "those people" six months ago, isn’t gonna go anywhere long-term.
To say that the anarchist press has a massive credibility issue is both an understatement and kind of missing the point. These days it seems like one can’t read a political think piece in the mainstream press without it mentioning that liberals and conservative both read a lot but with almost no crossover in material. So really, there’s no surprise that the anarchist press is written to support the ideas of the already anarchist. We’re just being Americans.
It’s just good to remember that it’s an organizing tool only to those who are seeking being organized. That is not without value, it’s just especially ambitious. When I reviewed for MRR, there was an incredibly funny exchange between MRR and Slingshot. One reviewer, who I actually think often got things completely right, gave Slingshot a lukewarm review and then ended with an offhand comment about how it was slightly alienating to her because it seemed like it was written by a bunch of "anarcho-robots". Slingshot objected to this term and from then on every MRR review mentioned it somehow, just for fun.
But you know, that’s what you get when you are writing for a specific audience and other people read it. Especially when you insist on using obvious pseudonyms.**** This may protect one from the big bad government who wants to put us in jail or kill us because we’re such a threat, ya know like the Black Panthers, but it certainly also has the effect of seeming that the writers lack the courage of their convictions and/or wish to remain unaccountable to the readers. Unless of course one is in the in-crowd enough to know the writers personally.
But hey, creating that dayplanner was certainly a smart move. Creating something of value and that serves a community really works. Look at all the attention we’ve given them!
*I am outing no one else. Declare yourselves if you like.
**Which yes, also says something about the anarchist press which I find to be mostly just embarrassing.
***In our anarcho-zine, we noticed after a couple of years that the masthead had gotten really small because we always copied the issues at 99% and we just chopped the masthead off the last issue and pasted it on the new one!
****Full disclosure: our ‘80s anarcho-zine was anonymous but we also approved all the articles in collective editorial meetings so that they actually were coming, in some way, from the organization not individuals. I’m not saying this wasn’t alienating either, just clarifying.
maeve66 has graciously promised me a new feral Slingshot soon.But I also think it’s funny that over 100 people commented on the Organizer and no one really discussed Slingshot the zine. I have a long term relationship with it myself due to my particular anarcho-circumstances, but imagine many of the folks who use the Organizer, never read the magazine, and may never even have seen an issue.
When the first issue of Slingshot came out in the mid ‘80s, I* was working on a similar college-based, anonymous , anarch-ish, pre-computer, cut and paste, free, political zine. We were in a very geographically isolated area and the daily arrival of other like minded zines really was something that made us feel we were part of a movement larger than ourselves. Slingshot felt like a sister publication even if couldn’t totally get behind some of their articles.
But now it’s like the granddaddy paper of the wingnuttist faction of the anarchist "movement". Which is funny really, because they actually print some of the best articles in the anarchist press.** I appreciate that they will print articles they see as important tot their community even if they are written by non-anarchist radicals. Certainly, they try to have longer, more investigative and theoretical articles than almost anyone in the anarchist press, which generally consists of articles that are either we’re-friends-so-we’ll-print-your-badly-written-press-release-unedited or sportswriter-style accounts from riots around the world. (Ever notice that, like the Weekly World News, the reports of the most surprising and revolutionary actions always seem to take place somewhere obscure where it would be hard to substantiate the events.)
One of the main points of Slingshot seems to be that in order to read it, you really have to want to read it. I mean, it’s ugly. Maybe not as ugly as some other zines, and maybe even a little cleaned up over the years, but certainly not very accessible unless you’re part of the counterculture already or looking for a way to be part of it. Trust me, I don’t often agree with Fred Woodworth of The Match, but his analysis of the readability of anarcho-zines was one thing that he got right., His tracing of the degradation of quality of certain graphics from SDS to the present as they got photocopied and lost more and more print resolution was actually kind of hilarious, especially because I was guilty of that in my zine days.*** Hell, when we first went to using computers (in 1987 or so) we insisted everyone use different fonts so that it kept the "style’ it had from all of us previously typing out articles on out own typewriters.
I go back and forth on issues of subculture and politics. Subculture can’t exist without distancing itself from (however it views it) regular society. This can create breakthroughs in theory, provide incredible community, spur change by making the implicit explicit and just be plain fun. By its nature though, it easily turns to elitism and vanguardism. And a political movement that thinks of "those people" as stupid, especially when some of you/us were "those people" six months ago, isn’t gonna go anywhere long-term.
To say that the anarchist press has a massive credibility issue is both an understatement and kind of missing the point. These days it seems like one can’t read a political think piece in the mainstream press without it mentioning that liberals and conservative both read a lot but with almost no crossover in material. So really, there’s no surprise that the anarchist press is written to support the ideas of the already anarchist. We’re just being Americans.
It’s just good to remember that it’s an organizing tool only to those who are seeking being organized. That is not without value, it’s just especially ambitious. When I reviewed for MRR, there was an incredibly funny exchange between MRR and Slingshot. One reviewer, who I actually think often got things completely right, gave Slingshot a lukewarm review and then ended with an offhand comment about how it was slightly alienating to her because it seemed like it was written by a bunch of "anarcho-robots". Slingshot objected to this term and from then on every MRR review mentioned it somehow, just for fun.
But you know, that’s what you get when you are writing for a specific audience and other people read it. Especially when you insist on using obvious pseudonyms.**** This may protect one from the big bad government who wants to put us in jail or kill us because we’re such a threat, ya know like the Black Panthers, but it certainly also has the effect of seeming that the writers lack the courage of their convictions and/or wish to remain unaccountable to the readers. Unless of course one is in the in-crowd enough to know the writers personally.
But hey, creating that dayplanner was certainly a smart move. Creating something of value and that serves a community really works. Look at all the attention we’ve given them!
*I am outing no one else. Declare yourselves if you like.
**Which yes, also says something about the anarchist press which I find to be mostly just embarrassing.
***In our anarcho-zine, we noticed after a couple of years that the masthead had gotten really small because we always copied the issues at 99% and we just chopped the masthead off the last issue and pasted it on the new one!
****Full disclosure: our ‘80s anarcho-zine was anonymous but we also approved all the articles in collective editorial meetings so that they actually were coming, in some way, from the organization not individuals. I’m not saying this wasn’t alienating either, just clarifying.
