Navigating (Living) Philosophy: Reflections on Dragon Philosophy and Guerrilla Love with Kalonji Changa

This collection invitations seasoned philosophers to share crucial reflections on emergent and institutionalised shapes of and encounters inside philosophy. The collection collects experience-based explorations of philosophy’s private, institutional, and disciplinary evolution that can even assist younger lecturers and college students navigate philosophy at this time.

Dr. Pleasure James’ following publish features a transcript taken from a ‘Black August’ interview on RSTV/BPM with FTP organizer Kalonji Changa, from August 30, 2022; the preliminary transcript has been edited for readability and brevity, and is adopted by a mirrored image. 

Advisory warning: This Black August 2022 weblog dialogue displays on violence, rape, and homicide; in addition to political riot in opposition to antiblack captivity and torture.

Dragons as Guerilla Intellectuals

Kalonji Changa: Talk about your idea of George Jackson as a ‘dragon.’

Pleasure James: The idea of the ‘dragon thinker’—within the August 21, 2018, AAIHS (African American Intellectual History) article, ‘George Jackson: Dragon Thinker and Revolutionary Abolitionist’—developed from a dialog I had with Harlem panther veteran and tutorial Kit Holder, who described Jackson as a ‘dragon’ and a thinker. My diploma in political philosophy and dissertation on Hannah Arendt means that I formally realized pretty nothing about Black folks, political riot, or black liberation actions—nicely no less than not from Jesuits, conservative whites, or employment in Ivy League colleges. When Holder, in dialog, outlined the dragon thinker as a revolutionary who loves, I started to marvel what sort of thinker I used to be in relation to the dragon thinker.

George and his youthful brother, Jonathan Jackson—who died on August 7, 1970, whereas George died on August 21, 1971—had been ‘guerrilla intellectuals.’ Creator of Soledad Brother and the posthumously printed Blood in My Eye, George Jackson embodied the strategist who defines not simply how to withstand state dispossession and violence, but additionally how captives might construct safety and a ‘folks’s struggle’ for liberation that might solely be gained by way of the destabilization of empire and conquest. 

Dragons are additionally philosophers as a result of they interact in meta-thinking; they assume throughout all classes. After I learn Soledad Brother, I see love. Then I’ve to reconcile seemingly diametrical poles: there may be militarism or the struggle methods; the echo of Malcolm X’s name for self-defense; and assertions of company through which there could be ‘dying on each side.’ There may be additionally immense love that coexists with defensive drive in opposition to state and white supremacist violence. Conference instructs with inflexible political dichotomies—asserting that “violence” (truly, drive by way of the train of self-defense) and love can not exist in the identical house on the identical time—however that may be a disciplinary soundtrack. That injunction doesn’t replicate the truth of our existence as mutations from centuries of enslavement, colonization, and social violations. The love is profound in our communities. The violence is deep. We’ve to reconcile the 2. To separate the 2 aside doesn’t make sense given what now we have inherited over centuries of captivity, enslavement, rape, and terror; and the way we survive. We love and resist in the identical zones.

Throughout a 2021 Black August interview on one other podcast episode, I said that “George is a Captive Maternal”; the interviewer’s response was: “He’s a hyper-masculinist—how might he be a Captive Maternal?” I replied that it was as a result of he liked and he cared for folks. If I speak about love in a much less summary approach in an effort to replicate on revolutionary wrestle, I distinguish drive from violence and acknowledge that now we have the appropriate—even when we lack the political will—to make use of drive in opposition to violence.

Kalonji Changa: Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara mentioned, “Revolution is an act of affection.” Freedom combating is all about love. I don’t perceive revolution with out love. Revolution with out love is legal. It’s for the love in your folks and the love for humanity that you simply combat. It’s the love for the planet that makes you combat and resist. Individuals are confused and misconstrued once they say, “Why are you so offended?” I’m not offended. I’m in love. That love causes me to answer violence by no matter means to place that fireside out… What does the dragon imply to you?

Pleasure James: The dragon is a mutation. Allow us to look at. We’re all born with personalities and a few of us have sturdy personalities. I didn’t have a robust character as a baby. I had a robust will, however not a robust character. I used to be a stutterer. I hugged timber. I hid in tree homes. I stayed away from folks. There have been most likely occasions when the dragon was ready for me on the nook, just like the trickster Elegba. Dragons, as political rebels and philosophers for freedom and justice, meet on the crossroads. Typically, they let you’re late in arriving, as in: We’ve been sitting right here for 20 years, however now that you simply’re lastly right here, we’re gonna do that; you’ll be able to run away, however as soon as we contact you, . That information is readability concerning the distinction between performing for reforms that convey you again into the established order, typically as a minor beneficiary, and performing within the function of the dragon thinker to critique and disassemble conventional politics for liberation actions. There’s a dragon-as-freedom fighter within you. There’s a dragon inside oppressed folks. There’s a dragon inside the kids who’re born and who make it to lengthy lives, and those whose lives are shortened or who by no means make it out of the womb. There are dragons in women and girls pressured to hold the penalty of being charged with ‘homicides’ and who’re thus lowered to captives in jail. Dragon thinkers or philosophers are in all places, however not often are they in academia the place philosophy is professionalized. 

George Jackson, who’s honored or acknowledged in Black August given his writings, jail riot, and assassination on this month, appeared to have collected fairly an quantity of dragon power and depth—that assortment is sensible. The seven years in solitary confinement, the indeterminate sentence of 1 12 months to life for a conviction of driving a automotive utilized in a fuel retailer theft that netted about $70, the racist violence in jail, the homicide of his shut pal and mentor W.L. Nolen by a guard/Vietnam veteran marksman in a tower—these experiences form epistemologies in addition to nervous methods. Nolen mentored and liked George; George liked him. Dragon philosophers are born out of affection and despair. Blended, the 2 don’t essentially produce passivity; at occasions they merge to type militant company. 

I first ‘met’ George after I ran into his picture, impressed upon a six-foot poster pinned to the wall of a house of a outstanding abolitionist who carefully knew him. Shackled, wry grin, defiant regardless of imprisonment and enslavement, he was jaunty and assured… so assured, in hell, striding to fulfill confrontation with the satan. Bumping into George, you sweep up in opposition to the dragon. That may develop into a catalyst to extend one’s capability to hunt intellectualism and motion outdoors of standard politics and social decorum. The situations of wrestle are decided by the violence arrayed in opposition to the folks we love. Learn George. He continually talked concerning the folks he loves. He was a seer. He knew himself as a dragon, and so knew that he would doubtless not make it out of jail alive as a result of he was not going to adapt. He refused to be lower than a mutation (therefore, he was a revolutionary not a civil rights advocate). There are methods through which we’re damaged by predatory folks and constructions. Then, we fake that there is no such thing as a dragon accessible inside us to specific our resistance to that hurt and steady predatory acts in opposition to us. Thus we develop into the damaged individuals who refuse the power of the combat which begins with concepts and important considering. Dragons will not be anti-intellectual. They’re extremely mental. After all, we are speaking about mythological beings. However their capability is materials and actual in our consciousness and decisions. Their capability will increase as a result of they admire the powers of emotional intelligence. As you mentioned, Kalonji, if you don’t love and you’re engaged in sure acts you then’re simply doing crime. That turns into, ultimately or basically, crime in opposition to the folks, crime in opposition to nature, and crime in opposition to our personal natures or ethics. 

Dragons are feared as a result of they can’t be tamed and changed into circus creatures. I might by no means maintain a dragon chained up: they at all times handle to flee. Their flight seeks not mere revenge, however reconciliation by way of reparations and restitution. Restitution doesn’t at all times should be financial, materials, or bodily; it may very well be mental or religious… orisha and ancestors exist for a motive. Typically the one solution to peace is thru accountability that can not be delivered by way of a test/money payout or your first Black president, and Black feminine vice chairman. There are payoffs when some monetize Black struggling; nevertheless it’s low-cost, pennies on the greenback inside a tradition that foster(s/ed) genocide. 

“Lengthy stay the dragon,” as you say, Kalonji. But, most individuals cross the road once they have an inkling that there could also be a hint of dragon philosophy inside a thinker coming into a motion, classroom, or supervisor’s workplace to make calls for for justice. Dragon philosophers’ main objective is freedom. Given the state’s impunity to torture, rape, and homicide Blacks, George Jackson, as a guerilla mental, learn the atmosphere as a struggle zone. 

Reflection: Gender Wars

I’m not certain how we sew or suture in a approach that gained’t fray in order that we should sew and suture once more, however I agree that gender ‘wars’ or conflicts appear to change our political principle and capability to prepare. Typically my work on radicalism or the Captive Maternal is used in opposition to feminism. I’m not making an attempt to leverage something in opposition to feminisms within the plural (range can be present in ‘abolitionisms’). I’m making an attempt to not be boxed in by bourgeois or petit bourgeois considering. Because the heirs of households and communities cast out of chattel slavery, now we have suffered fairly a little bit of hurt over centuries. Whether or not or not one believes in epigenetics, we nonetheless have disparities in well being outcomes which might be fairly devastating regarding maternal mortality charges, delivery charges, trauma, despair, medical neglect, poverty, and violence. Our psychological well being wants are vital. The market can play on that with promissory notes. For instance, you’re advised that when you comply with a sure Black feminism you can be stronger, a extra vibrant chief, and safer in society. Or, you will be advised that when you comply with a sure sort of Black masculinism, you’ll redeem your dignity and manhood. But, there are lives formed by the non-gender, a-gender, various gender, trans, and LGBTQ+ with further and particular vulnerabilities to violence. Filicide (the homicide of youngsters), femicide (the homicide of girls), and genocide (the homicide of communities and tradition) formed this state and social order. None of those classes of vulnerability exclude ‘males,’ who embody males, boys, nonbinary youngsters, or (self)recognized trans. Trans ladies are key targets inside the horrors of femicide. But, all gender classes are unstable or nonprimary beneath state violence or genocide. (Oddly, we emphasize the gender divide or divisions whereas the youth as intellectuals and organizers are dismantling or redefining ‘gender’ as an idea.) 

Can ‘gender wars’ (which isn’t the identical factor as femicide) develop into a deflection from confronting the predatory state? Underneath fascism, it’s doubtless that gender just isn’t going to be a giant deal. Should you’re designated for genocide, your gender just isn’t going to find out when you go first or final. Angela Davis wrote “The Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves” in 1971 whereas incarcerated in jail, awaiting trial, weeks after George Jackson was assassinated. Davis says that this textual content was a feminist tract they usually weren’t fairly conscious of it as such on the time. The article is devoted to George Jackson, the dragon thinker. Dragons don’t exhibit the persona of ‘black excellence’ or elite people who operate nicely inside the state because it maintains antiblack, anti-poor animus, and imperial mandates formed on extraction—and exploitation—and captivity. 

State workers as drivers of this racially-fashioned, imperial democracy embrace the Black ‘firsts’: the primary Black male president (Barack Obama); first Black feminine Vice President (Kamala Harris); first Black Lady NYPD commissioner (Keechant Sewell); first Black lesbian mayor of Chicago (Lori Lightfoot). All have a policing operate or mandate to extinguish dragons, as stabilizers or operatives for the state’s antiblack ethos and punitive practices. The neighborhood of slaves is to be disciplined not empowered. Gender stays an essential subject—and gender/sexual violence must be addressed as a precedence—however the neighborhood is the goal for disaggregation and pacification. Gender doesn’t carry out in a captive neighborhood the identical approach it does in a non-racially stigmatized or bourgeois/prosperous neighborhood. In privileged sectors, mass poverty, deportations, homicide, trafficking, exploitation, or the legacy of historic mass rape, theft of land, and poisoned environments/waters will not be the norm. Inside a particular corral, the neighborhood of slaves or Captive Maternals are coerced beneath punitive situations formed by a racially-denigrated standing of Black/African.

Gender just isn’t a secure assemble beneath genocide. Mass murderers don’t ask if you’re a boy or lady, man or girl, earlier than they push you off a cliff; or fuel you; or drone strike you. You’re merely one thing to be eradicated. Underneath these situations, gender mutates. We must comply with these mutations and analyze precarity from exterior aggressors. Internally inside our houses, communities, and actions, we should cease violence in opposition to one another. Since we’re speaking ‘remedy,’ I recommend, as a survivor of a number of rapes, that we put rape on the checklist of motion priorities. (See here and here.) Transfer that as much as the highest 10. Perceive that males/boys are additionally raped. To know the violence in opposition to ladies—males raping females—additionally means to acknowledge males raping males and boys, and people incarcerated or in neighborhoods or in war zones.

Ladies/women can even violate however accomplish that much less ceaselessly and noticeably. I do know of teenage women that grew to become madams and pimps. At first, for me, this was an oddity as a result of I solely envisioned a male persona as controlling predatory intercourse (I acknowledge the rights of intercourse staff to not be denigrated or criminalized, I’m referencing right here to predatory violence and labor exploitation). Predatory violence has to cease on all registers—emotional, mental, political, materials, bodily, and sexual. Gender mandates should not have the capability to take care of violence on all of these ranges and with the mercenaries, militarism, and imperialism protected by and emanating from the state. Gender mandates for equality, fairness, and security do good issues. There does must be a reconstruction or restitution of what it means to have a male identification with out being perpetually shamed if one is cisgender. There must also be a reconstruction of the feminine persona in order that it isn’t at all times seen as a sufferer or incapable of company, resistance, and management. All genders betray freedom actions. Nonetheless, excessive vulnerabilities to violence exist for Blacks of all genders: male, feminine, nonbinary, trans. Feminine, nonbinary and trans folks, racially-dishonored, neurodiverse, differently-abled, and impoverished peoples are disproportionately uncared for, disparaged, and focused by police who use the label and acronym “No Humans Involved” (NHI) for these murdered.

Contemplate the case of Samuel Little, who died in 2020 from outdated age in jail after incomes the notoriety of being essentially the most prolific particular person serial killer in the USA outdoors of a proper struggle zone. This African-American man raped and murdered 93 ladies. How do you hit numbers that prime? Disproportionately and overwhelmingly, his victims had been Black ladies. That is the way you attain such a excessive depend. The state didn’t care sufficient to totally examine these murders of girls whose deaths spanned almost forty years (1970-2005). Speak about ‘ladies’s rights.’ But when the state doesn’t care concerning the murders of Black or Indigenous ladies/women then ‘ladies’s rights’ are selectively utilized and enforced.

Creator Da’Shaun Harrison informs us in Scalawag concerning the struggle in opposition to communities, households, and youngsters. Harrison and Samaria Rice, who misplaced her twelve-year-old Tamir Rice to a police homicide in Ohio, remind us how legalism fails to supply protections and justice. My previous rapes from my youth weren’t inflected by ladies. In James Baldwin’s 1965 Cambridge University debate with white-power architect William Buckley, Baldwin notes that Blacks and whites had been “built-in” within the US. Observing that his “American” lighter complexion differed from that of African college students within the Cambridge College Corridor, he referenced the enslaved “concubines” subjugated by white energy in household historical past: “My grandmother,” said Baldwin to the Cambridge gathering, “was not a rapist.”

Males have quite a lot of work to do by way of what they’ve absorbed from a violent, enslaving, imperial tradition. Females, trans, and the ungendered even have work to do. We have to handle the violence in opposition to youngsters, the feminized, feminine and male and nonbinary. Filicide, or misopedia (the hatred of youngsters, extra particularly right here the hatred of their freedom and refusals), and femicide are key challenges. We concern one another a lot due to the hurt and violence. With excessive ranges of violence, there is no such thing as a liberation motion that we will develop with integrity. We must belief one another as a result of we grew to become disciplined in wrestle and in anti-violence and using drive in opposition to violence. We’d like therapeutic interventions and the fabric situations to have secure households, enough meals, water, and shelter. A ‘gender struggle’ could be a deflection from genocide if it doesn’t handle the fabric situations of communities which might be starved from assets and safety. Genocide eliminates all genders by way of filicide and femicide. Gender battles can transfer in direction of correction, decision, and rapprochement. The bigger subject can’t be lowered to gender struggle or battle; it should embrace a deal with the guerilla intellectuals’ or dragon philosophers’ responses to genocide and ecocide that embody genders.

Solely a section of individuals might be open to the dragon or receptive to the contributions of dragon philosophers (feminine/male/nonbinary). Nonetheless, we will nonetheless demand self-discipline that assists us in refraining from denigrating or abusing youngsters, ladies, males, trans and nonbinary, and the impoverished who bear the brunt of struggle and dispossession; defend ourselves, however not abuse ourselves or others—emotionally, verbally, bodily, sexually. No matter our ache is, regardless of the miswiring or rage, we should work out a solution to take care of and deflect with out inflicting hurt if we want to retain the capability for lucent considering amid fireplace and precarity. Everybody has the appropriate to make use of drive to take care of predators given the state’s deficiencies, and its personal predatory historical past and capabilities. However the social community must be mended to take care of the state’s betrayals.

Again to Samuel Little. Little had an aged black girl, who was additionally mentally and emotionally impaired, as his confederate. He would lure or drag ladies into his automotive and select ladies who had been unhoused, deserted, addicted, or intellectually/emotionally impaired. The older black girl who traveled with him dutifully cleaned up the again automotive seat wreckage from the rapes and strangulations after he disposed of the our bodies. Testifying in courtroom, swearing on the Bible with the persona of a black church woman, she affirmed that Little was along with her on the time of the murders and incapable of the horrific violence. How do you get almost 100 victims? Goal ladies/women thought of inconsequential by the state and society, i.e., those that are Black. Little understood the racial metric set by supremacists and policing as he selected his victims. Police terminology and affinity for NHI contribute to the excessive charges of disappearances and deaths for Black/African and Indigenous.

Guerilla intellectuals develop a safety equipment unbiased of the state in an effort to ratchet down the violence. Dragons as thinker rebels who’re disciplined don’t burn down your complete city when its inhabitants designated as NHI are beneath their care. They’re strategic within the safety and prolongation of life at the same time as their very own lives are sacrificed and shortened by captivity or Cointelpro. Those that insurgent in opposition to exploitative constructions and state violence may help self-discipline our consciousness that youngsters and essentially the most weak, the incarcerated, unhoused, and impoverished throughout all genders require our care and political ethics. 

I don’t romanticize that some dragon will magically seem to ‘save’ me and my kin, or create new liberatory ideas. I will resolve what kind of thinker I’m prepared to develop into given my understanding that there is no such thing as a mental or emotional entry to political principle as dragon philosophy with out sacrifice and wrestle. The dangers that George and Jonathan Jackson took out of affection, desperation, and want to free folks and themselves mirrored their dedication to freedom as a battle; thus, they grew to become dragon philosophers. We aren’t them. A few of us, although, as thinkers retain traits that enable resistance to state violence to mutate. There are issues we do in on a regular basis residing that reduce aggression and violence—practices which dragons domesticate whereas looking for liberation from captivity, denigration, poverty, and struggle.

Pleasure James’ most up-to-date ebook, created with community-based intellectuals and podcast pedagogues, is In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; and her forthcoming ebook is New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner.