Turn On, Tune In, Rise Up • Commune

an article on acid communism.

here is a liveblog of me reading this article.

He views his work as a dance party organizer as part of his political pursuits.

i love this. lol.

Toward this end, Gilbert and Fisher both explored the viability of incorporating old-school “consciousness-raising” events in a psychedelic framework. First developed by socialist feminists in the 1970s, consciousness-raising encourages participants to share stories about struggles normally conceived as private and shameful. The idea is that when people tune in to others’ narratives of hardship — which may include accounts of mental illness, social isolation and poverty — such problems are revealed as not an exception, but the norm. In his essay “No Romance Without Finance,” Fisher writes that “as soon as two or more people gather together, they can start to collectivise the stress that capitalism ordinarily privatizes. Personal shame becomes dissolved as its structural causes are collectively identified.” When community is built around shared struggle, feelings of alienation are modulated by feelings of solidarity.

wait, this is extremely important. i first heard people talk explicitly about this during the combahee river collective panel that i keep talking about. i am sure those very people are among the socialist feminists that this author is referring to. they talked about how they came together and realized that their individual experiences as black queer women were not isolated, individual experiences, but a result of interlocking systems of oppression.

The current popularity of free-spirited music festivals might be framed as a reaction to neoliberal malaise.

wait lol this is awesome.

Experimental spaces like Burning Man will end up being co-opted by capitalism if there isn’t some wider political movement to sustain them, inspire them, and inform them about how to do things differently.

lol

When I pressed Jeremy Gilbert on this, he responded that contemporary hippies who embrace libertarianism fail to grasp the political history of their subculture.

HAHAHA

i feel seen by this article. i have seen people on acid go straight to libertarianism. i have seen burners turn into communists and pretend that they hate burners. i have seen all kinds of things.

i have seen dance parties where people (who are and aren’t on drugs) have a great time and make weird magic together. helping lead dance parties is actually a big part of my identity. i offer proof not from the acid communism article but one of these other articles i just linked about myself:

Judy Tuan, 32, wore a cheerleader’s uniform and shook a pair of red pompoms. “Usually I do red ribbons, but I thought I’d do something different,” she said. “People light up when you hand them a prop. It gets them into it.” She broke off, running to embrace a man in a zebra-print onesie.

HAHAHAHAHHAHA

So I believe Combahee came a bit later in the game (1974) and didn’t do consciousness raising groups (formally, as opposed to having conversations which achieved the same thing) so much as they took the next steps in analyzing synthesizing learnings. I think the timing the article claims - 1970s - is off, because The Tyranny of Structurelessness was written ~1971, and the purpose of that article is claiming that feminist consciousness-raising groups have outlived their usefulness. According to Wikipedia, the height was 1973 (Jo Freeman definitely got a few things wrong lol), but they started in 1967 and were very widespread by 1971. Hey this actually sounds like a combination of workers inquiry, house meetings, and circles.

I am excited to actually read this piece.

This is amazing.

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it was the zebra’s birthday, we’d had a wonderful time dancing, and i saw he was leaving right then so i had to run and give him a hug! i guess it left the journalist a little miffed? i am a rude tuna D: lol

I think it’s really funny. I think that’s probably why they included it. And all the bits about you are very you hahaha.