[05 November 2023]: "Primitive Hypertext" — war profiteering; ever-evolving gradient of courage; vestigiality; gloss; someday we'll all be free
war profiteering; ever-evolving gradient of courage; vestigiality; gloss; someday we'll all be free
Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.
This is part of the newsletter's “Primitive Hypertext” (Octavia Estelle Butler) strand.
An annotated list of five things I’ve read/seen/heard and want to share. [weekly: every Sunday] Read more about the changes in the newsletter rhythm here.
Hiya!
I have been more outside than usual this past week. My community has been a salve for these times. Every week I send these out, I am hustling to the finish line and sometimes I say, I can miss a week. However, I cannot. It has been a relief to have at least one moment of consistency each week — a time to share the bits of learning from the week. Don’t forget: will you help me find new words? my sentences are growing lonely and desire the company of others.
After October 7th, I began checking stocks every day because I predicted that with war comes profiteering. I feel it is important to say this: subjugation, occupation, and war cannot be incentivized. Currently, there is too much money to be made on arming the conflict, transporting fighters, transporting supplies, feeding fighters, housing fighters, consulting about the conflict, documenting the conflict, accessorizing the conflict, deploying new surveillance systems, developing security systems for computer and phone communication, think tanking about the conflict, healing people from the conflict, data analyzing the conflict, and on and on.
That this definition imagines a reasonable profit from warfare is to be expected but still disheartening. I consider all the “invisible” beneficiaries when I think about war. We must be reminded that war is big business. I want to offer that sometimes, the support of occupation and war is not solely rooted in a hatred of people but rooted in the love for the power and profit that can be gained from providing infrastructural and defense support to those who have been misled to hate those people.
Tweet from Ashon Crawley (November 5, 2023)
I have been thinking about different registers of courage — that courage exists not as a binary but as an ever-evolving gradient that is contextualized by the intersection of one’s individual circumstances and structural vulnerabilities. Just as much as I have been reading the news, I have also been paying a lot of attention to the universalization of what courage looks like. It is a reminder that under capitalism, telling the truth can literally bankrupt you. It has always been my belief that we are expected to work so much and rely on an exploitative network of convenience and automation services to make being human under late capitalism feel a tiny bit more tolerable. A busy, overworked, overstimulated, and overextended person is a more pliable person. When how you (and maybe several dependents) eat and where you live are tethered to what you choose to be silent about, it is not as simple as “just speak up.” After dinner on Friday night, I came home and passed out. During the short Uber ride home, I was reminded of Audre Lorde's reminder that “your silence will not protect you.” I could not stop thinking about “protection.” Courage requires supportive mutual care networks. As we move through this newest iteration of “McCarthyite Backlash,” it is important to consider what that means for building sustainable networks where folks who are losing jobs have the financial and socio-emotional support necessary to carry on. It is not enough to lambast someone for not performing a certain kind of courage if you also are not prepared to provide them support as they weather the backlash for said courage. We are far beyond the stage of performing solidarity; we need to actually apply the theories many of us love to talk about. Courage requires community.
I really love this graphic below from Slow Factory, which reminds us that courage exists in many forms. My therapist has reminded me that in moments of crisis, we must lean into the work that we can sustain, not the work that others expect us to do. This doesn’t mean indifference; rather, it is to say that all of us have a place in this work and that the most powerful thing we might be able to do is to find a path through our existing work to speak up. I can only pray that we all find a channel to speak.
Been thinking a lot about dirty data, specifically in the ways Hito Steyerl discussed in A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis-)Recognition. I wonder how vestigiality is similar to dirty data — an evolutionary set of dirty data. And can vestigiality apply to modes of relationality or behavior?
Someday We'll All Be Free, Donny Hathaway (1973)
Thank you for reading,
Kameelah 👽
Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this wee little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at $70 USD :)
How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL