Geonational Imagination Ad Portas by A. Shahid Stover

THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#22, DEC/2016-FEB/2017

Geonational imagination at the gates: the decisive horizon of fundamental socio-historical change is shifting, thus exerting a revitalizing epistemological pressure upon the radical imagination. Geonational consciousness involves recognition of borderless imperatives towards emancipatory praxis and social justice encompassing a worldwide trajectory shared by an irreducible human unity-as-diversity; an authentic zeitgeist unconstrained by the normative gaze of Empire (1) reconfiguring sovereign legitimacy of western imperialist power through globalized capital, even while ideologically preserving the nation-state as ultimate horizon and fundamental guarantor of geohistorical transformation.

Nationalism is dead. Cleaver and Newton’s theoretical interventions make this abundantly clear. “We called ourselves Black nationalists because we thought that nationhood was the answer. Shortly after that we decided that what we really needed was revolutionary nationalism, that is, nationalism plus socialism. After analyzing conditions a little more, we found that it was impractical and even contradictory. Therefore we went to a higher level of consciousness. We saw that in order to be free we had to crush the ruling circle and therefore we had to unite with the peoples of the world. So we called ourselves Internationalists. We sought solidarity with the peoples of the world. We sought solidarity with what we thought were the nations of the world. But then what happened? We found that because everything is in a constant state of transformation, because of the development of technology, because of the development of mass media, because of the firepower of the imperialist, and because of the fact that the United States is no longer a nation but an empire, nations could not exist, for they did not have the criteria for nationhood. Their self-determination, economic determination, and cultural determination has been transformed by the imperialists and the ruling circle. They were no longer nations . . . because nations have been transformed into communities of the world.” (2)

Advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization continues consolidating state socialist and state communist variants of western imperialist power under the aegis of Empire, respecting no paradigm suggesting ultimate geohistorical reconciliation within the contours of any one particular nation-state. (3) And yet those who claim to raise the banners of opposition to Empire still find themselves immersed in an epistemological density of ideological bondage to nationalist eschatology. Archaic reactionary fealty to the vested interests of the nation reeks with a stench of socio-historical irrelevance when faced with the racist dehumanization and hyperexploitative demands of western imperialist power. “For the nation-state cannot exist once its principle of equality before the law has broken down. Without this legal equality, which originally was destined to replace the older laws and orders of the feudal society, the nation dissolves into an anarchic mass of over- and underprivileged individuals. Laws that are not equal to all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states. The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with omnipotent police.” (4) Even the imposition of austerity upon imperial mainstream populations, formerly buttressed by the spiritual deception of progressive ideological reconciliation between capitalist ‘liberal-democratic’ culture and socialist welfare state, ominously anticipates the coming insurgent tide of emancipatory imperatives originating from the socio-ontological underground of modernity.

Indeed, no matter how liberally inclusive or democratically conceptualized, nationalism, be it cultural or political, in all its plurality of articulations, ultimately strengthens the hegemony of a western imperialist continuum. Was this not Mandela’s conundrum? (5) Contemporary nationalist social justice movements earnestly striving towards emancipatory praxis, even within a cooperative or competitive international context, are unsustainable when bereft of an insurgent trajectory capable of constituting a genuinely geonational imperative against Empire. And yet, international consciousness initially exists and unfolds from within a healthy core of national consciousness, a “two-fold emerging” that conditions insurgent potentialities against Empire initiating a socio-ontological genesis towards egalitarian geonational community as genuine world culture. (6)

A madman returns upon clouds of anguish to the now global marketplace and is heard unceasingly proclaiming that nationalism is dead. “How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below?” (7) Telling laughter erupts amidst the bewildered herd and their new atheists, ever secure in dogmatic worship of cultural traditions and hallowed presuppositions grounded through blind faith in juridical belonging to nationalist mythology. And yet, such well-trodden roads of modernity lead towards an impasse of coloniality, hence positing historical progress as spiritual subservience to instrumentalist reason rooted in western imperialist power. Nationalism is dead. However, “this prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling – it has not yet reached men’s ears.” (8)

Dawn has yet to break, as heavy debate in Semitic language amongst the spiritual descendants of Moorish corsairs cedes discursive primacy to the active silence required for an approaching raid in unmediated confrontation against the Leviathan of global capital, embodied in massive vessels of Empire careening through the sea off the Afroasiatic coastline. Intensely interrogating nationalist illusions, and armed with human agency, plenty of ammunition, two AK-47’s, and an RPG; postmodern lumpenproletariat breach a geonational horizon of emancipatory praxis through inadequate piracy against western imperialist power, thus constituting an opening, a small glimpse forward, twilight beckoning towards unforeseen geonational constellations of insurrection. “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity. For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called emperor.’” (9)

Nationalism is dead. Nationalist opposition to Empire, no matter how authentic and deep seeded, is ultimately assimilated by a western imperialist continuum unless it can achieve socio-historical reconstitution through geonational insurgency. Contemporary difficulties discerning emerging geonational consciousness overwhelming ideological remnants of an old world ordered in accordance to socio-historical precepts in sovereign deference to a western imperialist continuum must be overcome. For if “nationalism is not made explicit, if it is not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley.” (10) This “blind alley” is now being circumnavigated by the skiffs of Afroasiatic Piracy with each swashbuckling venture arrogating ransom from multinational corporations on the high seas, reminding us the sun always rises and sets upon a geonational horizon.

Geonational consciousness fuels the Return of world historical momentum to struggles of human liberation that have socio-ontologically stalled and politically collapsed under the weight of globalized hegemony as violently imposed and structurally maintained by Empire. Postmodern ambiguity towards the emancipatory value of electoral political representation in correlation with juridical obligations and prerogatives of national citizenship submersed in advanced neoliberal capitalist globalization, is an appropriate antecedent towards approaching geonational imperatives. For nationalism no longer issues forth as a challenge to oppression, but rather, now bereft of sovereign legitimacy, merely enunciates its stubborn acquiescence to a subordinate role of nostalgic rhetorical significance within the context of a western imperialist continuum.

Against Empire, those who seek to confront globalized oppression have but one recourse; the explicit development of geonational consciousness from which to engage in emancipatory praxis, thus revealing any proclamation of ‘the end of history’ as serious collusion with consistent reconfigurations of western imperialist power.

Nationalism is dead. The nation-state’s capacity to fulfill its once stalwart role as sole attempted guarantor of universal human rights peaked with the Haitian revolution. (11) Human subjectivity-as-lived universal must liberate itself from ideological bondage to a nationalist paradigm that perpetually replicates the socio-historical primacy of a western imperialist continuum. Any authoritative guarantee of ‘inalienable rights’ finds imperative existential relevance only through appeal to the Divine as transcendent horizon of meaning beyond the reach of established power. (12) As such, appeals to the Divine must necessarily avoid dogmatic religious temptations of idealist mystification by their ready affirmation through emancipatory praxis against Empire. Such emancipatory praxis transcends the limitations of nationalism towards a new sovereign unity of geoterritorial legitimation, thus evoking a world ordered according to a lived egalitarian cultural unity-as-diversity of geonational human community “bringing a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men, and with it a new language and a new humanity.” The intersubjective resonance of human ‘being’ engaged in emancipatory praxis, reveals socio-ontological potentialities for the constitution of new human subjectivity-as-lived universal towards a historically new “veritable creation” of egalitarian geonational community. And yet, how long can the normative gaze continue suppressing enunciations of Revolt originating from the underground of modernity? Enunciations often heard as discouraging whispers amongst restless nonconformist youth, still sleepwalking in cultural nationalist deference to the imperial mainstream, as an explicit warning against not going too far or risk suffering a tremendous loss of privilege: geonational insurrection ad portas.

(1)Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, (Panaf Books, 1965, 1970). Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral, Edited by Africa Information Service, (Monthly Review Press, 1973). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, (Harvard University Press, 2000). Antonio Negri, Empire and Beyond, (Polity Press, 2006, 2010). Tiqqun, Introduction to Civil War, (Semiotext, 2009, 2010). Tiqqun, This is Not a Program, (Semiotext, 2009, 2011). Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, (Princeton University Press, 2000). Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, (Duke University Press, 2011). Coloniality At Large, Edited by Mabel Morana, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jauregui, (Duke University Press, 2008).

(2)Huey P. Newton, To Die For the People, (City Lights Books, 1972, 2009) pp.30-2. Emphasis in the original.

(3)“Various countries, which we thought were our friends and allies to the end, are now making a separate peace with our sworn enemy, the fascist imperialist U.S. government and ruling class. The coming into view of the dialogue and negotiations between the United States government and the government of the Peoples Republic of China should be the final signal necessary for each and every one of us to sit up and take notice. . . . They are quickly resolving contradictions between capitalism and socialism, between Christians and Jews, between Catholics and Protestants. Their continued support for the racist colonialism of Portugal in Africa, their stepped up aid and support of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, and added to this is our own experience, bloody and brutal, which clearly indicates that the long-range plan of the fascists for Afro-Americans has nothing to do with any peace, harmony and brotherhood.” Eldridge Cleaver, “Towards a People’s Army”, Target Zero, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1971, 2006) p.222.

(4)Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Harcourt Brace, 1948, 1979) p.290.

(5)Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile & Aparteid, (South End Press, 2008) pp.104-112.

(6)Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (Grove Press, 1961, 1963) p.248.

(7)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, (Barnes & Noble, 1882, 2008) p.103.

(8)Nietzsche, p.104.

(9)St. Augustine, City of God, (Penguin Books, 1972, 1984) p.139.

(10)Frantz Fanon, p.204

(11)Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

(12)“In other words, in the new secular and emancipated society, men were no longer sure of these social and human rights which until then had been outside the political order and guaranteed not by government and constitution, but by social, spiritual, and religious forces.” Arendt, p.291.

(13)Frantz Fanon, p.36.