Participated in the SKP triennial party assembly in Kotka two weeks ago. The meeting was important because the party manifesto has been rewritten (and was approved by the assembly). In meetings organized by the Helsinki district organization during the spring I criticized early drafts for their tone regarding international relations and EU matters. The manifesto was built on an anti-globalization agenda and utilized binary rhetorics, which reflected mindsets of the late 1990s. In my opinion these tools didn’t offer a route forward. For example for establishing EU-wide collaborations between leftists (and others) working multilaterally for peace etc. Some changes regarding this were made, which I’m happy about. But there is more work to be done.
Most importantly for me, I successfully criticized the general humanistic agenda of the previous manifesto. The past manifesto presented general humanistic values as the end goal of communist progress. In my critique I emphasized that the humanistic values which the party is striving for were idealistic norms, drafted by a class of privileged folk with very utilitarian views of nature and others. I think Marx is a great companion for environmentalist thinking but their premises build on a distinction of human intellect from other natural processes. The way their thinking was used in the previous manifesto, portrayed humans surviving in nature but not necessarily collaborating with the intellects of materials and animals.
To better engage with current ecological development (which I see as a social crisis or a lack of imagination) I attempted to introduce a posthumanist undertone to the text. I think it would for example, enable the party to establish solidarian ties with kin of the other kind. To my delight some steps towards removing the generalist humanistic agenda were made. For now these changes remain rhetoric and I will need to introduce posthumanist solidarity work for the party to set a trajectory for the next three years. Eventually SKP could incorporate posthumanist and de-colonial critique to its agenda.
Thanks to the involvement of the Kommunistinuoret youth organization, the party is well aligned with the Extinction Rebellion movement and strong statements on environmental matters were published by the assembly. Unfortunately these statements hinge on an anthropocenic critique of current affairs. Posthumanist and decolonial (necropolitical) approaches could help to ground this analysis to other rationalities (rationalities which have been suppressed and which are emerging), which are not idealized like the western scientific mythos that the concept of the anthropocene manifests.
It seems I’m still exploring the potentiality of deep time marxism.
My interest in natural springs and the resources they afford, is leading me towards working with the politics of geology. But not from the perspective of human intent. I’d like to investigate how geology informs and guides political agencies. Some terrains afford the emergence of particular thought, which (if we escape universalism and past humanistic ideals) is hyper-local. A particular form of socialism might emerge from a particular landscape.
I submerged the clay cup made from Kurängen spring clay to the Kurängen spring and it made an interesting high pitch squeal, a song of sorts. It appears to me as a non-waste-object. The only waste in that object is my engagement with its materials. I am the waste in the object. It is one of the most energy dense art-objects I’ve been involved with. Making it has required three car trips, heated storage facilities, internet access (for learning to build a kiln etc.) and the firing was very unefficient. The process of firing the clay felt like a celebration of surplus energy.
Human labor is a waste, materials remain what they are. #ॐ #☭