We Grant Authoritarians Power by Fearing Authorship
"It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little" (Diogenes)
Anarcho-transcreation, my 1st book, is about how to get things done when you are not or have no desire to be a God or a Godlike man. The sources in it are from the context of publishing a translation project, which is my field of practice, but the principles can be applied to any project where you need (or want) more than just yourself to accomplish.
No human is invincible – plenty lies outside our control, and there is no shield against reproach. But in the quest for invincibility, one of two tools are usually employed – forceful/coercive control of others, or self-exemption of responsibility and agency.
The first, on exerting control, we are well familiar with in global political discourse, and it orbits perceptions of Authority, Authoritarianism, and Hierarchy. Attempting to become invincible through the use of force is the basis for the creation of nation-states and their security forces.
The second interests me more because it's seldom acknowledged. It's a place where we dodge accountability by delegating responsibility to others. The fear of defeat, failure, or scrutiny is not only a bigger obstacle to self-governance than 'the Authorities', it's also the method through which we grant authoritarian forces their power. As such, none of our creations are vincible, because none of these creations are really ours.
The fear of self-governance is what leads some of us to think voting for representatives is the most important form of political engagement, with occasional complaints when we inevitably and repeatedly catch them being incompetent. We see politicians fail, it frustrates us, and yet, we may feel safe not having to take on their responsibilities ourselves and failing at it as well.
In my experience as an editor, it has been easy to identify when a writer is afraid of making their own statement, hiding behind citations after citations of other writers, not even assuming authorship over their curation. This is the difference between saying "This is my thesis statement, and these are the sources I use to sustain this statement", versus, "This thesis is about what these thinkers have stated".
When it comes to governance (over a community, organization or large project), doing it ourselves (self-governance) means assuming responsibilities and making decisions with others, as opposed to delegating the responsibility of a decision to an authority figure. This doesn't mean becoming an Authority ourselves, but assuming the responsibility for certain decisions and actions in specific projects. I call that Authoring.
In aspiring Anarchist social structures, there is an ideological aversion to Authority, but this doesn't mean hierarchical dynamics don't insidiously form. People who desire power and people who fear having it perhaps bond easily, but conflict may also arise here. This is because people who fear self-governance don't necessarily fear criticizing those actively governing. There are power struggles between people who want to govern all, and endless loops where nothing happens among those who fear assuming responsibilities. All configurations are prone to disarray.
Authoring is an Anarchist practice, because it requires and is an exercise in self-governance.
When I wrote, "if you need help with your project, it is no longer just yours" I was thinking about literal authorship of a book, while collaborating with designers, printers and all other facets of a publication. In capitalism, needing help with a project doesn't mean sharing authorship for the simple fact that money can buy the fruits of one's labor; as such, whatever I buy, becomes mine. Man accumulating wealth is man becoming godlike, and wanting little.
It is yet to be seen where the capitalist system works. In the context of Anarchist print publications, negotiating Authorship is a continuous practice that is inevitably crossed by the issue of money. Usually, the one with the money is the one with the Authority. But there are numerous opportunities to encourage the exercise of self-governance in large projects with limited budgets. But as I've said before in the book, there are no guarantees. There is no pathway established by an anarchist elder to whom we delegate the responsibility of deciding what needs to be done, to whom we delegate the responsibility of defining what is the 'correct' thing to do. The exercise of self-governance takes individual, perhaps Herculean, courage.
The courage it takes to self-govern is not about taking up armed revolution, or any other method of force. I am of the belief that if revolutionary groups had full support of the populace, the Authoritative Institutions they seek to undermine could simply be made obsolete. And that if they don't have full support of the populace, and choose to take over by force, it's just a matter of time before they also get taken over.
A revolution of narrative, to me, is a way to achieve long-lasting mutual consent among a populace, and this requires a populace to be politically literate in self-governance. Some say this is impossible to achieve, but considering the outrageous amount of wealth, resources and technologies Western powers have accumulated over the last century or so, it seems to me that this impossibility lies in a lack of disposition rather than a lack of possibilities.
If, at this point in the text, you are still waiting to be told what these possibilities are and how to act on them, self-governance is still unclear to you as a concept.
One of the most common criticisms of Anarchism as an ideology is that it doesn't lay out clearly what an anarchist society will look like – What institutions will do what, and run by whom, how... Some anarchists have dabbled in that, which only further frustrates people who want for guidelines. This is due to one simple reason: self-governance requires no intervention from an external authority figure. In other words, if you need to be told what to write, you're not the author.
To be clear, we are not discussing creativity. Plenty of creative people have difficulty authoring projects, or refraining from delegating responsibility to authority figures. We are talking about a state of mind where we choose to seek possibilities (or as Avi KBH puts it, post-Herculean possibilities). Usually, this comes with witnessing outrageous events led by Authoritarian forces; we are motivated to think about alternatives, resistance strategies. Ideally, horror and disaster should not be a necessity in this process, but the situation is even more dire. Constant tragedy has not been enough of a motivator. So, what will be enough?
Mirna Wabi-Sabi
Mirna is a Brazilian writer, site editor at Gods and Radicals and founder of Plataforma9. She is the author of the book Anarcho-transcreation and producer of several other titles under the P9 press.