Rob: Like Howard Zinn has made a good start.
MS: Exactly, exactly like Howard Zinn and the different peoples' histories that are being done. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz just did an indigenous people's history in the United States, yeah exactly.
Rob: Alright and I think of it as bottom up history.
MS: Yeah Zinn talked about from below, for sure.
Rob: Alright, another word that you use is protagonist.
MS: Yes, I like that one too because it describes who we are and what we're doing. It's something that's borrowed from the Argentines but then other people kind of use it to being an actor in your life, being a protagonist, you are the subject now of your own history, not kind of the footnote in somebody else's if mentioned at all. So we're the ones making our own history. So kind of against representation and for self-organization and being that person and being able to do it.
Rob: And in the book you describe in Venezuela the 1999 revision of their constitution described and characterized participatory and protagonistic democracy versus liberal and representative form. What's the difference?
MS: It's being very specific about not just participation in the representative sense, but in the protagonistic sense that each person plays an active role so think of assemblies and things like that where you're all actively participating and have a role in all of the decision making.
Rob: Okay. And you say in the book, you talk about political versus protagonist and you say collective protaganism leads to new ways of speaking, and you use the words nosotros, nuestor, yo or, we/us/our and I which is about collective ownership.
MS: In collective ways of thinking, yeah different ways of thinking and being, for sure.
Rob: And you just mentioned that earlier, the idea of we. I mean, it's -- when I meditate I try to do a bottom up meditation, I go from I, me to you to we to all and that's the -- I haven't had Spanish since a long time ago in college, but that's kind of the sequence of the different tenses in Spanish.
MS: Well and going that way in how we're thinking and how one would think about it, it's not just we like you and I sitting here together, but thinking differently about that relationship, both the individual and then the collective and a changing collective and one where each can have their autonomy and relate to one another in an equal way, and create something different together, but yet be unique. I mean that's something where borrowing the Zapatistas again, they say a world in which many worlds fit, and I think that's part of this concept of this different way of thinking about we and all and us and that each of these little pieces that creates a whole, but it is that whole that is important.
Rob: Okay, so I wanted to quote another section from your book, a brief excerpt. You say -- actually I already read it. I shifted things around; it was about the affective politics. So let's move on to Autogestion. Am I saying that right?
MS: Well in Spanish you would say autogestion.
Rob: Autogestion, okay.
MS: Estion, so it's - but it's what you were saying, the self-organization and self-administration. And that's very much related to this idea of recuperation, kind of taking back, but self-organizing it, that we do it ourselves not looking to other people to do things for us, but we self-organize it so it's -- and there's a very strong history all over the world of self-organization and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces since it's bringing back that history but it's also the way people are organizing right now in the movements around the world it's about self-organization and self-administration.
MS: Exactly, exactly like Howard Zinn and the different peoples' histories that are being done. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz just did an indigenous people's history in the United States, yeah exactly.
Rob: Alright and I think of it as bottom up history.
MS: Yeah Zinn talked about from below, for sure.
MS: Yes, I like that one too because it describes who we are and what we're doing. It's something that's borrowed from the Argentines but then other people kind of use it to being an actor in your life, being a protagonist, you are the subject now of your own history, not kind of the footnote in somebody else's if mentioned at all. So we're the ones making our own history. So kind of against representation and for self-organization and being that person and being able to do it.
Rob: And in the book you describe in Venezuela the 1999 revision of their constitution described and characterized participatory and protagonistic democracy versus liberal and representative form. What's the difference?
MS: It's being very specific about not just participation in the representative sense, but in the protagonistic sense that each person plays an active role so think of assemblies and things like that where you're all actively participating and have a role in all of the decision making.
Rob: Okay. And you say in the book, you talk about political versus protagonist and you say collective protaganism leads to new ways of speaking, and you use the words nosotros, nuestor, yo or, we/us/our and I which is about collective ownership.
MS: In collective ways of thinking, yeah different ways of thinking and being, for sure.
Rob: And you just mentioned that earlier, the idea of we. I mean, it's -- when I meditate I try to do a bottom up meditation, I go from I, me to you to we to all and that's the -- I haven't had Spanish since a long time ago in college, but that's kind of the sequence of the different tenses in Spanish.
MS: Well and going that way in how we're thinking and how one would think about it, it's not just we like you and I sitting here together, but thinking differently about that relationship, both the individual and then the collective and a changing collective and one where each can have their autonomy and relate to one another in an equal way, and create something different together, but yet be unique. I mean that's something where borrowing the Zapatistas again, they say a world in which many worlds fit, and I think that's part of this concept of this different way of thinking about we and all and us and that each of these little pieces that creates a whole, but it is that whole that is important.
Rob: Okay, so I wanted to quote another section from your book, a brief excerpt. You say -- actually I already read it. I shifted things around; it was about the affective politics. So let's move on to Autogestion. Am I saying that right?
MS: Well in Spanish you would say autogestion.
Rob: Autogestion, okay.
MS: Estion, so it's - but it's what you were saying, the self-organization and self-administration. And that's very much related to this idea of recuperation, kind of taking back, but self-organizing it, that we do it ourselves not looking to other people to do things for us, but we self-organize it so it's -- and there's a very strong history all over the world of self-organization and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces since it's bringing back that history but it's also the way people are organizing right now in the movements around the world it's about self-organization and self-administration.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
