Week 2 - Who do we want to be?
With a lot of time to think - or avoid thinking - I have turned inwards...
When I was 16, the Australian Democrats asked if I would be interested in running for parliament. The once proud party had fallen on hard times and were looking for fresh blood… but there were two problems. One: it turns out you have to be old enough to vote in order to be able to stand for parliament, and I was a couple of years shy of that date. Two: I didn’t know if what I believed in, politically, matched up with the values and vision of the Democrats.
I’ve found it curious that as someone so interested in justice, the exercise of power and liberation, that I have so consistently eschewed any notion of engaging in party politics throughout my life. It always seems counter-intuitive when considered at a distance. Surely someone interested in change would find value in getting to the heart of where the action is, keen to be part of shaping the laws that govern a nation, relish the ability to influence the institutions and structures that have been so unequal for so long. And yet, it has always seemed unappealing.
There was always a reason not to get involved; whether because the people who I knew in university who dabbled in party politics seemed to be singularly power-hungry and to operate with nary a moral compass in sight, or because it seemed that even the most well-intentioned folks were corrupted by the system and that the likelihood of being able to stay true to one’s values was almost nil.
But is that it?
I’m still not sure. What I do know is I spend quite a lot of time looking at people who are elected into positions of power and I think… is this really the best this country can do? Is this really who we are expected to follow? I could do a better job!
But still, I find reluctance holding me back…
…and it’s this reluctance that I have gently been interrogating.
Let me change gears here slightly. Do you know what vision of the world you are interested in seeing come to fruition?
I could easily tell you that my politics fits quite neatly into the realm of anti-imperalism, with the following wiki-entry doing a decent job of defining the term:
People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders.
For me, anti-imperalism covers my interest in racial and gender justice, reversal (or accountability) for historical wrongs, solidarity among oppressed groups, challenging of geo-political norms (like nation states and borders and the like), and so on. It encompasses quite neatly, the position I have on the systems that I believe are ultimately corrupt in their foundations.
However.
One cannot be satisfied by being anti-something alone. Certainly, I am not. I can be anti-imperalist, yes. But what does that mean for the society I do want to see? Once we have won, how would we survive victory, so to speak?
I think this is something that I am still teasing out. It is also likely why I have never signed up to a political party, despite being interested and involved in politics in some form or another for the better part of two decades. I have yet to be sold a vision that I can get behind, in part as I have not wholly done the work for myself on what vision - what political theory, what system of governance - I truly and genuinely believe in. I know elements, for sure, much of it informed by my faith system and the ideals of justice that are inherent to the Quranic teachings. I can also easily state that I believe in a politic of care, a politic that encourages growth and creativity, but ensures dignity for all. I believe…
/Sigh/. Even as I write these sentences, I feel they are… cliche, meaningless. Devolved from a grounded reality. Is it the engineer in me, or someone who has spent too much of her life in societies where they say they care about one thing but in reality, are deeply hypocritical? Perhaps what I am also desperate for is integrity, courage, backbone, not only in the individual, but in the collective. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
I am clearly still searching. I feel like I am getting closer to what is true for me, although a small voice in the back of my head wonders if I am missing something even bigger. Perhaps there is no final answer at all. Perhaps in searching for the ‘best’ vision, the ‘one’ way to do things, I am blinded to the importance of the constant, evolving search itself. Indeed, perhaps we may never achieve any ideal, but the process of working towards one allows us to become our highest selves…
What do you think?
What I am reading this week: I finished Crime and Punishment, yay! Next on the list is The Vanishing Half. I also re-read this fab medium post on why diversity branding can hurt diversity, including some helpful stats if you’re having the convo at work!
What I am listening to this week: I’ve been trying to work on my French, so have been bingeing on the French tunes. This gyal is my fav - Marwa Loud is all poppy, sassy vibes.
What I am watching this week: I am so excited for Call My Agent Season 4 dropping next week. In the meantime, I have kept myself occupied by watching Les Miserables, and it’s not the one you are thinking of (more a modern day La Haine).
Thanks for subscribing and reading this week’s edition of Diasporan Diaries. Please, comment with thoughts, questions, critiques…and share if it resonated.
Much love, strength and safety to you all.
Best,
Yassmin
A great read, thank you. In the same way I am also looking for some political identity to belong to but, despite my best efforts, I don't feel very inspired by anything on offer. I've voted Green and voted Labour and even done some leafleting, but am yet to get behind a vision, and on reading this I realise that you've nailed it - the vision that I imagined would speak to me sounds so totally cliche and all talk and no trouser - it is completely detached from any recognisable, reachable reality and I have heard it all before, a hundred times, without seeing any real movement towards it.
I wonder sometimes about how my identity shapes this response. As a white, middle class, educated, liberal woman I steer clear of the Right, but I wonder if the Tories suddenly came up with an amazing set of policies that genuinely seemed like they might address inequity in the UK (ha ha!), if I could bring myself to vote for them. Probably not. But at the same time, I can't help but be impressed by their capacity to appeal to people and connect with individual's and leverage parts of people's identities that the Left just can't seem to engage. Maybe one of the issues with the left is that it is necessarily universalist in its approach - it rejects individualism in favour of community but, in the West particularly, we are socialised by this neoliberal capitalist system to see ourselves and to operate primarily as individuals. Perhaps its hard for the left to mobilise people's lefty vision at a manageable, individual level, so we get stuck with these huge, sweeping, unattainable ideas?
I also envy the Conservative capacity to leverage nationalistic sentiment. Obviously, nationalism is not comfortably compatible with an anti-imperialist option but I think we might need an alternative national narrative for the left to have a chance to connect with a wider audience. I saw you speak at the Empowering Employment seminar yesterday (really interesting but, just as you said, I don't really think more advice and more mentoring is really going to blow it out of the water) and I wondered if we could really do with a national conversation about what it means to be British/English. The British identity is still awkwardly tied to our horrific imperial past and despite a brief flirtation with Cool Britannia (sad times) we've never successfully reinvented ourselves - not that we should sweep our past under the carpet, but it might help us to navigate away from this misplaced nostalgia for the 'Good Old Days' and this seemingly unstoppable drive into an insular, bigoted Right wing return to the past. We've gone and Brexited now and I think we need to build a vision of a future Britain that we can be proud of, to help us to steer away from the right because without a solid Plan B we've got nothing to aim for. How can we build a workable challenge to the outdated British identity? One that includes Muslim women at the top as standard, one that welcomes the gift of diversity, thrives on openness and still manages to tickle the tastebuds of the dyed in the wool nationalists? Could we make a lefty vision more tailored to our identity, if we could find some elements of Britishness that weren't too archaic and awful? Or is that just a stupid idea?
Very thought-provoking. What IS the good society I want to exist? I know all too well and in great detail what it ISNT but what it is...that's a harder one. I want so many things, and no philosophy I've found yet has answered all the asks I have. For the UK, I want a government that spends money on public services, funded as much as possible by taxation, that promotes equality, that provides free healthcare and education and childcare. But so many things I want are "a governmnt that DOESNT or ISNT." A government that doesn't bomb other countries willy nilly,or arm the police, or glorify the army; a government that isn't racist or transphobic or anti immigrant....a government that doesn't constantly tack to the right to appease some mythical voter. A government that thinks spending money is GOOD, actually, and there is such a thing as society and the common good. So socialism is the closest fit for me.