My Life in Sea Creatures: of crabs and queer clubs

 I have enjoyed reading Sabrina Imbler's 'My life in sea creatures' (2022), a kind of queer marine biology combining descriptions of the sea life and death with autobiographical reflections on race, gender and sexuality.

An account of communities of crabs gathered around isolated vents of hot water in the cold ocean depths segues into memories of Night Crush, a queer night at Re-Bar in Seattle they first visited in 2016:

'We showed up embarrassingly early —the bouncer was eating a ham sandwich by the DJ booth and had to be called to stamp us. We walked to the dance floor, a large black box crowned with a glinting disco ball, and watched the DJ spin Rihanna to the empty room, vocals glancing off the walls, from a booth decorated with a banner reading PAY ME, DO NOT FETISHIZE ME. I danced so hard all night that I didn't pee; my sweat made me as moist as a salamander. There were moments when the whole room vibrated together and I could have sworn my feet left the ground, lifted by the bodies swaying and shrieking around me'.

The club is now closed. In both the sea and the city, 'Oases here, where so few things are certain, inevitably blink on and off. But life always finds a place to begin anew, and communities in need will always find one another and invent new ways to glitter, together, in the dark'.

Swarms of sea creatures encountered at Jacob Riis beach in New York evoke comparisons with the city's annual Dyke March:  'Every June in New York, we swarm. We come from all around, on trains from other boroughs and cars from upstate and bikes over bridges that seem to quake, throttled every few minutes by subway cars careening into open air. However we come, we always recognize one another, limbs stuffed in mesh and netting and leather, teeth bared, nipples out. Our shirts, if we wear them, are emblazoned with the conditions of a world we would rather live in: without TERFS, without ICE, without imperialism...  We meet in a part of Manhattan many of us have no business in, a patch of green surrounded by glass-fronted stores and metallic offices, and once there, we grow larger, friends finding friends and water-getters winding their way through an obstacle course of bodies. We swarm because we are full of the joy of being together, full of anger at the systems that exclude or endanger us, full of hope for the possibilities of the future'

'In praise of the dancing body' - Silvia Federici

'our body is a receptacle of powers, capacities, and resistances that have been developed in a long process of coevolution with our natural environment as well as intergenerational practices that have made it a natural limit to exploitation. By the body as a “natural limit” I refer to the structure of needs and desires created in us not only by our conscious decisions or collective practices but also by millions of years of material evolution: the need for the sun, for the blue sky and the green of trees, for the smell of the woods and the oceans, the need for touching, smelling, sleeping, making love. This accumulated structure of needs and desires, that for thousands of years has been the condition of our social reproduction, has put limits on our exploitation and is something that capitalism has incessantly struggled to overcome'.

'Our struggle then must begin with the reappropriation of our body, the revaluation and rediscovery of its capacity for resistance, and expansion and celebration of its powers, individual and collective. Dance is central to this reappropriation. In essence, the act of dancing is an exploration and invention of what a body can do: of its capacities, its languages, its articulations of the strivings of our being. I have come to believe that there is a philosophy in dancing, for dance mimics the processes by which we relate to the world, connect with other bodies, transform ourselves and the space around us. From dance we learn that matter is not stupid, it is not blind, it is not mechanical but has its rhythms, its language, and it is self-activated and self-organizing. Our bodies have reasons that we need to learn, rediscover, reinvent. We need to listen to their language as the path to our health and healing, as we need to listen to the language and rhythms of the natural world as the path to the health and healing of the earth. Since the power to be affected and to effect, to be moved and to move, a capacity that is indestructible, exhausted only with death, is constitutive of the body, there is an immanent politics residing in it: the capacity to transform itself, others, and change the world'

Extracts from 'In praise of the dancing body' in Silvia Federici, Beyond the Periphery of the Skin:  Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism (PM Press, 2020). Isadora Duncan photo by Arnold Genthe.

Anti-fascists mobilise again in London against pro-Tommy flag shaggers

A respectable turn out on the 'Stop the Far Right' demonstration in central London yesterday, with around 5,000 people mobilising to oppose a similar size demo called by 'Tommy Robinson' (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) supporters. Back in October the latter managed to turn out a much bigger crowd, good to see their momentum on the streets of the capital stalling, even though internationally they are on the rise.

'Never again - remember history - fight fascism' - banner from lively black bloc

LGBT Against Racism

Ealing National Education Union banner remembers Blair Peach, anti-fascist teacher killed by the police protesting against the National Front in Southall in 1979

Good to see at least one banner from Luton there (another NEU one), the home of Mr Yaxley-Lennon.

'Borders and classes we will abolish them' - I don't know much about Turkish radical left, but good slogan!

I've seen mention of the Clash's London Calling being played at the Tommy Robinson rally, beyond irony as obviously The Clash were hardcore anti-fascists including playing for Rock Against  Racism. Kudos to Phoebe and Lilly from Brighton punk band Lambrini Girls for speaking at the  anti-racist rally. In times like these it's not enough to be personally non-racist, the far right are taking power across the world and need to be contested on the streets and wherever they show their face.

So Long Marianne

 Shall I see you tonight, sister, bathed in magic greet?

Shall we meet on the hilltop where the two roads meet?

(Marianne Faithfull, Witches' Song)