The Emancipatory Way
by the Editor
“Organizational communication scholar Dennis Mumby has theorized that resistance exists on a continuum ranging from emancipatory to hegemonic. Emancipatory resistance tends to examine and describe the oppression in a society and attempts to draw attention to that oppression. It is this kind of resistance that does the most toward creating an alternate ideology in a society, as it exposes the systems of control to the general public and allows it to respond. Hegemonic resistance, on the other hand, is resistance that actually reinforces the dominant system in a society by showing that the control is necessary.”
— "A Fan Dissects Black Metal"
When EAP invited a whole bunch of young writers to join in the EAP conversation about who we are, what we’re doing here, and what we should be doing here, we knew we were in for some exciting discussion.
So it is. Max Vernon, both in his interview with Linda Sandoval and his song lyrics , Joanna Cuevas talking with Stephanie Sides , Sean Watkin on being young and gay in Liverpool, Vitomir Marjanovic sending poetry from Serbia, Olivia Sandoval shopping for the past in New York…even eight year old Brendan Greenberg ’s account of a surreal night with the sitter…all sent the conversation in a different direction.
Then there’s Chloe Hansen’s A Fan Dissects Black Metal . In her piece, Chloe weighed in with the difference between a revolution of building new structures, and one of just destroying the old. Chloe calls the first “emancipatory resistance” and the second “hegemonic.”
It’s that first one EAP’s been looking for. The Emancipatory Way.
Building new structures is, of course, more boring than the excitement of destroying old ones. It’s a slow process, for one thing. First you have to find out what’s needed…no, back up…before you can find out what’s needed, you have to know who you are. Are you a Victim? Or are you an Authentic Actor? Then when you begin to know who you are — and that’s a lifelong process, figuring that one out — you can figure out your real needs. Then you have to set to joining with others to build those structures that provide for those real needs.
Like I said, it’s slow. It’s slower, less glamorous, much harder work than endlessly clamoring that Things Are Shit. The latter’s pretty flashy…and gets a lot of publicity…and has a known shelf life of…well, of as long as the Oppressive Structure being protested remains. What happens if you do spend all your time wailing that Imperialism is murderous? Well, of course it is. But what happens if it magically disappears? If you haven’t been working on an alternative, what the hell happens then?
Fortunately for the secret glamour hogs and the permanent boy rebels of the Left, that’s not going to happen anytime soon, not at this rate. But for the rest of us, faced as we are everyday with the serious questions of how to live and what to build and where to put our energies, we have to start from somewhere else. We have to look at ourselves for the roots of the things destroying our culture, because they’re in us, too, we are the culture, and until we know that, any complaining we do is about as effective as the tired whining of spoiled children.
Then we have to take a deep breath and build something better. Ignore the bastards determined to do worse, don’t bother fighting them except when they try to stop us, and keep going.
Keep going to emancipate. To create. Not to entangle ourselves more in hierarchy and complaint and self-satisfaction that we’re better than they are. Not to destroy. And to keep going no matter how slow the progress, or how hard, or even how impossible it seems.
That’s what EAP’s meant to be about: struggling, sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully, sometimes blindly, but always struggling together to build something new. And not to waste our energies on anything else.
So welcome, welcome, welcome younger writers to EAP. We need your energy.
And thanks.