Putting a much bigger frame around "Cancel Culture" & identity politics: Bayo Akomolafe and Ronan Harrington

We haven’t dived into questions of identity politics and “cancel culture” on the Daily Alternative - our brief is mostly to try to bring you creative, unifying expressions of community power - but we are delighted to find the above discussion, which addresses these questions directly (but in a massive new frame).

It’s from the spiritual politics network Alter Ego, founded by Ronan Harrington, who is here talking to the compelling Nigerian public intellectual and psychologist Bayo Akomolafe. Ronan’s context is below:

In the midst of Black Lives Matter, there is both a renewed urgency to protect marginalised groups and a simultaneous backlash against it. Is this because of ignorance or is there a valid concern?

Friendly critics draw a distinction between the goals and methods of social justice activism. While the intentions are good, the dominant display of social justice activism is contributing to a political culture that strips complex issues of nuanced discussion.

There are no two sides to the debate, not even multiple perspectives on a complex issue, but instead a subtle but powerful moral pressure to conform to the prevailing social justice orthodoxy, for fear of being labelled racist or oppressive. Think moral outrage, cancel culture, middle-class women being derogatorily referred to as Karens, or the dilemma for people who resonate with JK Rowling’s opinions on biological sex, but in no way want to be transphobic.

Even if activists are completely right on these issues, this isn’t a good strategy to get the rest of the world on board. We are in a paradoxical landscape where unacknowledged trauma shapes all sides, and the dominated become the dominators, balkanising into smaller tribes that speak largely to their in-group. This highly polarising activism plays into the hands of the far right who capitalise on an increasing allergy to ‘woke’ activism. It’s Trump’s trump card in the 2020 US presidential election.

Our intuition is that these polarising tendencies have psychological roots that need to be understood and integrated. The promise is a mature form of activism that can vigorously stand with those who are oppressed, whilst finding a language and form that inspires the majority to stand with us. Not from a place of fear or silent coercion, but empathy and integrity.

Yet what’s fascinating about the actual discussion is the way that Bayo constantly pulls this discussion onto a different, wider and stranger ground.

Blending his own Yoruba background with some unorthodox European-philosophical traditions (some of which we’ve cited here in A/UK - the quantum philosophy of Karen Barad and Karen O’Brien, Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory), Bayo asks everyone to stop even engaging with the great oppressive modern categories of race and power. Can we find novel, “monstrous” spaces in which to build real “supplements” (alternatives indeed) to our current political-economic structures.

If you really want to dig into Bayo’s intellectual background, this paper from Ephemera (co-authored with Alnoor Ladha) is a heavy enough dose. But there’s a metaphoric richness to their discussion which an activist, thoughtful person should enjoy—even if the references aren’t immediately obvious.

As a member of the Psychedlic Society, one of the co-hosts, summed it up:

Ronan set up this conversation, assuming it would be about the limits of identity politics and how to move forward. But instead he and Bayo spent 90 minutes wandering around in Bayo's completely different epistemological frame, deconstructing the human and the animal, giving up control and predictability, inviting us to disintegrate and spill into each other. The result was a kaleidoscopic transformation of the questions into an explosive disruption of familiar patterns of thought.