Guerrilla History - A Decolonial Feminism w/ Françoise Vergès

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

In this special crossover episode of Guerrilla History with The Red Menace Podcast, we bring on Dr. Françoise Vergès to talk about her new book A Decolonial Feminism.  An incredible conversation with a tremendous guest, you're definitely going to want to pick up this short but powerful work and form reading groups with it! Françoise Vergès is an activist, public educator, and is the author of many books including Resolutely Black: Conversations with Aime Cesaire (Polity, 2019), The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism and Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage (Duke University Press, 2020, 1999).  Her newest book, A Decolonial Feminism, is available from Pluto Press (https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341125/a-decolonial-feminism/). You can find The Red Menace Podcast wherever you get your pods, or directly at https://redmenace.libsyn.com/.  You can follow the show on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod. Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to a guerrilla history, and the Red Menace crossover episode, I'm joined, I'm Henry Huckimacky, one of the co-hosts of

Gorilla History, and I'm joined by the wonderful Alison Escalante of the Red Menace podcast. Now, we're sister podcasts affiliated with the Revolutionary Left radio kind of network of shows. And so since this is a crossover episode, we'll briefly introduce ourselves just so that listeners of the Red Menace who haven't listened to Gorilla History know a bit about me and people that listen to guerrilla history that don't listen to the Red Menace, but should, I might add, know a little bit about Allison. So I'm Henry Huckimacki. I'm an immunobiology graduate researcher. And as I said, I co-host the Gorilla History podcast with Professor Adnan Hussein and Brett O'Shea. We're a proletarian history podcast and we cover global history. I think that if you

are a regular listener of the Red Menace podcast, it will be an interesting podcast for you, because we take much the same viewpoint on issues, but with focus on proletarian history, as I said. Allison? Hi, yeah. So I'm Allison. Like Henry said, I am one of the co-hosts on Red Minus podcast with Brett O'Shea.

On our podcast, we mostly take texts of revolutionary theory and try to break them down with a pretty intense textual focus, quoting at length and also trying to do summary work for readers, to kind of act as a companion to reading the text and help people a little bit, and also to think about what those texts might mean and suggest for us today in organizational work, not just as abstract ideas, but in terms of implementing them in the world in some way or another. So yeah, that's kind of what we do over there. Again, I think there's some interesting overlap in what we do in guerrilla history. So hopefully you can check out and enjoy both

of them. And I'm very excited for this crossover episode. Absolutely. And I've been a fan of Allison's for as soon as she first went on to Rev Left Radio for the first time. So it's a pleasure to finally meet you, Allison. Now, we're joined today by a very special guest who has a very special book out recently. We're joined by Francois Verges, who is an activist and public educator and the author of the new book, pretty new, a decolonial feminism out from Pluto Press. Hello, Francoise. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm fine. And you? I couldn't be better. Well, I had a bit of, have a bit of a fever today, but other than that, I couldn't be better. I'm very happy to talk with you. So why don't I open up the conversation by just having you lay out the central

thesis of your work, a decolonial feminism, let us know about what your vision for a decolonial feminism is briefly and maybe also add in a little bit about how your background coming up on Reunion Island kind of shaped that worldview. And then we'll talk a little bit more specifically after that. Well, thank you and thank you, you know, for inviting me. And I'm very glad to talk to two, you know, host that absolutely very clearly identify themselves with the revolutionary left, because this is also where I situate decolonial feminism as radically anti-racist, anti-capitalists, and anti-imperialists. That's very important also for me, the anti-imperialism. And so very also radically as the goal is transforming deeply the society and the world in which we live.

And so not just, it's not a feminism of equality or just parity, let's say, but really of the deep transformation. And taken of the book, start with a strike of women, you know, clean, they were cleaning a railway station in France, but they could have clean of a railway station anywhere in the world or, you know, some hospital or university. It was, you know, taking again the feminism from really the woman, made the most vulnerable, the most precarious by, you know, capitalism and racism.

All women are, you know, are women of black women, women of color. And so the decolonial feminism was to say, okay, let's look again, you know, where the struggle is, the struggle of, you know, with radical feminism, and we will start from the women who are cleaning the world. And for me, with this, the fact that the society will not function. nothing, you know, the patriarchal capitalist racist society will not function without their daily work. The fact that then, you know, the guy, you know, the banker can go to the office and drop their kids at the, you know, daycare and then go to the, to the gym or to the restaurant

or whatever. All the world has been clean so that they can, you know, and their wives all there. So how the comfort of a few rests on the exploitation and exhaustion of the many and the many being mostly women of color. That was, you know, the starting point and also the need to reappropriate feminism to take it from the end of, you know, because everyone can be a feminist today, you know, is no longer so even the far right. So this is, you know, the army can be feminist, anything can be anyone can be feminist. So, no, to have to redefine feminism. I mean, they can call themselves feminism, of course. But the point that there is a feminism that has history, I mean, there are feminism that are history

and connected with radical liberation, radical revolution in the global South and elsewhere. Yeah, I think that's a really helpful summary. So I really loved this text, honestly. I think one thing that you really get at is connecting sort of these perspectives, also to the actions that are being taken by decolonial feminists in the world today, right?

which is always what I am impressed to see in theoretical works that are connecting to things grounded. So before we get into that a little bit, I was wondering if I could maybe, for the sake of our readers, bring up sort of a theoretical distinction that you make that I think is very useful, but that some people might not be familiar with, that I found very helpful in your text, which is that you bring up a distinction between colonialism and colonization, right? So these two distinct things, wherein one is a process and the other is an event. And this is an idea that I think in the United States people have been starting, to think with as sort of critiques of settler colonialism have become more popular. And the idea

that there's an ongoing process, not just a past event, but a continual occupation and ideology, which accompanies that. So I was just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on what that distinction is for our readers, because I think it's very helpful for understanding what a decolonial feminism means in the 21st century in particular. Yeah, I do think that, you know, that there is at the art of capitalism on its, you know, regime of dispossations, sporeation, exploitation, the need to colonize, I mean, to find new ways, you know, new place to exploit and, you know, to deploy extractivism. This place can be, you know, like place, concrete place, but also bodies, you know, have new bodies to exploit, you know, like even the deep sea, everywhere.

There is no place that can escape. And that has not handed with independence and construction of new nation state and the dismantling of the big European colonial empire. This is continuing. So there is something of the colony that remained really deeply at the art of racial capitalism. There was no possibility. So the anti, the decolonial position is ready to put an aunt to that really art. And of course, that will dismantle capitalism and patriarchal and racism. But as you say, the deep kind of illusion that something handed with independence, you know,

with the end of the colonial administrative status is very important to show. And as you say, if we look at North America, the way indigenous people are, you know, still in their situation, their position, or if it's a black community, or any kind of community. And if we look at Central and South America, this would be also, we do see that something remain

and that there is in that art, I mean, this foundation, which really rests on racism and exploitation and extraction has to be really dismantle if we want to dismantle, you know, like the regime of murder

in which we live. So I have a pretty big question here, so I'll leave it open so you can take it however you want to. We're talking about colonialism, colonialism, and now I want to shift that to how feminism ties into this. So we have many forms of feminism. As I understand it, you didn't consider yourself a feminist for many, many years because of all of these very disparate tendencies within the feminist realm. And you really didn't affiliate yourself with many of them. A lot of them have severe problems, let's say.

So I guess here's a few of the threads that I'm just going to put out there. And then as I said, you can take it however you want. One thing that really carries through this work and something that I had not really thought about in a conceptual way. I had understood it in individual events is civilizational feminism. So that's something that, of course, you carry through here.

And I would love if you could talk about civilizational feminism what it is because, as I said, you'd see things like the banning of the Nicar or you'd see all kinds of instances like this where we have civilized countries as they would construe themselves, trying to impose their virtues on other nations.

And at the same time, we have other tendencies like femo-nationalism, femo-imperialism. I have a quote from your book here, which I think also might help tie some of these threads together, which is, you say, the rise of reactionaries of all kinds shows one thing loud and clear. A feminism that fights only for gender equality and refuses to see how integration leaves racialized women at the mercy of brutality, violence, rape, and murder is ultimately complicit in that. So I know I put a lot of threads out there, and I'm hoping that, you know, you find a way to kind of thread some of those together. But can you tell us about civilizational feminism and some of these tendencies and how you

wanted to break free from those in your conception of feminism? Yeah. Well, you know, as you, as you were saying at the beginning, I am from Réinue Island, which was, you know, a French colony of slave. And now it's still a French territory or overseas territory. I mean, France, the French states still have a lot of territories around the world. And so it's still a colonial state in the sense of what we define at the beginning. So within that, of course, what very few feminists in Europe were really against slavery, colonial slavery.

And very few feminists were against colonization, very few. Especially for colonization, they really deeply thought that this will bring progress to the woman in this colony. But their voices were not that important. They were not very powerful at the time, 19th century, 20th century. But what I noticed in the 21st century that really that civilization and feminism came back very strongly.

I mean, we noticed it when the United States launched the war against Afghanistan. Part of it was like to save the Afghan woman, right? Suddenly it became important. Suddenly, the woman appeared. You know, the woman in the South appear as helpless, victim of terrible patriarchy, terrible, you know, culture. And so, in fact, the United States will go to save them.

So the white savior complex was, in fact, feminists adopted it very much. And the civilizing mission, which was really the art of the, you know, the French colonial empire and even though with another name in the British Empire, was really the deep, the fact that you're going to, going to save these people who are victims. So you put yourself in a very, I mean, colonization is a good deed.

When you do that, you put yourself as a good person. You're doing a good thing. You're going to go there or even in your country with women who are veiled and, you know, the Muslim woman. And you're going to save them. As if effectively the question of feminism, the country, the north, has been the natural ground, the natural soul on which, you know, feminism emerge. I said, you know, the two were connected.

It was the, you know, the birthplace of feminism. And so that one thing. And so I handle the line that, of course, a woman in the North and Europe had very few rights, very few civic rights until the 20th century. But they had one. As soon as, you know, Europe started to colonize, they had the right to own human being.

And this is a right that gave them, you know, white supremacy gave them the right. gender. So even if you look at the history of rights and the history of feminism of bourgeois white feminism, it has the narrative about it, is a narrative that it, you know, exclude a very important chapter in the understanding of rights, you know, what are women's right. But upon this understanding, they are, you know, they will say this are the women right. This is what women deserve. This is women's emancipation and liberation. And this woman don't. don't understand it, and we have to tell them what to do.

And this is absolutely why feminism, that kind of feminism, can be, in fact, adopted by a lot of government and on the international level or so, because in fact, it gave a very strong argument to the West, to the imperialist West, that, you know, that the kind of other civilizing mission were falling, you know, that they could not do it anymore, you know, that we're going to bridge an aspect or nobody, you know, care about that. But if you were saying women's right, that touched very deeply. And in fact, a certain narcissism in the North, like we have this. We have this.

You know, we know what to do. And this became one of the best arguments that this feminist offer to imperialism. Here, you know, you no longer have a very strong, you know, discourse, speech that is very convincing. This one going to be good. And we saw it with Afghanistan, we saw it in Iraq, we saw it everywhere, and we saw it, as you say, Henry, with, you know, all this obsession with a veil or the kneecap among, you know, a white feminist. So there was, I mean, the argument could have been, they could have met the argument and this would have been women marginal. But what I argue is that it offers a very strong argument to imperialism because who is against women's right? you know who can say oh yes i'm you know i am from a little girl being married i am you know no i mean

it's it's kind of you know so it was very good very strong and so they certainly feminism go to very good you know media they were interview they could be interviewed they could their books could be sold because they offer to neoliberalism and to imperialism the very best argument that even business you know could have that we have for equality that we offer equality that we offer inclusion and diversity, and this will be good. And then outside, we will save this woman from, you know, the worst patriarchy. Because the culture over there, all this culture are, in fact, all sexist culture and patriarchal. But we here, we have progress.

Look, we have women in the army, we have women pilot, we have, you know. So it was really, it was very interesting to try to understand how this happened and how why it became so popular. You know, suddenly it became, you start to hear it, you know, in the, you know, global places, the foundation, the global, you know, big foundation. They are always, you know, equality, women's right, you know, in their program. So it has become common sense. And so it's a way of naturalizing imperialism and neoliberalism.

So has a potential follow-up to that. because I think this is, you know, it really brings home growing up during the beginnings of the war on terror in the United States, right? We saw these invocations from the Bush regime about human rights in Afghanistan in particular. I think you point out quite correctly. But one interesting thing about at least the domestic ideology here for how that was articulated was that it was very religious in orientation, right? American nationalism tends to have this very religious ring to it. But there's sort of more of a distinct ideology in France, right, where you have the notion of secularism or lycite that functions, you know, outside of that. And so I was wondering if for our listeners who might not be so familiar with that concept of secularism, you could talk a little bit about how secularism has played into this concept of civilizational feminism. I think it's

complicated for the left in some ways because the left has been very critical of religion. And you will often hear talking points that almost mirror those talking points about Islam, for example. So how does secularism fit into this question? And how might we on the revolutionary left navigate this. Yeah, the way in which secularism has become a weapon, has been weaponized in France by feminists and by the state, the bourgeois state, is really, in fact, a transformation of what was secularism at the beginning, which was you can, you know, have your religion, but the point the state cannot be religious.

The state cannot have a religion. So that was, you know, in fact, very progressive. Now, secularism is against religion. You know, secularism become a religion of the state, become a state religion, that in fact target Muslim, very clearly. Nothing, you know, like no other thing. It's Islam, Islam, which is really the target. So there is also, you know, through that, a form,

I mean, in the United States, it's a form of religious nationalism, but we still, you know, go to the church to further that. In France, it's a state, it's a religion in the most of the state, because it's becoming very egemonic. So the state decide, you know, what can be done or not done in public, which should not be the state question. And so the intervention. But the fact that is Islamophobic is very important.

It's really Islam, which is don't get it. That's so clearly. And the feminists, whether in Germany, in France or in England, have been at the forefront. And they, in fact, provided the argument. for Islamophobia. By saying that the veil could be only the symbol of women subjugation. That was nothing else.

A woman could not choose herself. You know, Muslim women could not be agent. You know, there are no urgency. And that had a very strong echoes because then it was put side by side with what was happening in Afghanistan or, you know, in Iraq or elsewhere. At a moment of Western government also supporting Saudi Arabia, right, and selling a lot of weapons. We do see also, you know, how imperialism also play within that, you know. So this, but one thing that you say, Alison, that I think it will be interesting to also perhaps really reflect on when you say the war, the war on terror.

And how war we are living in a permanent state of war, like now, war on drug, war on clear war, war on the virus, war on everything, right? So this permanent state of war is also in the feminist film, in that bourgeois, white feminism, has been, you know, through a certain analysis of the rape and violence that is seen through that lens of civilisation, you know, civilizing, Men must be civilized and supporting them the police state and the prison as a solution, you know, throughout. And so it's not an analysis of the structural, systemic violence that this permanent state of war has absolutely normalized, banalized, weaponized. But it's three men, you know, like through some men are brutal and they should be, you know, taken out of society to protect women. And that question of protection today, which is so. important and that go also to the question that you say how you know to protect women from themselves and from the men you know who are their father and brother and so the state now has totally captured

the idea of protection and that we have to accept to be protected by the state you know as women because otherwise we you know we are and so but of course the state impose the condition of protection. And so you have to leave by this condition and these norms to be protected. Otherwise, you are unprotected. And if you are unprotected, anything can happen to you. You can be beaten, put in gel, you know, strip of your rights, persecuted, humiliated. You know, this is, so it goes also your question with a question of protection, a certain written of patriarchy through the question of protection of women and children or the powerless. But it's totally depoliticized the question of protection. And because we see also with

a pandemic that the most vulnerable and the people who are being led to die are still the people rationalized and the poor people. So to follow up on, it's still keeping the threat of civilizational feminism going, one, so people on the left-ish that are not members of the revolutionary left tend to uphold the French model of feminism because women have time off from work when their maternity leave, they have child care, et cetera. And a lot of social Democrats and the like, progressives in the U.S., particularly look at that system that France has and compared to the U.S., where we have no protections in place or no even remotely feminist appearing policies in place, and they think that France is this enlightened society,

they're very feminist, and the revolutionary left, of course, does not go along with this view whatsoever, and including because in France the protections for women during their maternity period during the child-rearing years is to allow women into the professional sphere. It's to allow women to have advancement. But at whose expense? It's the white women disproportionately, and you point this out in your book, it's the white women in France disproportionately who are benefiting from these policies because it is the racialized women who are upholding these systems through the child care work, through other associated work. so really it's the racialized women that are upholding the ability of the white women in France

to achieve professional success. I was just wondering if you could speak to how this is construed in France, how French people view this. I'm assuming they don't think about the racialized women who are upholding the role of white women in society and how we should analyze this. Yeah, indeed. And, you know, in a form of book. Also, I look at the fact that the state, the French state, in the 1970s, was, you know, criminalizing abortion and contraception. And at the same time, in a French department, Renew Island, absolutely, you know, encouraging thousands of abortion without consent and sterilization. So the fact of who in the 1970 were the right to give a birth and who did not have the right to give birth

was rationalized. So in fact, even the battle, you know, for abortion and contraception, if the feminist in France had reflected on that, they would have seen that it was not just, you know, that the universal as all women will be on the same plane. And so this question and what you are saying, maternity leave and all this, we're also one because of struggle by the working class, right? Mostly, mostly, it was a working class, we thought, not the bourgeoisie. But the things have changed, of course, more women now who are, you know, 80% of part-time worker are women in France, right? 80% of cleaning are black women. So women in this precarious, very low-paid, you know, underqualified jobs cannot have access to, I mean, this effectively, this social right, they do not work for them, you know, because they don't even have, you know, enough money to survive.

what women are earning is incredible. It's like 900 euro per month, right? It's practically, you know, it's not much in France. And so within that, effectively, first, you have an erasure of the fact that you had to fight for this right. It was never the state that gave them. And second, that more and more as effectively there are structural change within capital, right, and capital, you know, making life more precarious, the life, the comfortable life, of white bourgeois woman is upon the back, if I may say, really of racialized women.

And so this goes with also a certain economy of what, you know, I call it an economy of exhaustion of the body, because this woman, I mean, the woman who were as cleaner or as, you know, nannies for the kids of white family or taking care of the elderly and everything, they tell me, they tell me that, you know, they are absolutely their body. the pain, the suffering, and some of them are barely in their 50. They have already three surgeries, you know, for their knees or everything. So there is also the fact that the white woman can go to the yoga or meditation or, you know, jogging and be healthy and eat well is possible because the body and other woman is exhausted, cannot eat well because she doesn't start, has to make two hours of transportation to come to her job, going back to a place where you don't have park for her children,

no place and so on. But there is also that it's not just the exploitation, it's also the way the life of the rationalized woman, of the woman who is making that life possible, all the environment of her life is, you know, is hostile to a good health and to a good, not just the physical, but also the psachic health. So yes, there is a fabrication,

especially now, you know, and we see it also in North America, health, you know, being in good health, what you have to do eat well, you know, your avocado toast and do this and so on. This good life, this good taking care of your body and taking care of your mind and do meditation and so on is absolutely all this construction and all these places, all this self-help things for your good is made possible because all the bodies are then exhausted and do not have access to all this. But there was really effectively, as you said, the construction of comfort and the good life made on the invisibilization of so many exploited because it's not just a narnia in the cleaning lady.

It's also the woman in Bangladesh who are, you know, doing the fast fashions, so she can, you know, this bourgeois woman in Europe can go and change. clothes, I mean, buy clothes every two weeks that are different. It's also the people in the plantation somewhere who sell, you know, the avocado that would be good for a body is. So her life, our good life, rest on an incredible, you know, network of exploitation and disposition. Yeah, so I think this notion of invisibilization is very, very useful, right? And part of the difficulty, I think, from the decolonial feminist perspective is that when we're trying to make these things, visible, and I think you get at this very clearly, we're trying to look at these sites that aren't

the product of just one contradiction, right? There are many, many contradictions at play from capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and various ideologies kind of piled on top of that. So maybe going to think about how decolonial feminism tackles this a little bit. I'm sort of interested in kind of the method that you develop here. So in the first half of the book, when you're really kind of developing a lot of these ideas, you say, quote, decolonial feminism is a feminism that offers a multi-dimensional analysis of oppression and refuses to divide race, sexuality, and class into mutually exclusive categories, end quote. And then you kind of state that the goal, right, is to hold these several threats at the same time. And again, this idea of

multidimensional analysis, I believe as you present it, kind of moving beyond some of the ideas of intersectionality to something more developed in a certain sense. So what I'm curious about is when we're taking this multidimensional approach, right, how do we hold these various contradictions in relation to each other. So again, not seeing them as totally separate, but is that to deny the primacy of certain contradictions, or is it to place all of them on an equal footing? How methodologically do we approach social contradictions in this sense, especially in a time when capitalism is often viewed as a totalizing ideology, right? Is that at odds with this multidimensional approach, or are those reconcilable in some way?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I would say that the multidimension of things for me, that effectively to be aware that, you know, patriarchy capitalism, racism does not work in one way, right? That's one thing. The second thing is also the way in which our lives are constructed, you know, for the racial lives or for, you know, made vulnerable is that the past is still there. I mean, we live in entangled temporality. A path is still not repair, right?

I mean, land being wasted, you know, like, okay. a present that in being destroyed under our eyes, right, that is very affected. And a future that would maybe not be possible if this goes on like that, that there would be perhaps no future generation. So this entangled temporality have to work also through this different threat, right? So but at the same time, as you were asking, I would say it's within the context, there sometimes you fight there is an enemy here, right? So you cannot say, oh, there was an enemy, but there was that and that.

No, there is that one. Okay, let's go and bang that one, right? But at the same time, it's constantly being aware of this. So we don't fall into then this kind of, on the, and so many movement fail, you know, by looking at just one thing, one contradiction. And this is going to be difficult because we will have to invent as we go some different method of struggling. but I do think we have to make that effort. Otherwise, we're going to fall against, you know, like the main contradiction,

the fall of, and we know that what this was left. So it's a difficult then a kind of action, I mean, of, yeah, of acting, but it's necessary. But it does not take away the urgency, you know. There is a strike to do. There was a strike to do. It's not you're not going to have this. But as you do the strike, you work through all this long-time contradiction.

Because even if you win that, you know that's new contradiction going to emerge. So you have constantly to work, both in the present, and constantly working, I mean, nourishing, utopian thinking. Where do we want, you know, how are we going to beat that, you know, monster, right? And that, so there is how we throw a thing in the machine so the machine, you know, get to, you know, a rupture, right, the famous. strike, you know, the strike, not just in the sense of occupying the place, but I would restore that. And at the same time, what kind of world we want to do, you know, like throwing, how are we going to stop the chain, you know, like that, in the different sense of the chain? But when I insist on the multidimensional, because it's hard to intersectionality, the fact that

effectively this multiple temporality, this entangled temporality. And the fact that also there are all the that are making us. And especially now, how do we tackle the question of the environment from a revolutionary point of view? And so we don't let you know. So how this is becoming an incredible threat, an important threat, and that how are we going to answer to that from really, and it's in its multidimension, right? And how do we, and for me, it's how do we look.

in the abyss of the brutality of racial capitalism. And we are not afraid by what we see, but we have to look at it really straight like that so we can imagine what will have to be done so that is not, you know, will be beaten once and for all. Because sometimes I do think that we still think that or some, you know, some reform will happen or it will reform itself, you know, or it will not go there.

And then every day we got proof that, yes, they do it. They are absolutely able to do it. They are, you know, as we see in France, born before shame, you know. You know, near Van Ault, you know, they were born before shame arrive in the world, right. So following up on your decolonial analysis, you provide an example in the book of how you go about constructing a decolonial pedagogy of bananas. And I found that to be a very instructive and very interesting example. And I was just wondering if briefly you would be able to kind of break that down for the listeners so they understand how you go about this analysis. Okay, very quickly.

years ago, you know, it started during soccer a game, the public will throw a banana on the field and everyone understood it was against the black player. You did not have to say anything. So what was the connection between banana and anti-black racism? That was the beginning, you know, the famous threat. So I pulled a thread and then appear different history of the banana, the relation with advertisement, the relation with music,

with, you know, Banana Republic and U.S. imperialism and CIA, consumption, film, and when the connection is made between anti-blackness and the banana. And this will be at the moment when banana become a very U.S. I mean, the U.S. is, you know, importing a lot of banana intervening Central America, but also so that the banana has to become something, you know, in every suburb place, right? And at the same time, through that,

the advertisement will make the happy, funny, you know, black person or the happy Latina at the moment when imperialism is really, you know, going through that. And so the connection will be made between banana monkey and anti-blackness as a moment, at the same time when the banana become a staple

for, you know, on the table, on the U.S. table. And through fun, you know, through fun, not, you know, it was, oh, look at it, this is funny, you know. And this, from that, the connection being made, it can effectively become anti-black racism today. So it was to pull all this thread and today was the pollution, the action of Monsanto, the fact that the banana need to be yellow and in certain shape, otherwise the Western people don't think it's not bad. So they don't want to eat that banana. So all this you got environment, slavery, imperialism,

CIA, black, you know, workers, organization, women and the question of plantation, where the violence against women is absolutely systemic. Advertisement. Banana has good food for children, babies and elderly. You know, so it's like certain, this very banal fruit very banal fruit, I mean, that everyone knows. You pull an history which is environmental, imperialism, racism,

and they are connected, not necessarily from, you know, cause to effect, but you trace a certain cartography that suddenly makes sense, and this banal fruit enter in a history and geography, that suddenly makes sense and open your eye to the production, how this come out to my table how this arrive on my table who put that on my table

you know and so in that it's for me also encouraging the curiosity about the world in which we live which is not natural you know the fact that what arrived on my table

is not natural it's not like you know it's not some whatever godgy whatever so it's also that you know

and that analysis is constantly asking ourselves, where this is coming from, who produces, how it arrives, what is associated with good health, you know, whole this different construction and fabrication, bring, you know, make sense, suddenly make visible, as you say, Alison, someone, a world become visible. And I think by making sense and making all this right visible, it's less scary, in fact, you know, it's, because nothing is mysterious at the end, you know. So you get power from knowing that.

Yeah, I think that's really very helpful. It's interesting even thinking about this, you know, drawing on threads of ideas like Marx's secret hidden in the commodity, right? What is all there that we never talk about and making all of that explicit? Transitioning a little bit, though, one thing that, at least for me, I think, stands out about this text very much so that I find very helpful is an emphasis, again, on this idea that decolonial feminism or a decolonial feminism, rather, would be something that is enacted, right?

It's not merely a way of tracing histories or of understanding things. It's something which is done. And I think in the context of thinking through colonization and decoloniality, this is important as well, right? We've had scholars like Tuck and Yang, for example, who've talked about how these things become metaphors that we never move beyond into actual action. And I think what's very profound about this book is the insistence that throughout the global South, especially, there are women who are enacting struggles that are decolonial feminist struggles. And I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate on what some of those

struggles are that have sort of inspired this book that have sort of drawn you to this project. Yeah, I will say, you know, indigenous woman activist fighting for land and the connection between land and the body and the health and education. So it's not just I want my piece of land, but the whole is connected with, you know, better food for my children, better education, you know, better. And how this is, you know, better. And how this This understanding of the connection between the different, you know, way of fabricating a vulnerable life, you know, to death or vulnerable life is made. This understanding for me that I see through, you know, indigenous women or black, Afro-Brazilian feminists, or the woman in Argentina now, or the incredible courageous women in Mexico who effectively attack, attack the building of power. or what we have seen also in Chile,

which I think is very impressive. And even what I thought also was impressive. I mean, in terms of practice, as you say, how, you know, during the marches and demonstrations, they understood that, you know, you have the front line and that front line will be, you know, the people who are not afraid to fight with the police. But those, so there is not, oh, you cannot fight for the police?

Oh, you know, you're poor things. But you are the one in, you know, in the behind. carrying the water or whatever is need to be carried. And, you know, so, and I do think also this kind of organization is very much closer to what we need, you know, than the kind of heroic things of everyone has to be together, you know, on the same level. And their understanding of that, this feminist in the global arts is for me absolutely very, very strong. You know, I mean, as you say, in the action, we don't, we imagine, I mean, we practice it. so it's not just oh we should you know march and everyone is put in the march as if everyone is on the same level for instance of you know fighting for instance i don't i run very badly so don't put me on the front line put me in the back i carry the water whatever need to be carried you know whatever but don't be i mean i cannot run so i'm going to be beaten in the first moment and then i will no longer so it that also this kind of organization that pay attention but strongly

to the body and to, you know, the affect and the possibility. And so then work something over strength, you know, of a force, and that courage can be then enacted. And so it's not kind of masculinistic, you know, kind of macho kind of courage, but it's a deep courage. And I think the feminist understood that, this decolonial feminist in the thoughts, that the fact and the, and who,

and also not being afraid. I think overcoming fear is part of their pedagogy. And I think that's very important because I do think that the patriarchy now and neoliberalism are very, very good at, you know, instilling fear. There is a direct fear of being beaten and killed in the street. But there's all the other fear of, you know,

oh, okay, you're going to see what happened to you. in terms of job, in terms of housing, in terms of also of identifying you as a troublemaker. So your family can even say, what are you doing that? You know, so the kind of pressure of conformity, the constant politics of conformity, and that we have to overcome that.

And I do think that this feminist would drive that very well. The question of fear, the question of conformity, of respectability, you know, and that how to show that there have been weapon in the hand of patriarchy and violence and state violence. I'm going to stay on the topic of tactics because as individuals on the revolutionary left, we of course, our entire ideology is based around anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, etc. Everybody that's listening to this already knows that. We also have to figure out tactics for how to take these ideological starting points of anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and apply them to the struggle to build a decolonial feminism.

Now, one sticking point that I could see or something that could be weaponized against us as we are a minority opinion, as things stand, is that as you try to build this decolonial feminism in a place like France, for example, that. that effort in order to overturn the status quo could be weaponized by the state to say, well, this is anti-feminism because you don't want to care about the care work that is allowing these women to achieve their professional goals. You don't care about the women in other countries who are being forced to wear the hijab, et cetera, et cetera. You get branded in a way as anti-feminist as opposed to more accurately being described as a decolonial feminist. So my question, for you, Francois, and Allison, if you, I'd like to foster a little bit of a back and forth here on the tactical front. So as we go on, we'll just kind of make it more of a conversation. How do we advance our goals of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, in a decolonial feminist framework for success and avoid the pitfalls of being branded as anti-feminist in the process? that's very important because right now in France

the anti-the-political anti-racist movement is very fragmented and divided and neoliberalism is very good as dividing I mean divided and rule has always been of course the whole tactic of power and it works so you know they do it but what I mean is like more that what we we can notice is like you know in the last two decades let's say the capacity of capitalism of reintegrating what even attack it as being as much faster than it used to be right much faster so it's a new you know possibility of capitalism i mean one day someone says something the following day you got t-shirt on it was you know made by women in thailand and

paid you know very low and then sold by whom we know whom you know online and then all this will work right So, effectively, there was a much more difficulty, and the kind of, you know, weaponized as anti-feminist, this is already happening in France. So, you know, we are accused of, you know, so many things. And so there, okay, I will answer by, if I mean, first, I grew up in an anti-colonial communist family. So I know about being insulted, threatened. notion of rumor, you know, how this also is a weapon, that stay, you know, whatever, there is no veracity, I mean, the truth cannot be said. You say the truth does not matter. It will remain. So it's an education. You have, we have to educate ourselves in the fact that we would

be, you know, we would be inserted, right? We will be defamed and so on. And how do we react like that? How do it does not, you know, affect our mental health? And that's very important. because I have seen it so much, so much, you know, I mean, I saw it. I mean, I was six-year-old, you know. And so, and now I'm also the target of that. And I will say the defense, I mean, the sad defense against weaponization is to understand the role of this and how this is used to weaken you, you know, weaken your autonomy, weaken your courage and force.

And how this has succeeded, you know, you got burnout, people cannot stay. And as I say, it's too difficult, you know, I can't do that anymore. So to avoid that, I will say it's that. And then I will say to understand today this speed through which capitalism is capable of cannibalizing. Hope, for instance, now you got so many capital saying we need inclusion, we need diversity, We need more women in business. We need really equality. It's going to be good.

And so I would say there was a shift also, much clearer of perhaps what we saw in the United States set under Nixon of we need, you know, Nixon saying, we need black capitalism to beat the Black Panther Party and other revolution in the party. And we see it reactivated in different ways. the question of corporate philanthropic, which is very important or so right now

in ways of pacifying, you know, the revolutionary movement. So I will say to answer more clearly, you know, directly to your question, it's a new political education that we have to develop and deploy, and we have really to go back to what we used to call

what used to be called political education, really, to give weapon of autonomy, of thinking, you know, and more and more because it's very good. I mean, they are very good at what they are doing and getting much better and getting much better. They have, you know, like thousands of psychologists, sociologists working for them, say, okay, this, you know, and people. So we should not underestimate their capacity, but also we have to see so many young people,

you know, who do not at the same time capable of playing with, you know, all this social network and doing something else. But I will say to conclude that I think we're going to leave for difficult moment, you know, that we should not, we should not hope for, it's going to be long and difficult. It's not going to be that easy. They are really determined. They are really determined people to, they are, they have an understanding of what the world they want, how they see themselves in that world. and it's not our vision. But they are determined to bring it,

I think. Sometimes I have to imagine the world they want because sometimes it's so difficult for me to understand the kind of world they want. But I have to make also this effort of imagination myself to think, okay, this is the world they want, right? and how that world is so different from the world that so many other people.

But I have to make this leap sometime, you know? Because it's like, who are these people? Who are these people? But yeah, but they are all there, you know. And the world they want is so strange in a way, a very masculineistic, very masculineistic. The idea of domination. is very important in their worldview,

the media, teenage, people, everything. And so analysis of domination as a source of action for them. And domination, the goal of domination animate them, we should not forget that, you know. Domination is a very important fuel for them, you know. And of course, it may appear foreign to us, but we have to understand that it's not irrational with the other. So, Alison, I know you have a question, but I have just a very brief follow-up here, and I'd like both of your takes on it.

So, Alison, I'll let you answer first, and then you can ask Francoise your question as well, and Francoise can then take both of them in turn. So Francoise, you just talked about how we have a very different worldview than the people that are trying to uphold the current world that we live in. And we want to construct something totally different, totally different. So my question, and Allison, like I said, I'll pitch it over to you first. It's very, very simple. And I think that your previous answer alluded to how you're going to answer it. Can we construct something approximating a decolonial feminism without first overturning

capitalism as a system? Because I think that we can get closer to it, but I'm unsure. that we can actually achieve anything that we would consider a true decolonial feminism without actually overturning capitalism as a system, either at the same time or before we actually build this decolonial feminism that we would like to see. So, Alison, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think that this question perfectly brings up what I was trying to get out with my question about the multidimensional analysis as well. And isn't this what's so difficult, right? Is to a certain extent, it's not just, I think, that we could not have a decolonial

project without the abolition of capitalism, but we also couldn't have the abolition of capitalism without a decolonial project as well, right? And that's sort of, I think, where it's so hard coming as a communist in 21st century, where we have, I think, found fantastic and incredible theoretical breakthroughs in the last hundred years of development of political theory that allow us to see the interconnection of these. And it does get difficult to decide where to start in terms of these things. So, you know, I don't want to say that, like, we couldn't have it without getting rid of capitalism, because I think that puts the direction that things need to move in in a very linear manner when these things are both things that have to be combated simultaneously. And that

might deal kind of with this question of temporality, right? That is, of course, constantly complicating the political question for us. So it seems to me, like, you know, what I find useful in this text and what I have found useful in decolonial perspectives generally is an analysis of the way that capitalism and colonization are inherently intertwined with each other. So again, there's, you know, both the original sense of capitalist land expansion, resource acquisition through colonization, but Francoise, like you say, there's also the colonization of bodies as an ongoing project within capitalism in its relation to labor. And so I think I would want to push back against the idea that these are disentangleable in a temporal manner at all, perhaps. It's hard

to see the difference between the two to a certain extent. That's kind of how I would have it at least. But again, these things are difficult because trying to come from a decolonial feminist perspective, we're dealing with so many layers of exploitation and domination simultaneously, that knowing where to begin at all, I think is difficult. And I would just push against maybe the kind of a linear view of this, then this, as a way of approaching that, perhaps. Totally agree. And Allison, then what's your question for Francoise? And then we'll let her take both of them. My question is somewhat in a different direction, but I think relates to this question of domination in a certain extent, and the extent to which, like, there are people who

are trying to create this world of the view of the world that is so distinct from our own. And one thing that I found, you know, for a whole discussion here that has been very interesting to think about is in the context of the United States, we had these uprisings last summer that, while not explicitly ideologically decolonial, were uprisings that are spurred by colonial contradictions in the United States, right? We, for example, obviously have the colonial repression of black populations in the United States, which raises questions of histories of colonialism, slavery, all these different sort of complex things that still bear in the present through various things like the

prison industrial complex as well as, you know, the literal stratification of space along colonial lines within U.S. cities. So we saw this kind of come to a head. And I think this idea, Francoise, you get at, of the sort of ability of capitalism to rehabilitate the attacks we make against it is something that we've seen so clearly, right? In the summer, of last year, we saw police stations being burned down. We saw what was really a level of intensity in terms of these uprisings that was very profound. And at the same time, we have also seen sort of the neoliberal move to try to placate this. So the Biden presidency, obviously, is full of neoliberal rhetoric that never moves beyond that rhetoric whatsoever. Harris as a vice president

is used as a tokenized figure, right, in order to kind of push back against these attacks. And so we've seen really this attempt, I think, that neoliberal ideology is so good at, to rehabilitate those events that have occurred. And so that's happening on the one hand. And what I wanted to get at, and I think your book does get at this as well, is on the other hand, while we have this attempt to rehabilitate kind of the rhetoric of resistance, there's also more raw repression that occurs, right? And this is, I think, the other side of what we're seeing in the United States, at least, where the hammer is beginning to fall somewhat. There's increased discussion of domestic violent extremism, right? It's kind of the talk that we are seeing from the federal

government that is meant to focus on both the right and the left, obviously. But there's also kind of a revived call for intense crime legislation in the United States, which is hard to see as anything other than a direct kind of reactionary response to these uprisings that occurred. And so my question, which is not super related to the first one, but you know, you can tackle them how you want, would be, does decolonial feminism give us a way to resist that repressive power as well, not just the rehabilitative power of capital? Well, I mean, many things. I will perhaps start by perhaps a lesson of the colonial feminism that's connected with an antithesis of racism and how racism, capitalism, or intertwined, and you cannot have anti-capitalism without anti-capitalism and vice. So I will say that one lesson that can, that even to perhaps to rethink, even the temporality of struggle,

even, you know, the vocabulary of defeat and victory, the fact of that most revolution movement have been defeated. What do we mean by defeated? Is that it's, are we not adopted also the vocabulary? It's kind of long, long, long history. On which nonetheless, you know, all the ways and rules that were opened by this preceding struggle,

on which we can we stand, you know, and all what we learn from them, right, and all what we learn from what happened. That would be a first thing. And the question, then the second, the question of repression, I do think that we have not seen the end of it, you know, what's happening also in Lebanon, what's happening, you know, what's happening in Nigeria, where you had one million people every Friday out, and that the regime now is, you know,

putting, jelling everyone, you know, and censorship everywhere. the rise of the, I mean, the far right is all through Europe. The fact that you have, you know, a fascist now in the Spanish parliament, you know, but also Nazi in the German parliament and people in Hungary, in Poland. I mean, the government, there is really, I mean, you've got Brexit and Boris Johnson, and you get moody in India who let these people, you know, die. I mean, and Bolsonaro, Brazil, we are surrounded. I mean, there is a very moment, an incredible.

incredible, strong reaction that is not connected with the image of what you say that for instance, the Biden image or macro image, you know, right now, that if there is a passive hope bourgeois democratic capitalism, right, and capitalism and racial capitalism. What do we see everywhere is, in fact, this, the people, men in power were absolutely fascists are mad, I mean, criminal, absolutely criminal. So I do think that the question of repression is that we have to say, okay, we are living dark time and they're going to be darker, right?

So the way in which resistance has to be thinking is with this understanding and this witness knowledge that we have to learn from the past or from the present ways of protecting ourselves. because they're going to, they're going to strike, right? As you say, on the one hand, we have a black woman as vice president of the United States, on the other hand, more and more deaths and more dress and more crazy things. And you do have, you do have power who are not necessarily that popular, but they are able to stay in power.

So there is a crisis, or not deep, deep, have been for a long time, but more than ever. So this is a situation and it's a task for a lot of imagination on our hand, incredible, you know, also imagination of one can be. So what's happening also, I will say also, we have to look at what's happening also in Africa, what's happening in the Caribbean, what's happening in the Pacific world, which is really going everywhere, which is at the same time, what we did incredible movement in Thailand.

And so what is going, what is happening now at the same time of incredible emergence of movement everywhere, incredible, and at the same time of incredible repression at the same time, of possibility being absolutely repressive. And but with new weapon even, right, not just the whole police, you know, or gel, but the expansion, the extension. of this weapon, the internalization, the new industry of control and surveillance. That, what are we going to do about that? You know, how are we going to fight back? So this is why I say we need to have a, to really think, we think, how we're going to fight imperialism, capitalism and racism, and therefore patriarchy, absolutely, with all this aspiration because I do think that many people in the world understand that this can, you

know, if we go on like that, it's death, right? Nothing else. But then what is life in the sense of our evolutionary life, you know, not just living and in fact, barely breathing, but what is life? And so to bring back also a revolutionary meaning to that. So it's not just social organization, you know, how we're going to have, you know, it's really what is life in the revolutionary sense you know what is what is what will be life

post the kind of life that has been built by this system which is bare life not in the sense of a gambon not that but you know barely living barely living I mean the fact that you so many people can breathe and if a human being

does a breeze there is not you know the fact that water is becoming you know less and less available. So I will say we, perhaps as a revolutionary, we have to go back to this absolutely basic need of the human life, see how they are commodified, privatized, and in a way that many people will be deprived of it

and will see biblical life. So how do we redefine life, not in the biological sense, something, but life as effectively what will be, revolution of life. You know, what even, I mean, this has existed, Rosambeau talk about, I mean, the dream of what will be alive that is not determined by racism, sexism, and capitalism. And this, I will say, in recent, I mean, this is coming back in indigenous thinking and so on. But for a while, the revolutionary left left this aside, you know, what is life, you know, because by fear of becoming, you know, saying a thing that will look banal,

you know, not, you know, revolution in the sense of up to the barricade and, you know, and the winter palates and everything. But in the sense of really, that what is life for billion of people in the world and that this is how to effectively. So children born today, we have. a childhood already because childhood is not a universal right is not a universal right so in the way the enslaved fought for freedom but by saying that freedom is not the freedom the way you define it because the way you have defined it a law foreign freedom justify and freedom so the life

the racial capitalism and patriotic is defining is not life and so perhaps making that visible as a revolutionary horizon and but having really political meaning to it not just let's be happy and hold hand although that could be okay also okay Francois last question now so Allison and I yes we both do podcast Allison does a philosophy and revolutionary literature podcast I do a history podcast but much more important than that is that we're both activists most of our listeners are activists should be all of our listeners are activists and if you're listening to this and you're not get out in the streets and do something anything find find something that you believe in and make it make a noise about it but so francois the last question is for listeners who have

listened to this conversation who are activists or will become activists what is your take-home message in terms of from this conversation both from an analytical standpoint as well as as an action-based standpoint? What should activists take from this conversation and from your work more generally to apply to their lives, again, from both analytical and action standpoints? I would say education.

Education, education, education, education. Self-education, constantly asking myself question. And perhaps, you know, what I said 10 years ago, need to be revised because, you know, I, you know. So it's a constant curiosity and openness to, you know, the new contradiction and not being, you know, overwhelmed by that. And the question of really for me a new form of pedagogy to invent our own pedagogy, radical pedagogy against, you know,

what power Freire or Tagore or Cabral did, we have really. Because the question of transmission in a moment when they are so much overload of, you know, whatever happening is very important in terms of, you know, political education, like of being in the world, what does it mean to be in the world? you know and in a world so i would say way of the education education education education i think that that's a great note to end on again our guest was francoise vergesse the author of the new book a decolonial feminism out from pluto press and i i mean this seriously when i say i read a lot listeners in case you haven't noticed in past conversations and whatnot this

was one of my favorite books i read this year it was really tremendous both again from an analytical standpoint as well as just a mind opening standpoint because you really gave voice to a lot of things that were kind of floating around in my mind. This wasn't something that was completely alien to me, but I didn't have a very systematized way of thinking about this. And you really gave voice to that. I want to thank you for putting this work together. And yeah, it was absolutely fantastic. I'm recommending the listeners to pick up the book, request your libraries to get the book. That's something I always say at the end of guerrilla history episodes. Get libraries to get books.

These are important things for everybody to read. So, yeah, thank you very much, Francoise, for Jez. Can you tell the listeners, if there's anywhere that you want to direct them to keep up with you, the work that you're doing, anything of that sort? Well, I don't like to say, you know, read this book, whatever, it's too, you know, like for me, it's like too scholarly. Be curious. You know, start by something.

You can even start by a novel, right? You can say, I mean, literature is also very good. Literature of poetry, a very good high opener. And then pull the thread, put us at it, you know, become like that. I mean, there is a, I have an upcoming book also on Pluto on the question of, you know, what we allude to the question of protection, what will be anti-racist political protection. So how to bring back, you know, protection in our hands, self-defense and stuff like that. And also something on the colonial violence in the public space.

that would be out in France about how cities are outside environment to women, to gays, to queer, to trans, to workers, to black, to Arabs, to homeless people, to to migrant, to refugee, behind a face of cities for fun and romantic cities and all this behind a very brutal, very important environment. So the coronary variance are not just a statue and monument, but the way in which the city itself is forbidden and is in fact some form of reported segregation. I'm really looking forward to that future work, the question of protection, and hopefully we'll be able to convince you to come back and talk to us about that when it comes out

because I know I would really enjoy that conversation. Alison, any final thoughts on your behalf? And can you tell the listeners particularly, guerrilla history listeners who don't listen to the Red Menace, but should, how they can find your work or anything that you want to direct them to as well. Yeah, so just real quick, thank you so much for having us both on here, Henry. This has been an absolute joy. And thank you, Francoise, so much. This has been an incredible discussion. And thank you for this text, honestly. It's definitely one I'll be recommending to people and studying ideally with others, because I think there's a lot of value

here. In terms of Red Menace, you can find us on Twitter. You can find us on most things. that podcasts are on. This month, we are actually covering two works by Alexandra Kolentai about, you know, kind of women's issues in Russia at the time, her thoughts before the revolution, and her thoughts after the revolution tracing some of the development of those ideas, the social basis of the women question and her fascinating text make way for waned eros, which I think gets into some of that imaginative work perhaps in a way that is quite useful. So that's what we'll be doing this month. You can check it out again on iTunes podcast app. I think we're on most of the major stuff.

And yeah, if you enjoyed this, hopefully we can have some conversations there that will also be helpful for thinking through these questions. And on my behalf and guerrilla history's behalf, you can find me personally on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-1-995. If you are a Red Menace listener

and don't listen to Gorilla History, check us out. We're on every podcasting platform app that you pretty much could think of. You can find us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, that's G-E-R-R with two R's, I-L-A. If you look up only one R, for some reason, it doesn't show up a lot of the time, even though it should.

In any case, it was a wonderful conversation. Really looking forward to hopefully talking with you both again in the relatively near future. And I guess the last thing I'll pitch then is things that are coming out on guerrilla history since you just did for Red Menace. Our last episode that came out is an episode with Andrew Liu talking about the development of capitalism in China and India through the story of the tea trade, a story of a commodity as the development of capitalism. Very interesting. We're also releasing one of our Patreon episodes this week. It's going to be on UFO, so something very out of left field for us, but hopefully something that listeners will have a fun time listening to.

We had a very interesting conversation. And our episode for July is going to be on another book from Pluto, which is Organizing Insurgency. I'm pulling it next to me, but I'm making noise doing so now I'm dropping stuff. Organizing Insurgency Workers' Movements in the Global South by Emanuel Ness, a fantastic book, fantastic conversation. So be sure to check us out, subscribe all of that. On that note, we're closed for now.

Listeners, until next time, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.