White Ally

1. Morality is sometimes distinguished from ethics—perhaps fruitfully. Typically the distinction intended is the one indexing the difference between happiness as a function of the rule of association, and Morality as a come what may rule. Duty based ethics, often referred to as Kantian in essence, here takes the name Morality; and by this distinction even utilitarian ethics might pick up the tip. Given that anarchism is essentially anti-authoritarian, the best of anarchists mitigate the lacuna about back pocket morality with a healthy dose of irony, while the rest attempt to differentiate their versions of power-over as collectively constituted. It is no wonder then that Alessandro de Acosta has resurrected the difference between ethics (eudaimonia (the good life) or ataraxia (freedom from suffering)) and morality, as one that earmarks a rupturing of anarchist morality. Therefore, while it is not necessarily the case that morality and ethics must be distinguished, it is useful to see them as distinct, even if the original terms that clarify the difference aren't so. We follow De Acosta and reject Morality, choosing ethics; and what this means is that our project for living is not a priori—prior to experience—but is, rather, a muddling through without foregoing agency, a power-with; a growth of voluntary participation, so long as we find it works, which is our right to association—which doesn’t fail to include disassociation. Given this, what does it mean to reject the morality of white ally?—Obviously it is we who accept this will to morality especially if we ironically play the game of privilege. But if we adopt the principle of being performatively white, we watch ourselves domesticate ourselves in a matrix of power-with.

2. Given that the distribution of privilege is a function of a morality that divides, a margarine word in the writings of de Acosta, for the nihilist, the produced position of the one with power-to is always problematic in the network of power-with. To say nothing of rigidity, this word-machine fixes discourse—without style. Objectively speaking it is simple to say that X has an advantage over Y, given, say, various abilities; but the potential attribution of fitting into the way things are, which is the language of passing in society, is far from clear at two levels. The first point is the assumption of experience—that if you are white, you just get privilege—; the second point that is often left unaddressed, is whether one ought to desire to pass, a move that completely ignores the question whether one should. Following the problematizing here it it proposed that certain individuals just have potencies—unactualized actualities—that set them at an advantage. The principle of white ally as a Moral essence, ends in the one necessarily with power-to yielding to those without power-to so that power-with becomes a revolution-machine in which the white ally is a special and boxed in instantiation of white-performativity. I propose that just as the passing transgendered person is left unmarked and invisible in the gaze, what is meant by being white is that one passes as such. I can always make myself invisible by passing easily and without effort; but it’s tough to want to be perceived as fitting in, unless, of course, such is to my advantage. This is how we pragmatically have ethics, over and against being had by Morality: my power-to is mine, to do with what I will; it cannot be yours, unless I gift it.

3. The assumption of Moral essences ought to be replaced with the answer of ethical passing. But if the language of passing here is permissible, we can say that performativity is a matter of fit. Given that my body has a white cover to it, it is often assumed by other bodies that I fit into their project of success, or better, that I could more readily. But there is nothing normative about whiteness per se unless a morality is added: How one is white, and how one ought to be white. And only after this question is settled can we begin to discuss how one fits or fails to fit. “It’s easy to spot the white person”, you might say: “It’s skin tone, after all”. With the language of ethical passing, we might say, with a tone of jealously if we do not share the pertinent quality, that it’s easier for a white person to become invisible. But is it really so impossible to play society for the fool? To fit in as a civilized human? Its simple: just go to work, buy things, be normal, play the game, at whatever level of poverty you find yourself. Irony requires performative disguises; and it’s easy to neutralize yourself as a subject—which is what the state is trying to do anyways. The difficulty here is not that there is some quality that you possess to the exception of anyone else that stands in the way of being neutralized. The problem is that the whole fucking thing feels fucking gross. To be courageous enough to attack the state has nothing to do with determinations that follow from bodily constitution. This requires a choice and techniques of invisibility—even if you have a white cover. After all, the liberal term “terrorist” is colourblind.

4. For those of us that have our physical constitution covered in a colourless cover, are we supposed to perform whiteness? or are we to destroy the performance? Surely we are not going to try to mutilate our bodies. So, it is argued that if we perform as white, rendering ourselves invisible because of the passing power-to that a white substance carries, we can necessarily receive privilege that can be utilized in a power-with matrix. If we accept white-ally performativity and we adopt the principle of moral essence with its ends gestated in the belly of prefigurative politics, we filter our power-to into a form of power with. (From the consequences of adopting this moral principle, I think we can say: we pass for being white whether or not we are invisible; that if we fail to preform whiteness, we can still pass; and that if we destroy our performance, we become very visible, but never strictly outside the morality generated by privilege.—Importantly, it seems irrelevant if privilege politics fails to address this last difference given that the state hates back really well.) But being performatively white, is split according to ends and means, which casts a dark shadow on the possibility of prefigurative politics. Whitey is urged to performatively follow the conditioned means of the state, but to filter ends differently, for the revolution. One is urged to pass, and pass well, visibly; neither invisibly, nor visibly as a failure. Obviously these dictated behaviours only resemble an anti-authoritarian power-with if one sips the Kool-Aid. The important thing to remember is that power-over has many forms; and it may be the case that according to Uri Gordon, power-to is always the fixed gear, forever fighting power-over like a nihilist in a network of means without end. Such is where we start.

5. One might say, “different outputs, different principles; there cannot be an analogy between the state and the activist.” On the contrary, the liberal stands at the end of the just state, and in both cases, the state and the activist, a morality is given. In the case of the state, the given morality is a solidarity mechanism that occludes class difference by eroding its sense. In the other, in the case of the inverting activist, it is a prescription of performative whiteness as virtually wealthy, and therefore, as having a greater capacity to rise the ranks of privilege; to be a contributing sort in building power-with, in the broadest (and therefore most useless category). Becoming uncivilized, going against the grain of privilege is a starting point for a deepening into freedom; it is most certainly not a trajectory from whence one starts on the way to becoming moral and civilized. Instead, reject moralities, and opt for ethics. And so, we say that our possibilities, too, are away from the cities; and that, as such, privilege isn’t well defined.

Because the term freedom is more fundamental to our sense of life than collective self-sacrifice, we see privilege, in the reformist sense, to be civilized through and through, and that becoming uncivilized, becoming monstrous individualities, achieving qualitative success, is what it means to determine revolution. The inversion, rev-for-us, is something that anarchists accept because some of us are too weak to reject it and aim for our own liberated desires. We think there are better ways to orient oneself with respect to this inversion, precisely because the term ‘freedom’ is up for grabs. Being white is to maintain the way things are; and if one wants to see civilization razed to the ground, one is not only a bad whitey, given the state’s morality, but also a bad whitey given activist morality. The inversion that precedes us, our anarchist utopia—given to us by manufacturers of revolution—would delineate being a good whitey. The state may want this too. Since we neither have an idea how to define what we mean by revolution, nor wish to, to say that there are options plays rather well with the notion of living your life. Only a morality can say that one is failing the rev-for-us, whatever that means. This nihilist ruptures all of it by rejecting morality. And the reasoning might be that one doesn’t want to be a recuperable, reformed, assimilated. Being bad whitey, however the activist looks at it, could be a goal, if one cares enough to take a position. If, after all that, that were advantageous.