Why I Don’t Vote 1 Why I Don’t Vote 1 Frank B. Wilderson III October 17 th , 2016 There’s a cable television series I’m sure most of you are familiar with: it’s called Homeland and it’s about the trials and tribulations of a mentally ill, bipolar CIA officer named Carrie Mathis on. In one episode 2 her cover is that of an investigative journalist who convinces the nephew of an Afghan Taliban leader that she can get him out of Islamabad and help him find safe haven in England. She convinces him that the two of them must stay holed up in a secret apartment for three days as transport is being arranged for his safe passage. It’s all a lie. She’s really using him as bait to lure his uncle into a trap that she might assassinate his uncle. In point of fact, the apartment is a CIA safe ho use in which Carrie holds this young man captive. She then proceeds to seduce him; he thinks they are in the throes of some sort of love affair which is overdetermined by mutual consent. 3 In other words, he doesn’t know that he is being raped...repeatedly r aped...that his consent to this sex has been abrogated by the very structure of the conditions in which the sex takes place. It is a rape scenario because the sex that he mistakes for mutual attraction is really a series of multiple acts of aggression in whi ch his consent has been eviscerated, completely. The gun the White woman holds to his head needn’t be in her hand. In 1 Frank B. Wilderson III’s opening re marks in an ASUCI (UCI undergraduate student government) sponsored debate which took place on October 17 th , 2016. My opponent was Associate Professor Carole Uhlaner, from UCI’s Political Science Department. The student government asked both debaters to add ress the following question in their opening (15 minute) remarks: “ Is Voting an Essential Element of Change in a Democracy ”? 2 Season 4, Episode 5, “About a Boy.” 3 Determine , account for, or cause (something) in more than one way or with more conditions t han are necessary. i.e., "every gesture is overdetermined by cultural form, personal biography, historical contingency, and so on" Why I Don’t Vote 2 fact, the gun she holds to his head is not one weapon but the weapons of three million soldiers in uniform and their arsenal of drones and technologies of death. She forces sex upon him through her capacity; the capacity that her white skin embodies. Another way of saying this is to say that White desire is always already weaponized. She forces sex on him through the capacity that White bodi es have to weaponize White desire. The young Afghan man is fucked! He is fucked at every level of abstraction. The guns are in the bedroom (Carrie Mathison’s hidden pistol). The guns are also pointed at his head from outside in the street: the CIA operativ es who watch the house. And the guns are held to his head from high above, in the 9,000 drones that saturate the sky and track him as he makes his way back to Carrie’s genuine objective — his uncle, whom she hopes to murder at long range. We have, here, a p ristine example of the ways in which White femininity and White masculinity occupy the same structural position vis - à - vis a man or a woman of color. To paraphrase Frantz Fanon: the White family is the cut - out of the state. 4 And we can see how geopolitical agendas of the White nation cannot be disentangled from the sex life of White femininity and White masculinity. In other words, White sexuality is always already weaponized. To put it differently, but no less to the point, the United State of America is a big, bad rapist; a big bad rapist that projects the fantasy of its vulnerability onto Muslims, Mexicans, Native Americans and Blacks. Fanon discusses the rape fantasy of the White woman in great detail in Black Skin, White Masks . I won’t rehearse it here. For our purposes we should note 4 The paraphrase comes from Black Skin, White Masks the chapter titled “The Negro and Psychopathology.” In espionage parlance , a cut - out is a mutually trusted intermediary, method or channel of communication that facilitates the exchange of information between agents. Cutouts usually know only the source and destination of the information to be transmitted, not the identities of any other persons involved in the espionage process (need to know basis). Thus, a captured cutout cannot be used to identify members of an espionage cell. Why I Don’t Vote 3 that the rapist projects the fantasy of vulnerabili ty by suggesting that she or he is the victim of Islamic jihadism or the victim of Black agitation against cop killing. The big bad rapist would have us believe that Americ a is the victim; and underneath that phantasmagoric projection, underneath the fantasy of vulnerability, is a set of assumptions that America is indeed an ethical social and political formation; that the problems that America has are not structural, but ra ther, that they are performative (i.e., to be found in acts of discrimination or in the use of excessive levels of force). None of this would be a problem if not for the structure of violence that subtends this fantasy; the institutional violence that give s these fantasies what Professor David Marriott calls “objective value.” 5 Professor Jared Sexton gives a concrete explanation of David Marriott’s phrase “objective value” when he says, “You better understand White people’s fantasies [pause/repeat] because tomorrow they’ll be legislation.” 6 That’s what the law is: the White fantasy as objective value. The White family and the White state have the fire power and the institutional infrastructure to enforce their projections. What people of color get to do when they go to the polls is decide what flavor of this rape fantasy they are going to support. In words, of George Jackson “ An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die .” Voting is an important performance of dis possession for people - of - color who are not Black. But for Black people, voting is not just a performance of dispossession. We have to dig deeper and see how the very bedrock, the structure, the very paradigm of electoral politics is predicated on sexualize d violence against 5 See his book On Black Men 6 From a workshop Sexton conducted for Black undergraduate student orga nizers at UC Berkeley in 2000. Why I Don’t Vote 4 Black people. Sexualized violence against Black people is electoral politics’ condition of possibility ! Anti - Blackness is the genome of electoral politics. In short, anti - Blackness is the genetic material of this organism called the Uni ted States of America. The fantasy projections that have been weaponized to rape the young Afghan man would not be possible if the paradigm of the weaponization was not already in place prior to the conflict between Muslims and the USA ; and that weaponized paradigm is overdetermined by anti - Blackness. The U.S. government could become a democracy for people of color who are not Black (it’s not likely, but it is entirely possible); but if it ever rid itself of the central ingredient that overdetermines its co ndition of possibility — that is to say if the United States of America were to somehow not be anti - Black , then we would no longer have a country — the United States of America would cease to exist. I’ve explained how the USA is an anti - Black polity by using a synchronic analysis. I’m going to close by saying how it is also historically unethical: how the USA is diachronically anti - Black. A recent history book does this job of diachronic explanation, brilliantly. It’s called The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave - Breeding Industry , by Ned and Constance Sublette . A small portion of the book focuses on the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a prime example of a so - called “democratic” institution that owes its condition of possibility to the se xualized violence against - and captivity of Black people. Without the sexualized violence against and mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Black captives, Americans would not be Why I Don’t Vote 5 able to elect a U.S president. Thomas Jefferson would never have be come president. In the late 18th century, early 19th century, “389, 000 [that’s less than ½ million] ...African slaves, bred like horse s or sheep , became four - million e nslaved African - Americans. . . [T] he forced mating of slaves. . . gave slave states more vo ting power based on the number of slaves they held captive. ” ( from Ballinger ’s review of the book ) Virginia was the largest slave breeding states ; as a result it gained 25% of the 46 Electoral College votes. More than enough to send Jefferson to the White House. Let ’ s just stop and think about that for a moment. Slave breeding is a form of captivity that dwarfs the kind of captivity Muslims are subjected to in Guantanamo or in the “love nest” where the female CIA agent raped the young Afghan . How else can 389,000 people be made to procreate, under pain of torture of death, into 4 million people if they are not incarcerated and forced into sex? Slave breeding is a kind of forced sex that makes the words like rape and incarceration puny and inadequat e. The Afghan young man had a prior moment of freedom, and a prior space of consent, before the White women held him captive and raped him. For Blacks there is no prior space and time of freedom and consent: the freedom of all others — in the form of Elector al politics — owes its condition of possibility to the unfreedom (lack of consent) and sexualized violence against Black people. People of color experience this madness from time to time ; but the forced procreation of Blackness is the bedrock of this madness The young Afghan ’s rights were violated by the White woman; but the concept of rights that can be violated, or respected, rises up out of the breeding of Blacks like cattle. You can speak of prisoners ’ rights, but the term “slave rights” is an o xymoron. Why I Don’t Vote 6 Slave men were forced to impregnate slave women. And slave women, writes Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, were “raised in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear” (quoted in Sublette 21) “To own a slave was to have license to libertine behavior, because sexual violation was intrinsic to slavery. . . sexual use was part of the portfolio of privileges” (Sublette 34). Slave women and men had no consent to be violated. In other words, they were incarcerated everywhere and alway s; because, having no consent, they were captive to the violent and sexual whims of anyone, anywhere. All of this points to a paradigm of oppression; but not one in which Blacks were subjects who found themselves in a context of captivity which denied them most of their rights; but in which they were objects beyond the boundaries of any kind of rights discussion. An historical analysis of the Electoral College illustrates how Black people are political currency , not political actors And that is the paradig m of our, Black people’s existence today. Blacks are political currency, not political actors. I’ve only skimmed the surface of a case that I build in great depth in my books and articles. But I’ll end here with two quotes from two prominent Black thinkers and actors — quotes that crystalize what I have said this evening. The first is from Malcolm X, who said, “I’m not Democrat, nor a Republican, nor an American — and got sense enough to know it. Uncle Sam’s the criminal,” Malcolm X continued, “he created the p roblem. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court!” The second comes from Josephine Baker. Josephine Baker was famous Black singer, dancer, actor, and activist who renounced her American citizenship in 1937. Why I Don’t Vote 7 She became a c itizen of France and was also a highly decorated intelligence operative in the French Resistance. Josephine Baker said, “The very idea of America makes me shake and tremble and gives me nightmares.” [Repeat] Thank you!