Saturday, August 17, 2024

What the Election of AMLO’s Protégé Means for Mexico



Saturday 17 August 2024, by Dan La Botz


So Sheinbaum’s election poses three major questions: Will she be a puppet of the former president? Will she continue his policies founded on authoritarian populism and increasing militarism? [1]1 And, finally, has AMLO recreated a new corporatist state that Sheinbaum will perpetuate?

The Mexican federal elections took place in less-than-ideal circumstances. There were by the end of April, some 30 assassinations of candidates, a dozen kidnappings, dozens of other death threats, and scores of violent attacks on political events and candidates. All of this is an expression of the pervasive criminal violence in the country due to the drug cartels that sometimes assassinate candidates who are not to their liking. In the state of Chiapas, rife with violence that AMLO has failed to prevent, [2] in a shocking incident, Sheinbaum herself was stopped at a checkpoint by armed men, one of whom told her, “When you get to power, remember the mountains, remember the poor people. That’s all we have to say. We are not against the government; we are here so you see the disaster that is Comalapa.” Comalapa is a small town in the Lacandón Jungle on the Guatemalan border that has been the scene of violence. AMLO dismissed the incident as “propaganda.”

The fairness of the election also remains in question. In 2022, AMLO’s supporters in Congress carried out a “reform” of the electoral system opposed by many sectors of society and particularly by human rights groups that warned the reform would make elections less fair. In addition, the new, weaker National Electoral Institute (INA, formerly IFE), had its budget and staff cut largely due to AMLO’s governmental austerity program, and became less effective. Though there was little doubt that Sheinbaum would win the election by an enormous margin, the INA’s reforms and lack of resources may affect congressional and local races.

There is also AMLO’s Trump-like domination of the media, working in the last few months to promote not only himself as usual, but also Sheinbaum’s campaign. His mañaneras, or morning press conferences, held nearly every morning for six years, were watched with love by 13 million people, about 10 percent of the population. They were also streamed by major media such as UnoTV, Grupo REFORMA, MILENIO, and NMás, often getting 70 million views in a nation with about 90 million adults. On Wednesdays, the mañaneras was dedicated to the questions “¿Quién es quién en las mentiras?” (Who’s who in the lies?) in which AMLO denounced the media and the reporters that dared to question him and his policies. He called them fake journalists, biased, even “scum journalists.” This in a country where during his presidency 37 journalists have been murdered and five more disappeared, often because they were reporting on the cartels and sometimes on their ties to government officials.

The Candidates and Coalitions

The left—that is, democratic forces, progressive social movements, and grassroots working people—had little or no role in this election. A small group of far-left political groups, unions, feminists, and LGBTQ activists have created what they call “an Independent, anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal Left Bloc, [3] but no left party has been able to achieve ballot status and no far-left candidates were up for election to major offices. Three candidates stood in the election held on June 2. Sheinbaum headed up the coalition called Suigamos Haciendo Historia, “Let’s Keep Making History.” The second candidate, Xochitl Gómez, heads the “Fuerza y Corazón por México,” or “Strength and Heart for Mexico,” made up of three former ruling parties, the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). And, third, Jorge Máynez represents the Movimiento Ciudadano or Citizens Movement Party.

We have to say a few words about the several parties that support these various candidates, though they will not be very nice words because there is little good to be said about them. Let’s take them up in reverse order, from the weakest to the strongest.

First, we have Jorge Máynez, the smiling, handsome young candidate of the Citizens’ Party, a middle-class party that claims to stand for political reform, but Máynez’s record belies that. He began his political career in 2010 in the Nueva Alianza, New Alliance Party, created by the powerful, ambitious. corrupt, and unscrupulous union bureaucrat Elba Esther Gordillo; his candidacy for the state congress of Zacatecas was also supported by both the corrupt PRI and the opportunistic Green Party. Later he was elected to the Mexican Congress, serving from 2015 to 2024, not noted for anything special, and then became head of the Citizen’s Party of which he was the presidential candidate.

Then we have Xochitl Gálvez, a businesswoman, the candidate of the “Strength and Heart” coalition made up of three former governing parties of Mexico. First, PRI, the party that governed Mexico under various names from its founding in 1929 until 2000, a nationalist, developmentalist, corporatist party that reached an accommodation with the bourgeoisie, dominated peasants leagues and labor unions, established a modus vivendi with the drug cartels, and ruled through corruption and violence. Second, PAN, the party of the Roman Catholic Church and big business, which governed Mexico from 2000 to 2012. And third, PRD, which originated from a reform movement founded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas within the PRI, and which later became an independent party in 1989—but within a decade became corrupt. (AMLO who had been a PRD leader left with a good chunk of its members and founded his party, Morena). These three parties making up the Gálvez coalition had become utterly discredited in the minds of a majority of Mexicans who deserted them to support AMLO and Morena. Gálvez played the populist card, claiming that her humble background gives her a better understanding of the common people and she promised to keep all social programs for the poor in place and to improve them. She failed to convince the Mexican people, most of whom saw her as the representative of the corrupt parties of the past.

Finally, we have Sheinbaum, the candidate of Morena, the handpicked successor to AMLO and dependent upon him. To understand her, we must know him. AMLO was for decades the charismatic, authoritarian leader of a populist party. He and his party have a broad base of support among Mexico’s working people and the poor, buttressed in part by the social programs he has promoted. Morena is full of ordinary people, peasants, workers, school teachers, and the lower middle classes who have put their faith in AMLO. At the same time, he made it clear over his entire political career and especially during his six years as president, that he wanted to be in the good graces of the U.S. government and to promote foreign and domestic capitalist investment. To call AMLO’s and Morena’s policies social democratic would be a mistake both because there is nothing democratic about him or the party and the social aspect is limited. This is the populist leader and the principal political party that has put Sheinbaum in power.

The other two parties in Sheinbaum’s coalition, are both politically corrupt satellites: the Green Party and the Labor Party. Mexico’s Green Party (PVEM) is an opportunist outfit that was previously allied with the then-leftist PRD and then later with the right-wing PAN. The Greens have no principles. The Labor Party (PT) has nothing to do with labor unions or socialist politics, but is a small Stalinist sect that once had a base among poor people in Chihuahua. Its thuggish leader Alberto Anaya sent greetings to Kim Jong Un in 2019, saying, “The Korean people’s heroic struggle for the country’s sovereignty and the dignity of the nation and peace of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world serves as a model of all the revolutionaries and the progressive peoples struggling for global independence.” Ugh.

Sheinbaum herself has many assets. She is a highly educated woman, trained as an environmental scientist. She is a youthful and attractive-looking 61-year-old woman, charming in her way, comfortable speaking to the press and to business groups, able to read a speech, if rather stiffly. Though she lacks the common touch, she can take selfies with supporters and gladhand the crowd. She was capable of holding her own, against Xochitl Gálvez in the national debate as each slung mud, accusing the other of corruption.

Antisemitism is pervasive in Mexico, and Sheinbaum has been the victim of it, though she doesn’t assert her religion or ethnicity. Mexican Jews work to keep a low profile. Former PAN president Vicente Fox baited her for being both Jewish and a foreigner because her grandparents were Bulgarian Jewish immigrants. Sheinbaum, her eyes on the political prize, responded by saying that her parents were born in Mexico and that she is “100 percent Mexican.”

Sheinbaum claims to be an environmentalist, the science in which she has been trained. Yet she has supported AMLO’s spending of several billion dollars for the construction of the new Dos Bocas oil refinery, arguing that it will make Mexico energy self-sufficient and provide cheaper gas for cars. Nor did she speak out when AMLO spent billions to upgrade several older refineries. Still, she says she will emphasize green energy alternatives in the future.

Though she has called herself a feminist, she has spent the last six years working with AMLO who has been widely criticized by the feminist movement, particularly for disregarding and even denying the problem of femicide, the high rate of murders of women that persisted during his presidency. And Sheinbaum has had little relationship to feminist activists, proving incapable of communicating with them. During her term as mayor of Mexico City, she came into conflict with the women’s movement activists of Okupa Cuba who had taken over a human rights office and radio station on Cuba Street in Mexico City to call attention to the issue of violence against women. Sheinbaum approved the dispatch of the police to evict them. [4]

Sheinbaum and the Legacy of AMLO

Sheinbaum is fundamentally an apparatchik and politician, a creature of the party and the state who dutifully worked her way up, first elected as head of a borough of Mexico City, later serving as AMLO’s secretary of the environment, and then as head of the Federal District, effectively the mayor of Mexico City. She inherits the role as head of the government, but she has not demonstrated any personal charisma and has so far not had an opportunity to govern independently. Some believe that AMLO, with his enormous popularity will continue to be the power behind the presidential throne. Mexicans may think back to the era of Plutarco Elías Calle, who served as president from 1924 to 1928, but then between 1928 and 1934 pulled the strings of three puppet presidents (Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo L. Rodríguez). Will AMLO pull Sheinbaum’s strings, or will she be her own person?

In any case, Sheinbaum is inheriting the governmental structures, the bureaucracy, policies, and the successes and failures bequeathed to her by AMLO. The most important development of AMLO’s six years as president was the increased militarization of the country. AMLO initially said he would deal with the cartels “con abrazos, no balas,” that is, with hugs not bullets, but the continued violence that took the lives of thousands led him to create a new national guard, originally made up of 60,000 soldiers that quickly grew to 100,000. This is in addition to the 260,000-member Mexican Army, and about 100,000 sailors and marines, and 500,000 notoriously corrupt police officers. Under AMLO, the army, the navy, the marines, and the national guard dealt with the cartels, handled immigration, owned and managed banks that distributed social welfare payments, and ran the airports and the new Maya Train.

All of these military and police forces failed to end the violence that has characterized Mexico since former president Felipe Calderón unleashed the drug wars in 2006. Conflicts among cartels and between the cartels and the authorities have since then taken an estimated 300,000 lives in addition to 100,000 or more kidnappings, and there are about 30,000 homicides every year. (The U.S. population of 333 million is more than two and a half times that of Mexico’s 127 million, but has about 26,000 homicides per year.)

The cost to the citizens of all this policing has been great. The United States under both presidents Trump and Biden maintained a close relationship with Mexico and its justice system. Yet the U.S. State Department itself reports that,

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings by police, military, and other governmental officials; forced disappearance by government agents; torture or cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; restrictions on free expression and media, including violence against journalists; serious acts of government corruption; insufficient investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting persons with disabilities.

Impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption. There were reports some government agents were complicit with international criminal gangs, and prosecution and conviction rates were low for these abuses [5]

AMLO proved unable to eradicate the cartels. Far from it. The drug cartels, one of Mexico’s five biggest sources of income (together with manufacturing, tourism, oil, and immigrant remittances), earn profits estimated between $13 billion and $50 billion per year and are believed to employ 175,000 people. There are no indications that Sheinbaum will reduce the role of the military nor that she has any other approach to dealing with the drug cartels.

AMLO’s failure to deal with the country’s violence forms part of a broader failing in terms of human right. Human Rights Watch’s report on Mexico in 2023 stated:

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in 2018, has made little progress in addressing Mexico’s serious human rights challenges, including extreme criminal violence, abuses against migrants, gender-based violence, attacks on independent journalists and human rights defenders, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings [6]

And the Successes She Inherits?

Sheinbaum also inherits what are seen as the major successes of AMLO’s regime. In foreign policy, AMLO’s primary preoccupation, like that of all Mexican presidents, was to maintain Mexico’s subordination to the United States on the best possible terms. For AMLO this meant a willingness to act to assist U.S. presidents Donald Trump and Joseph Biden in stopping Central American migrants on Mexico’s southern border in order to reduce the pressure on the U.S. border. Sheinbaum has said, “The relationship with the U.S. must be one of respect without subordination.” If so, she would be the first Mexican president to achieve that, but in reality, it is impossible given U.S. economic domination and political and military power.

Domestically AMLO focused on encouraging both Mexican and foreign investment in Mexico on completely normal capitalist terms. The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), ratified during AMLO’s term, provides the framework for $1.78 trillion in trade between the three countries in 2022, growing by 27 percent since 2019. While there have been many disputes among the three and while there have been some improved protections for labor, this is a standard capitalist business arrangement and there is otherwise nothing particularly progressive about it. Speaking to a group of corporate executives during her campaign, Sheinbaum told them that maintaining Mexico’s attractive climate for business was job number one.

The most frequently heralded progressive developments for which AMLO has been credited are the social programs, principally payments to the poor. As a candidate, AMLO had promised that he would put “the poor first.” His government abolished many universal government social programs and instead gave cash payments to certain vulnerable groups, particularly the elderly and students under 15 years of age. Money for the poor is distributed through 13,000 banks run by the military. While left governments as part of their concern for working people generally create social programs, some view AMLO as cynically using these programs to build support for his party, himself, and now for Sheinbaum. As Vanessa Rubio wrote in Americas Quarterly in late 2023,

To cement his popularity, the president has used social programs for clientelist purposes with great effectiveness, along with an appealing (albeit polarizing) narrative and strong disenchantment with the traditional political class. Welfare and pension program spending has tripled, from $8 billion in 2018 to $24 billion in 2023. Most resources are allocated to AMLO’s social programs, primarily a basic universal pension, youth education, and training program, “The Young Building the Future” (Jovenes Construyendo el Futuro).

But spending for these programs is expected to increase next year, an election year, by an additional 25%, reaching $30 billion, according to the 2024 budget submitted by the Finance Ministry early in September for Congress’ discussion and eventual approval. While their effectiveness is questionable—the programs reach a lower number of poor households compared to previous administrations, and only 50% are deemed to have an adequate design according to independent evaluator Coneval—these social programs have proven to be a political and public perception success. [7]

AMLO’s administration allocated billions to help the poor, but didn’t always spend all of it. Records of what was spent for social programs were not transparent, making it difficult to really understand their impact. Some fear that such targeted programs contributed to corruption, though the evidence for that was not clear either.

Some programs simply failed. The Young Building the Future signed up a million young people to get jobs but found work for only 15,000. Máximo Ernesto Jaramillo-Molina in an article titled “More for the Rich, Less for the Poor” argues that government data shows that—while more funds than ever are going to social welfare programs—significantly more of that money is going to the rich and less to the poor. And in 2020 Oxfam reported that 60 percent of Mexico’s poor were ineligible for three of the main social welfare programs. At the same time, military spending increased and often exceeded what had been budgeted. [8]

Mexico’s poverty and inequality are also in large part a result of the existence of a large informal economy made up of businesses or the self-employed. In both cases these are untaxed, unregulated, and not participants in the government’s social security institutions that provide workers with health care and pensions. These are men and women who work as street vendors, employees of small shops, or delivery workers directed by apps, among many others. Wages are generally low, but hard to measure. The informal sector represents 29 percent of the total economy, while informal employment represents 59 percent of total employment.

Human Rights Watch assessd the economic situation in 2023 in this way:

The poverty rate has fallen under López Obrador’s presidency, from 41.9 percent in 2018 to 36.3 percent in 2022, according to the official poverty analysis agency. However, extreme poverty has remained unchanged and the number of people without access to health care has more than doubled. Analysts have pointed to a major increase in the minimum wage and a near-doubling of remittances from Mexicans abroad as possible contributors to the drop in poverty. [9]

The formal working class—people with regular jobs with legally registered employers —did better under AMLO. His administration increased the national minimum wage from around US$4.40 per day to approximately US$5.00. In the border region, closer to the United States where things are more expensive, the minimum wage was set at US$9.00 per day.

Still, not all that much changed for the poor under AMLO. Julio Boltvinik, who writes the “Moral Economy” column for La Jornada, a paper that has supported AMLO, demonstrated that in August 2023 there were 98 million poor people in Mexico, just as there were when AMLO took office in 2018. And Sheinbaum plans to maintain AMLO’s policies.

Taxes are a related issue. AMLO refused to carry out a fiscal reform that would provide more money for social programs and government projects. Mexico has among the lowest taxes in Latin America, and the OECD reports that tax evasion in Mexico has been estimated to be around 27 percent of the total revenue of the main taxes, accounting for 3 percent of GDP. AMLO has not raised taxes on the rich nor done much to end tax cheating, both of which would be good governance if not structural reform.

The other major progressive accomplishment attributed to AMLO is the establishment of what we might call a new regime of labor union legality. And this is important and a genuine advance. When AMLO’s term began, almost all of those workers were controlled by a corporativist system of labor relations where the state protected its “official” labor unions, which in turn protected employers from real unions, keeping productivity high and wages low. Most workers could not vote for the union they wanted, could not vote on the contract, and risked their jobs if they spoke up. For the first time since the 1920s, independent labor unions can achieve legal recognition, workers can engage in strikes, and unions have greater protections thanks to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. USMCA protects workers’ rights to negotiate collective bargaining agreements without fear of state repression. USMCA provides a valuable tool. Most economists believe the general impact of the new treaty is negligible, but the USMCA Annex 23-A required Mexico to improve collective bargaining and Annex 31-A created the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism. [ [10]

There is a good deal of debate about whether or not AMLO in his six years in office nearly succeeded in recreating a corporatist party like that of the PRI, that is, a party based on control of both the party and mass organizations such as the labor unions that it controls. AMLO’s support for labor law allowed him to incorporate into his political operation reform-minded union leaders such as Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, head of the miners’ union, giving Morena a labor contingent of some significance. AMLO will, no doubt, want to see this process strengthened and extended, which would enormously enhance his party’s power. If under Sheinbaum the relationship between Morena and the unions strengthens, we could see the recreation of something like the PRI, but on the basis of an even more conservative political economy. The question is whether the unions can maintain their independence and internal democracy.

Perhaps once she sits on the presidential throne, Sheinbaum will become a strong independent leader and become the feminist and environmentalist she claims to be, capable of breaking with the authoritarian populist party and the militarist policies that AMLO has left her. Maybe she will prove to be a genuine progressive, left leader. But this seems pretty unlikely.

New Politics

P.S.

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Footnotes

[1] Dan La Botz, “AMLO’s Mexico: Fourth Transformation?” Against the Current, Sept./Oct. 2023.

[2] Dan La Botz, “At 30, the Zapatistas’ Future is in Question,” Solidarity website, February 21, 2024.

[8] Ramón I. Centeno, “Not a Mexican Pink Tide The AMLO Administration and the Neoliberal Left,” trans. by Mariana Ortega-Breña, Latin Amreican Perspective, 2023.

  • Dan La Botz

    Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

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Cultivating Combative Feminist Strength
August 17, 2024
Source: Ojalá


The image is released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0


Alessandra Chricosta is a small woman with an easy smile who practices martial arts and embraces philosophy as a way of life. She is Italian by birth, but circumstances led her to spend a decade in Vietnam.

Learning Vietnamese helped her understand differences between linguistic structures, which sometimes rely on contradictory forms of syntax. She insists languages rooted in Latin impose logical limits on thought based on the subject-verb-predicate relationship.

She challenges these limits in her work and strives to make linkages that connect diverse situations. The knowledge she begins with is that of her own body, its capabilities and movements, which nourish her philosophical reflection.

Her book, Contra el mito de la fuerza viril [Against the myth of manly strength], which she presented on August 9 at Volcana Lugar Común in Mexico City, comes out of this process.

In addition to studying philosophy in Rome, Chiricosta studied Southeast Asian philosophy. She draws a sharp distinction between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophies, one that situates her on fertile ground and allows her to engage debates on key contemporary issues including war, violence, self-defense and—her favorite—strength.

Shared strength

Chiricosta begins Contra el mito de la fuerza viril with a reflection on strength. She urges us to recognize that strength is not synonymous with violence and much less with war. While there is a kind of strength based on violence, one that naturalizes war and that is founded on the myth of male strength, she argues this definition undermines our capacity to understand other kinds of strength, particularly the combative strength of feminism, which is the central issue in her work and which she tries to cultivate in her daily political practice.

“When we say that war is a place of maleness, we are not saying that it is a matter of men, rather we are affirming that a certain form of being male—a toxic, patriarchal and oppressive form—has war as a model of creation and reference,” she writes.

For Chiricosta, strength is not necessarily oriented toward the annihilation or destruction of an enemy, whether known or fabricated, as is the case with violence and war. We must rethink our own strength, she writes, particularly that which we are capable of deploying from the singular and collective body, and we must practice and cultivate it in order to free it.

She calls this other kind of strength, “combative feminist strength,” and argues it reflects our ability to create connections between that which violence has torn apart. It is rooted in reconnecting with the abilities present in one’s own body. For Chiricosta, the ability to establish connections is a productive and disruptive force that can protect and dispute the spaces and relationships we have built. This is the power of combative feminist strength.

The author belongs to a generation of mature and yet still young women who draw from the struggles and work of predecessors such as Simone Weil and Carla Lonzi. These women did not use their abilities to insert themselves into the patriarchal world, but sought to overflow it, to erode it, or to boycott it. They managed to produce other abilities, to reconnect the singular body with other capacities and to gradually destroy the symbolic triad of patriarchy that condenses key actors in conflict to the positions of victim, executioner and redeemer.

In war, the dynamics of this triad harden: some are executioners, others are victims, and each party in the conflict claims to be a redeemer. We already know that the space of the victim is highly problematic, especially when it is understood only as helplessness and suffering. We also know that those who suffer the harshest violence are never only victims, but that they renew, under very difficult conditions, their ability to resist.
Breaking the silence

Chiricosta strives to put this silenced energy into words, naming it “combative strength.” Based on the practice of self-defense, it calls for the recovery of our center of balance, reconnection with our bodies and their abilities and the destabilization of aggressors by attacking them at their weakest points.

One of Chiricosta’s breakthroughs is to interrupt the patriarchal symbolism that encourages the repetition of events by hardening their positions into opposites (for example, the executioner claims to be the victim while both parties in conflict claim to be redeemers). And that is no small matter.

The Italian philosopher also draws from Vietnamese women’s experience of struggle and combat. With their male comrades, Vietnamese women fought a long battle against colonization, first against the French and later against the United States. The Vietnamese won victory in 1975, forcing invading armies to retreat.

Almost half a century later, war is once again spreading to different parts of the world.

Hence the relevance of rethinking the “other kind of strength.” According to Chiricosta, cultivating and freeing the capacities of our bodies how we can challenge and break the limits imposed by the multiple and intertwined dominations that ensnare us.

The author concludes with a discussion of the “Amazonian war strategy,” which is based on “unforeseen subjects” bursting onto a battlefield to alter it and break it down. Put this way, it seems very simple, although it alludes to something extremely difficult to put into practice.

Breaking up the battlefield—altering it—implies not doing battle with the aggressor on symmetrical terms. Rather, she writes, it requires maintaining a clear reading of context and refusing the terms in which the confrontation is imposed.

Alessandra Chricosta. Contra el mito de la fuerza viril. Autodefensa en clave feminista. Translation: Gilda Vignolo and Diego Picotto. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limon. 2023.

Alessandra Chiricosta will present Contra el mito de la fuerza viril in Puebla on August 23 at Terraformar. Raquel Gutiérrez and Márgara Millán will participate in the discussion as well.

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar  has participated in various experiences of struggle on the South American continent, works to encourage reflection and the production of anti-patriarchal weavings for the commons. She is Ojalá’s opinions editor.
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WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM

KURDISTAN 


Interview with Çiğdem Doğu, KJK: Questioning Male Hegemony and Becoming Oneself

In the quest to dominate society and woman the capitalist system has systematically removed us from ourselves, from our own identity. A person who knows oneself will also understand the system. Cigdem Dogu, a member of the KJK (Komelen Jinen Kurdistan, Kurdistan Women’s Community) Executive Council answers and poses questions on the struggle to get to know oneself as a woman and as a human being and explores “xwebun” the Kurdish Movement for Freedom’s concept of “becoming oneself”.


 Interview from 29 April 2024.
August 17, 2024
Source: Academy of Democratic Modernity


"To achieve “xwebun” is to be yourself, to be a comrade with women, to be harmonious with your society, identity and a free life." - Çiğdem Doğu | Image via Academy of Democratic Modernity



As KJK, we have a long history of struggle. The body and spirit of this struggle came to life with the principles of PAJK (Partiya Azadiya Jinen Kurdistane, Party of Free Women in Kurdistan). How do you evaluate these principles? And can we call this a struggle for “xwebun”?

We have fifty years of history since martyr Sakine Cansız joined the PKK, thirty-seven years since the establishment of our first women’s organisation YJWK (Kurdistan Patriotic Women’s Union), thirty-one years since the establishment of our first women’s army, twenty-five years since the first initiative of our women’s party, and nineteen years since our transition to the confederal system with KJK. The free women’s identity and approach created by Sakine Cansız, which met with Reber Apo’s (name used for Abdullah Öcalan within the Kurdish Freedom Movement) line in the PKK, has determined our history of women’s struggle for freedom. For this reason, in the words of Reber Apo, our women’s liberation struggle is the way, fight and identity of comrade Sakine Cansız. The women’s freedom march in Kurdistan has always been marked by Sakine Cansız’s life of struggle and love for humanity. We first learnt the truth of becoming oneself from her; her fighting personality that never bowed to fascism, colonialism or male domination, as well as her immense love for comradeship, humanity and free womanhood, and her modesty, guided us and gave us the strength and determination to walk on this path. Therefore, at all decisive points of our women’s liberation struggle, we encounter the truth of Sakine’s self realisation, her experiences and legacy – her trace.

Our Kurdistan women’s democratic confederal system emerged with the struggle of becoming oneself. It was developed at great cost. Tens of thousands of our female comrades have shed blood and sweat for this cause, and have revealed their identity as free women after struggling with immense adversity. Kurdish women did not theorise the reality of becoming oneself whilst sitting at a table. In the middle of the war, in the prison cells, on the streets, within the family, at school, at work, wherever they exist – they have experienced and theorised it with collective mind, collective heart, collective organisation and struggle – paying a price at each step. The ideology of women’s liberation and women’s partisanship emerged out of these experiences and heritage, revealing the principles on which the reality of becoming onself should be built. The women’s liberation struggle has been carried out in line with the five principles of PAJK (Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Party) and its Women’s Liberation Ideology; love for the homeland, free thought and free will, struggle, organisation, and ethics-aesthetics, all of which aim to instil a consciousness of selfhood among women individually and across the female gender. This struggle has passed through different epochs and phases, and has reached the stage of establishing women’s self-government in society. Such a struggle cannot be considered independently of the truth of becoming oneself.

1) How do you think the identity of “xwebun” has become an expression of Kurdish women and society?

Imagine that you exist in a social, cultural and national reality that has pioneered the development of human history, but you have no name, no language, and no country. Yet, you have existed for thousands of years. You are the woman of an unnamed country that has been colonised by being torn apart. Identity-less women of an identity-less country. The Kurdish woman lived a reality in which the colonising states imprisoned her within the family and assigned the colonised Kurdish masculinity as a guard. She was in a situation where the colonial power and the male-dominated power jointly usurped her will, and she was de-identified twofold. This deep contradiction experienced by Kurdish women has also brought with it a great potential and quest for freedom.

In fact, it is very striking that when the PKK began to emerge on the ground in Kurdistan, the mothers and young women embraced it readily, and began to see and feel their own existence and future reflected in it. The fascist Turkish state had no tolerance for even hearing the word “kurd”; its only reflex against the phenomenon and concept of kurdishness was – and still is – massacre, oppression and violence. Therefore, to speak of kurdishness at that time meant facing the most severe oppression, and it required a great deal of courage, especially for women, to move towards such an awareness and to attempt to fight for the cause. It was in this environment that Sakine Cansız took the lead and set a brave and conscious example in terms of the participation of women and mothers.

Women began to find themselves within the PKK reality. Until the third PKK congress in 1986, there was no specific evaluation or women’s organisation formulated. In general terms, the theoretical approach did not go much beyond the framework drawn by real socialism. However, Reber Apo’s practical approach was to involve women without hesitation in any work, and to develop more original sites of organisation to strengthen the involvement and development of women. The third congress, the formation of a women’s organisation called YJWK in 1987, and the development of an analysis of women and family in Kurdistan in the same period, marked a turning point in our women’s struggle. The process that followed developed step by step.

Women moved towards a more authentic and autonomous organisation both in the guerrilla and in society, becoming more competent at every step.

Our women’s struggle came to life as the women’s army, women’s organisation, women’s liberation ideology, women’s party, and democratic confederalism of women in the form of specific and autonomous organisation within the scope of the general organisation. In 2008, this culminated in Reber Apo’s conceptualisation of “Jineoloji” as the science of women. All these processes, which we have very briefly summarised, were the processes in which women in Kurdistan recognised, discovered, and realised themselves. In other words; in our struggle, women have progressed and continue to advance on the path of becoming themselves, of self realisation, with their self-defence, organisation, struggle, love and defence of the homeland, the power to think freely and produce politics, and their consciousness . Of course, this struggle will continue as long as the male-dominated system and individuals exist. It will continue until all women and the society in Kurdistan, the Middle East and the world are liberated.

The women’s revolution taking place in Rojava today is the most concrete and visible manifestation in the social sphere of the struggle to become oneself. Here, the democratic nation project and the democratic confederal style of organisation come to life as direct democracy. And within this system, women endeavour to occupy a space in all areas of life. Through co-chairing, through equal representation of power, women articulate themselves and implement decision making power in every area of life, while developing their unique and autonomous organisation within society. From economy to health, education, ecology, justice and self-defence; women play a role that strengthens and democratises both their gender and society as a whole. Currently, candidates are being selected and preparations are being made for the municipal elections that will take place in May. While Kongra Star enters these municipal elections in alliance with the PYD, it determines its candidates through primary elections. Women themselves choose the female candidates in the primary elections, which is a very important example and model. Women determine their own female co-mayor candidates, while electing the co-mayors, which will foster self-governance. They are chosen based on women’s principles and criteria.

The reality of becoming oneself which has emerged for the Kurdish woman is the acquisition of a meaning and identity with its own unique and autonomous organisation. This identity both defends itself and wages struggle, and most importantly, is utilised in establishing a free life. It is not only a theoretical, philosophical and ideological concept – it is a reality that is lived in the most meaningful and beautiful way.

2) How do you evaluate the identity of Xwebun and its links with the philosophy of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”?

The philosophy of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”, in which the phenomena of life, women and freedom are considered holistically, requires a deep understanding. After the execution of Jîna Emini by the Iranian regime, these words gained a universal echo, embedded in the wave of struggle sweeping across the world. It became our common voice, our word. Because of the depth of its meaning and liberating power, because it touched women and men in search of freedom, because it impassioned consciousness and hearts, it rippled across the globe.

For years, we chanted the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” on the mountain tops and in the guerrilla areas and blessed our struggle with these meaningful words. With the Rojava revolution and then the murder of Jîna Emini in Rojhilat (East Kurdistan), this slogan began to pour like a flood, breaching every dam and cascading into a wider-reaching terrain. Because these were the words and voice of freedom, of true love, of those who wanted to overcome all falsehoods and artificialities, and to reach the truth. It was filtered through a process of struggle on the ground in Kurdistan that is very difficult to explain and describe. This philosophy manifested and blossomed in the mountains, on the streets, in the prisons, in the cries of women and children of evacuated villages, in “serhildans” (uprisings), in the battle cry of Beritan (1) on the cliff edge, in the spirit of Zilan (2) in the Dersim square, in the last words of thousands of young women and men. Moreover, this energy could not contain itself, it could not stop at its borders – it began to surge beyond its confines towards new lands to form new synergies. This deluge continues to flow in the most valuable way.

Because this philosophy expressed being, or Xwebun, in Kurdistan, Xwebun is also the other, the other with its power of social relationship, its communality. Therefore, as Xwebun becomes Xwebun, it attains a dialectic that meets the other, completes itself with the will of the other, re-creates itself, in a constant process of creation. While Reber Apo described the human as the incomplete god, he also described god as the completed human. The incomplete human-being always wants to make themselves whole; what they actually seek is to do so with life, society, human beings, nature, women and men, with their free will. The dialectic of Xwebunisation instigates this feeling and consciousness in human beings, and at the same time, this feeling and consciousness advances the search for organisation and struggle in order to will. It incites the feeling of struggle against that reality which destroys the will, which oppresses, exploits, falsifies, distorts and conceals freedom and truth. This statism and its weapons are killing my ability to become myself, and my process of Xwebun with my national, gender, religious, cultural, linguistic and social identity. If the main obstacle to me being me is the forces of power that are enemies of life and freedom, then the first thing I must do is fight against this obstacle. This is where the reality of women, the fundamental subject of life and freedom, comes to the fore. Because life, will, freedom and intrinsic nature were decimated by destroying women first. A life without women has no meaning, no freedom, no naturalness, beauty or simplicity.

Consequently, in order to make sense of life, to freely be yourself, to be become oneself, it is necessary to fight for life and freedom by placing women’s freedom and struggle in the centre. This necessity applies primarily to women, but men will also find themselves in this position. Life will be meaningful and beautiful as society develops the dialectic of the free and meaningful relationship between the sexes with the actualisation and liberation of women and men’s identities. I would like to point out, again, that to be capable of this requires a great determination to struggle, to organise, a love for humanity; drinking the sweet and real syrup of society-humanity, not the poisonous syrup of the powers that be. Its beauty lies in experiencing how it feels to develop the strength, courage and consciousness to overcome the limits set for us. In Reber Apo’s words, it is hidden in the risk of “a fight worthy of Prometheus”, in cultivating the courage to walk on the edge of cliffs, in the power to transform fight into love and love into fight. Not with the touch of the magic wand of fairy tales, but with the love of struggle, with the dialectic of “hebun-zanabun-xwebun” (existence, knowing, and becoming oneself), we can overcome the poisonous ‘seductive’ life of the powers, capitalist modernity, and realise the construction of free women, free men, free society, and develop our symbiotic relationship with the already free nature. We can create brand new synergies.

3) Is it possible to create a free individual, a free woman and a free society without the identity of “xwebun”?

Being natural, that is, being truly oneself, is a very important, existential characteristic of every being in nature, in every living creature as well as in human beings, both men and women. In the plant and animal kingdoms, there is not a problem of being oneself, of “xwebun”. They have not been corrupted by the ruling fictional analytical intelligence – although their existence is endangered by its effects. Some species are heading towards extinction, but apart from some over-domesticated animals, they are not distanced from their own existential structure, degraded, or assimilated.

In the structure of human society that is neither hegemonic or dominated by masculinity, this degradation does not exist; sociality is the self, which preserves and develops its naturalness with its moral and political structure. As a matter of fact, the remains of the Neolithic period tell us clearly that the initial structure of society preserved this naturalness. All these remains, albeit in different geographies, show that the natural social structure does not have the characteristics of exploitation, power, perpetual wars, domination such as oppression, or inequality. It also shows that the relations between men and women are not characterised by domination, violence, inequality and a lack of freedom. We understand that these societies and the individuals living within them are themselves in all their naturalness, they are in “xwebun”. That is to say, the primary character of the human and society has a moral and political structure, and with this structure, it is itself, there is no deformation or degradation. Sociality, and the continuation of the physical existence and metaphysical structure of the individual within this sociality, is also linked to this character.

With the five thousand year old male-dominated system, this naturalness has deteriorated and started to cease. When we consider that for five thousand years the histories of democratic civilisation and hegemonic civilisation have continued to flow like two forks of a river, we see that the forces of democratic civilisation have tried to preserve their original structure on the one hand, and on the other hand, they have suffered deterioration. However, we know very well from the legacy of liberatory and moral resistance that has been left to us that there has not been total destruction or total surrender to the forces of the ruling hegemonic civilisation.

Although the forces of capitalist modernity insist on destroying this heritage, and they attack women, peoples, and the oppressed, they cannot and will not be destroyed. The energy of resistance, like all energies, is indestructible. The river of democratic civilisation has carried and continues to carry us in the spirit of life, freedom, courage and resistance. For this reason, women, peoples and oppressed groups as the forces of democratic modernity are taking action in every region of the world against the forces of capitalist modernity.

Especially in our era, the forces of capitalist modernity attack on the basis of destroying the truths that make a human human, society a society, and even nature nature, without recognising any limits and measures. It is trying to remove man from being human, society from being society, nature from being nature, and life from being life. It separates women and men from their own nature. It tries to evade them of their human identity. The foremost need is to regain our social and human nature, and for this, it is necessary to overcome the capitalist system, its policies, its state and non-state methods of attack, its ideological structure that distorts the truth and effectively separates us from our nature, and to develop alternatives.

How can we build a life worth living, a free life, if we cannot analyse what this capitalist system – the hegemonic male system – has made us lose? How it deceives us, and how it builds the reality of a false life and relationships? How can we be ourselves if we cannot develop as meaningful human beings, meaningful women and men who seek a meaningful life, with its organised and combative dynamics? How can we meet our truth, the truth of becoming oneself? For this reason, as you stated in your question, the construction of free women, free men and free society cannot be realised without the search for oneself. And one cannot be oneself without the struggle to build free women, free men and free society. In today’s world, where the doomsday bell tolls, the struggle to save humanity, nature, women and men can only be possible by confronting the reality of the capitalist system, which spreads poison and death, which gives birth to violence at every moment, and by attaining the eternal divorce from it.

When we consider it from the female dimension, it is necessary to see the intoxicating poison offered by the system like a sweet syrup to women under the guise of freedom and equality, and to vomit it up and break away from it. Questioning, in every aspect, the hegemonic male system and male individuals who have become the servants of this system, recognising the obfuscations and tricks that create the illusion of freedom: breaking away from male domination is the basis of the struggle for becoming oneself. The reality of women who find and recreate themselves, who can be themselves, can develop the power to transform both society and men from the power of change they create in themselves. It can expand the capacity and values of living together and pave the way for free individuals and free relationships. As we increase this struggle, the space of the hegemonic male system, the capitalist system, will narrow – and the capacity for free life, free women and free men will expand. The revolutions of our age have to develop in such a way. For this reason, it is of great importance that every individual who opposes this system and seeks emancipation develops the struggle and expands the areas of freedom wherever and whenever they are. The more each person increases their own struggle for becoming themselves, the more male domination and the ruling system will regress and collapse.

4) How can the identity of “xwebun” create bonds between women in terms of internationalism? And what is your call to the forces opposed to the system in this regard?

In our age, we see that a struggle that develops locally can quickly become universal, leading to regional and global effects. We have seen this clearly, especially in the unfolding women’s struggle, in the mobilisations, in the rapid convergence of the slogans and results. The women’s struggle finds and affects one another, whether we physically recognise each other or not. Women’s resistance quickly leads to a collective energy and synergy. It is noteworthy that during periods when the women’s struggle intensifies and radicalises, the dominant male system implements its strategies and tactics, and the intensity of struggle is dispersed and interrupted. While the pre-coronavirus pandemic period was a time in which the women’s struggle was radicalised and peaked in a universal sense, an atmosphere was created with the pandemic in which everyone was confined to homes, where all kinds of relationships posed a threat of death through the virus, and women’s organisation regressed. The confinement of every woman at home intensified male violence and created a situation where state authority and control became completely dominant. After the pandemic, there was a discontinuity in the activism of women’s movements. There was a pause in co-operation.

As women, what will establish us as a real strength is to create possibility of uniting with women of every culture, every belief, every language on the basis of being themselves, achieving “xwebun”. As the women’s identity that emerges in its own space, in its own locality, meets with other women’s identities, other women struggling for becoming themselves, by struggling for this unique true identity, by developing and strengthening it, our power will grow. In this way, we need to develop a ground where every woman-to-women movement can both preserve its identity and meet in the identity of a broader women’s organisation. Only by developing such an organisation can we resist the global domination of the hegemonic male system, its policies and wars, and develop our alternatives. And we argue that this must take the form of a democratic confederal organisation of women. The more we can integrate women’s organisations in a democratic confederal bond, the more our network of relations and our organisation will grow. If we can develop the system of women’s self-governance, women’s communes, women’s assemblies, women’s academies and communal economies greater within the geographies where we live, and if we can elevate this confederal organisational power towards regional and worldwide unity, then we will be more successful. A women’s reality that cannot govern itself, that cannot develop its own system of life, economy, health, education, law, media, culture, art, science and faith, cannot survive the violence of hegemonic masculinity and the massacres that are implemented in different forms. It always experiences a state of victimisation, of always being a victim. To the extent that we prevail over what makes us powerless and defenceless, that which makes us prisoners of this system, we can create our own alternative and build a free life, free women and free men with the understanding of democratic confederal organisation.

My call is based on meeting with all women comrades in this organisational model that will unite and increase our power. Both strengthening ourselves in our own locality – through the democratic confederal style of organisation – and integrating with the women of other geographies through the democratic confederal style of organisation could be the main approach to save us from the apocalypse of our age. Discussing this issue more, putting it on the agenda and taking concrete steps will be very important in terms of amplifying the legacy of women’s resistance and carrying it to future generations.

To achieve “xwebun” is to be yourself, to be a comrade with women, to be harmonious with your society, identity and a free life. It is to live in the moment with history and the future, with combativeness and production intertwined in each moment towards a free life. It is our human obligation to weave women’s love in the most beautiful patterns with women’s comradeship, to imbue it and animate it with life’s most beautiful colours. Whether we know each other or not, I greet with love and respect all my women comrades whose hearts are beating for freedom and being themselves, and I wish success for women in their quests for victory.


References

(1) A female guerilla fighter who chose to throw herself of a cliff rather than fall into the hands of the enemy forces.

(2) A member of the Kurdish Freedom Movement who committed an action against a military parade in Dersim, Kurdistan.


Çiğdem Doğu

Cigdem Dogu is a member of the KJK (Komelen Jinen Kurdistan, Kurdistan Women’s Community) Executive Council.

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Against Praecisio Mundi

August 15, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





The Latin expression, praecisio mundi, precision of the world, has a long history in Western philosophy, acquired renewed notoriety since Descartes and more in the 19th century with positivism. In this text, I argue that it is acquiring a new and problematic importance. Etymologically, praecisio derives from the Latin verb praecidere which means to cut off, to mutilate, but over time the term acquired a positive meaning – precision: to express oneself briefly, to be clear, to be precise, to leave out the superfluous. In Western modernity, the concept has come to mean the elimination of everything that is considered obscure or confusing, from theological metaphysics to mythical-poetic thought and vernacular, popular communication. Precision, as an expression of what is rigorous, has come to be identified with everything that is predictable, measurable and quantifiable. For modern science, precision is the raison d’être of scientific work and, with positivism, the concept of precision achieved its maximum legitimacy. According to Auguste Comte, in the first version of his positivist manifesto, published in 1822, it was considered precise and therefore positive: what was real and not imaginary; useful and not idle; certain and not doubtful; not vague, indeterminate or inexact. The epistemic leap occurs when precision is identified with truth. What is imprecise cannot be true. The hegemony of modern science as the only valid knowledge meant that everything that wasn’t true (precise) for science was considered disposable, if not dangerous. The problem was never the idea of rigor (which is desirable and necessary), but what was meant by rigor and the criteria that underpinned it.

Since the beginning (perhaps with Thales of Miletus in the 6th century BC), the concept of precision has been the subject of controversy. From the Sophists to the Romantics, from the debates on quantitative sciences (explanation) and qualitative sciences (understanding), from quantum physics to astronomy, the limitations imposed on the concept of precision, the suspicion of subjectivity that can surreptitiously underlie it and, above all, the importance of what can be amputated by the scissors of precision have been contested. This contestation will reach a level of existential discussion in the near future as artificial intelligence and its privileged instrument, algorithms, become the condition of effective precision in our time. The debate has already begun and will certainly reach its maximum in areas such as complex medical interventions and lethal weapons in theaters of war.

A deeper reflection shows that precision has a validity today that goes far beyond these areas. It is now one of the pillars of the spirit of the age. True to the epistemic perspective I have been adopting, the epistemologies of the South, I am interested in identifying the sociology of absences (in the form of amputations or mutilations) that the concept of precision feeds on. Without any concern for exhaustion, I will briefly discuss two amputations or mutilations. Others will follow. I refer to the Latin designations to show where they come from.

Ancoras praecidere/cutting off the ties

The theme of cutting off the ties is a leitmotif of all Eurocentric modernity and took on the character of an almost categorical imperative with Nietzsche. Cutting off the ties means freeing the modern human being’s boat so that he can sail, take risks, venture out and innovate. Literally, cutting off the ties is what Portuguese, Spanish and later other European navigators are said to have done when they set sail in search of the so-called New World. In Gaia Science, Nietzsche advocates leaving and cutting off the bridges with everything that has been left behind, namely the entire ontological, metaphysical and theological burden with which Western culture has been constituted. And the fundamental break is with God: God is dead and it was humans who killed him. The nihilistic void will be filled by Zarathustra’s superman. Nietzsche’s provocation has vanished into thin air, but other avatars of God seem to be on the horizon. Artificial intelligence and algorithms are destined to be the superman of our times. If you ask ChatGTP what God is, you’ll be led to the conclusion that belief in God has been replaced by belief in the algorithm.

Cutting off the ties means amputating the epistemic, social and cultural wealth of the world to an unimaginable degree, not only of the non-Western world that was colonized from the 15th century onwards, but of everything that was cut off from Western culture and philosophy because it was not useful to the cause of colonization. The memory and history of those who cannot forget is lost. Unconditional authority is given to those who don’t want to remember. And if precision is increasingly conditioned by so-called artificial intelligence, the neo-colonial extractivism on which it is based (the construction of big data and the biases that inhabit all algorithmic construction protected by patents), it is possible that praecisio mundi will tragically end in praecisio mortis mundi (precision of the end of the world).

Linguam praecidere/cutting out the tongue

I’m not referring here to the literal use of cutting out the tongue as a form of punishment for certain crimes in the ancient world. Metaphorically, cutting out the tongue has had multiple meanings, such as forbidding the use of certain words or languages (blasphemy), or demanding the precision of terms as an expression of the precision of thought (philosophy, science) or of the authority of those who pronounce (oracles, fatwas, encyclicals, codes). The search for precision or correctness in language always implies the amputation or mutilation of what is excluded and the exercise of control over what is included. Depending on the type of power on which this control is based, amputation has sometimes been odious, sometimes virtuous. The Inquisition (the burning of books and often their authors) and all the dictatorial political regimes that imposed censorship and forbade dissent were, and continue to be, the most odious forms of language amputation in the name of orthodoxy and dogmatism.

With the advent of modern science, the amputation of language – which Galileo had pioneered by proclaiming the superiority of mathematical and geometric language – became the only way to achieve the virtuous precision of language, identified as the only expression of truth. Positivism took this legitimacy to a paroxysm. The costs of mutilating language in the name of precision were always denounced, both because the criteria of precision were disguises for imprecision (Schopenhauer) and because the mythical-poetic, aesthetic and religious dimensions were relegated to the disposable world of confusion and obscurity, as many philosophers and poets have pointed out.

But these denunciations missed many other forms of mutilation that led to an impoverished understanding of the world. First and foremost, orality became an inherently imprecise and therefore disposable linguistic vehicle. In the peoples colonized by Europeans, oral culture dominated, and continued to dominate for a long time. Precisely because it was oral, it was the target of what I call epistemicide, the destruction of orally transmitted knowledge from generation to generation. The precision of scientific knowledge did not necessarily have to lead to this destruction. It was enough for science to be considered valid knowledge, but not the only valid knowledge. On this basis, it would be possible to critically value different knowledges (their possibilities and limits), recognize the different concepts of rigor, seek dialogues between them in order to increase intercultural interknowledge of the world – what I have called the ecology of knowledges. But that’s not what happened. On the contrary, with positivism the monoculture of science was fully enshrined and scientific precision became the sole criterion of truth. However, since all systems of knowledge are incomplete and cannot answer all questions, science, as the only valid knowledge, became both a system of knowledge and a system of ignorance. Since science can only answer scientifically formulated questions, ignorance lies in questions that cannot be scientifically formulated. Why are we in the world? What is the meaning of life? Do our ancestors live with us? Why, being finite, are human beings the only ones who think about the infinite? Are they? What is the difference between hearing and listening deeply? Between seeing and seeing the invisible? Why does a good poem touch us more deeply than any scientific article? What is spirituality? Is the truth of a mystical experience reduced to the psychological state it manifests?

The mutilation of language in the name of science has brought with it some perversities that deserve attention. I’ll list two. Firstly, scientific rigor has created a culture of linguistic patrolling that turns against science itself (and its truth) when it doesn’t subscribe to it. Examples of this are the proliferation of fakenews, political correctness and the cancel culture. Secondly, the patrolling of scientific correctness by anonymous reviewers (of unknown knowledge and ignorance) and based on quantitative criteria of rankings and impact is destroying scientific curiosity and creativity. Revolutionary science, in Thomas Kuhn’s terms, has become unfeasible. For these reasons, scientifically formulated questions are still important, but they are of interest to fewer and fewer people, they are increasingly trivial, guided by interests that escape the scientists themselves and have nothing to do with improving human and non-human life, which was the original aim of science.

1. In the 1980s, the existentialist philosopher Wolfgang Janke wrote a short text entitled “Postontologie” in which he presented the first critical analysis of praecisio mundi. This text was published in Spanish on the initiative of Colombian philosopher Guillermo Hoyos Vasquez under the title Mito y Poesia en la crisis en la modernidad/postmodernidad: postontologia. Buenos Aires: La Marca, 1995. Janke returned to the theme in Kritik der präzisierten Welt, 1999 and, finally, in Fragen die uns angehen, 2016. The initiative of Guillermo Hoyos, unjustly forgotten today, was recently recalled by Yuri Jack Gómez-Morales “La praecisio mundi. La medición de la ciencia y el recorte de la universidad como proyecto cultural.” Ideas y Valores 70, Supp. no. 7 (2021): 111-121.


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Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. His most recent book is Decolonizing the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice.
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