Risen: a philosophy of strength
There is a tendency in queer theory to lump all binaries under false consciousness. Binary thinking, so it goes, is inherently flawed. There is no either/or, there is only both/and. While I appreciate and practice the queer critique of binary logic, the absolutism of rejecting all binaries strikes me as essentialist and reductive, as if every binary is a stand-in for every other.
Let us take the example of positive and negative emotions. I was criticized by a colleague for my use of the term “negative emotions” in my description of Despair Sanctuary. The word “negative,” she said, stigmatizes despair, when my event purportedly rejects such stigmatization. I understand the point that she made, but I think it reflects a lack of understanding of the actual experience of despair.
“Positive” and “negative” are quantitative terms. They refer to things that can be measured. To use an analogy, bread bakers understand that yeast has a rising effect for dough, and salt has a constrictive effect. Dough will expand according to the proportion of active yeast within it, and contract according to the proportion of salt. In this way, for dough, yeast can be seen as positive and salt as negative. Likewise, water for soil makes plant growth possible, but lead in the soil causes decay. So for plant life, water is positive and lead is negative. Similarly, emotions can be uplifting or constrictive. Excitement for Christmas gets children out of bed at dawn, while dread for school pressures them to stay in bed as long as possible. So excitement is positive and dread is negative.
Anxiety and depression are not neutral emotions. They are negative because they hurt the body and inhibit growth. Someone who is depressed often lacks the motivation to get out of bed in the morning, to take care of their body, and to secure their livelihood. They often neglect bare necessities because they are weighed down by negativity. Extreme depression leads to suicide, which is the ultimate, practical negation of one’s own life.
Likewise, anxiety clouds judgment, and subtracts from a person‘s ability to act or make decisions. Lacking the peace of mind to move forward, the anxious person remains immobile. Or, they flail about and act erratically, making reckless choices and endangering their well-being. Scammers can only succeed if they can produce and exploit anxiety in their victims.
So anxiety and depression are negative because they have actual, measurable, life-negating effects on the body.
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I did not start Despair Sanctuary because I admired despair and thought it should be promoted. I started it because I observed that the denial of despair is more life-negating than its acceptance. Emotions are inherently impermanent, but how we respond to them determines the lasting effects they have on our lives. Denying and repressing despair only makes us incapable of reckoning with reality, whereas owning and enduring despair makes it possible to move beyond it.
I do believe that despair has an underappreciated practical utility, and can therefore be positive in certain doses. Negative things can have positive outcomes. Even though salt inhibits the rise of dough, a portion of it is still necessary for the chemical balance that composes bread.
I'm currently writing a book exploring the positive potential of despair. One thing I point out is that despair is a necessary moment for revolutionary imagination. As long as we insist the status quo just needs to be reformed, we suspend our capacity for radical alternatives. And yet, though despair can create an opening for revolution, it still makes people incapable of producing one. So I maintain that despair is an essentially life-negating emotion.
A philosophy grounded in despair is impossible to sustain. This is why there are so few antinatalists. They are too consistent. They die out.
For producing a revolution, we must move beyond the negative, non-creative state of despair, to the positive, creative state that is based in assurance. In other words, we must progress from weakness to strength.
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This binary of strength and weakness comes under fire from queer theorists as well. When I posted, “Why are socialists self-abasing?”, a colleague criticized my dependence on the terms “strength” and “weakness.” They considered this a gender binary, since the patriarchal imagination regards women as “the weaker sex.” But I argue this critique falls into the same gender ideology it purportedly rejects. I did not say socialists need to become more manly, or that revolution requires male leadership. I said socialists need to get stronger and cultivate the qualities necessary for asserting power. Are women incapable of strength? Are they unfit for power? The patriarchal imagination would have us assume so, but Sojourner Truth, in her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, took precisely this assumption to task. Strength and power, she demonstrated, can be every bit as feminine as masculine.
Furthermore, queer theory is not about lifting up the traditional notion of femininity as such. It is not a matter of buttressing weakness for the sake of transvaluing patriarchy. Queer theory is about imagining new femininities and new masculinities, overcoming traditional gender binaries by cultivating complex, fluid, and multidimensional personhoods. It is about liberating ourselves instead of being bound to fixed roles and behaviors that are based solely on our genitals. Queer theory should make women more powerful and men more emotionally intelligent. It should not simply make powerlessness good and power evil.
Those who regard powerlessness as a virtue and will to power as a vice can never be revolutionaries, because their ideology is incompatible with exerting influence and shaping history. They also display a basic contradiction, because if you are somehow able to influence people to regard powerlessness as a virtue, it could only be because you have wielded some level of power. This is why Nietzsche critiqued the church, because though it preached, “God’s power is made perfect in weakness,” it used this message to assert power. It made people weak to make itself strong.
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What does it mean when people are weak?
It means they advance toward death.
What does it mean when people are strong?
It means they advance toward life.
Water makes strong.
Poison makes weak.
Bread makes strong.
Starvation makes weak.
Exercise makes strong.
Inertia makes weak.
When depressed, we stay in bed, fill our stomachs with sugar and alcohol, and accomplish nothing. And so depression is a weakness. It is a lure of death, suicide in slow motion. If we are ruled by it, we descend into illness, and we die early. Humans seek treatment for depression because we want to avoid this fate. We don’t want weakness, we want strength.
Strength is vitality. It is life force. By it, our bodies resist disease, heal themselves, and live long. Without it, all breath, all action, and all contemplation are impossible. We succumb to death the moment we lose all strength. To live is to be strong, and to advance in life means to exercise strength.
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While I offer a Nietzschean counterpoint to the queer critique of the strength-weakness binary, my own philosophy is against Nietzsche’s. I reject his naïve assumption that strength and weakness correspond to classes of people. He supposed that the wealthy rule because they are strong, while the poor do not because they are weak. He maintained that there will always be a higher caste and a lower caste, masters and slaves, because some people are weak while others are strong.
This assumption is what made Nietzsche's philosophy compatible with Nazi racism, because if you think the powerful deserve power and the powerless deserve servitude, you’re going to interpret history racistly. Why are most American presidents white men? It must be because white men are fit for power. Why were black people enslaved for 400 years? It must be because black people are fit for slavery. And so on.
People who buy into the notion that Might Is Right think this is deep, but it really betrays an utterly shallow intellect. It’s about as brilliant as the notion that because we walk on level ground, the Earth must be flat.
I don’t think in terms of “the strong” and “the weak.” I think strength and weakness are potentialities in all people. And I don’t think people are either always advancing in strength or always advancing in weakness. Life is not linear. We vacillate from getting stronger to getting weaker. And sometimes greater strength can only be found via an excursion through weakness.
There are also many forms of strength and weakness. Athletes and soldiers can be physically strong and remarkably skilled, yet dumb as a door nail, while a physicist can revolutionize science from a wheelchair. One person can lift a thousand pounds, while another who has never touched a barbell designs a machine that lifts ten thousand. A petite woman can meditate for 12 hours, while a bodybuilder shoots himself over heartbreak.
The key is to strike a balance—to discern when to rejoice, when to despair, when to fight, when to be afraid, when to seek help, when to do nothing—yet in all things, to pursue strength of body, strength of mind, strength of spirit, strength of will, and strength of character. This pursuit is a lifelong journey, but as Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Jack Holloway
