Beyond the Blood

Engaging with european ancestry and folk practices from an anti-fascist perspective.

A lot of us are connecting with ancestral traditions, exploring folk magic, tracing lineages, and seeking tools and practices for living a life in connection with the animate world. So much beauty has been created through this explosion of interest, resulting in the sharing of songs, rituals, plant medicine, stories and explorations of old/new ways of being. For many, this ancestral work comes from wanting to dismantle whiteness, connect to pre-christian and pre capitalist ways of being, and anchor into spiritual practices that are not stolen from other people.

At the same time, white nationalists embrace pagan and “white” european (so-called) ethnic traditions, creating overlaps between contemporary forms of fascism and ancestral practices. Nazi concepts, such as blood and soil, permeate settler ancestral reconnection discourses. A lot of the common concepts now used by even self-identified anti-racists. What’s going on here? This class will pull these threads apart and move us towards explicitly anti-fascist, anti-colonial ancestral and animist practices.

In the first half of the class, we will reckon with troubled histories and lineages. How has fascism developed in tandem with folklore, connection to the land, and ancestry interests in the past, and how does it relate to what’s happening now? We will consider concepts of tradition, migration, history, identity, purity, nationalism, time, and nature. We will look at norms and frameworks in current north american settler ancestry discourse, consider where they come from and what worlds they uphold or challenge.

The second half will explore ways to build anti-fascist ancestral connection practices. Despite the ravages of empire, luminous threads of the knowledge of our interconnections and our resistances to alienation remain. Where do we find them? What does it mean to bring them into our presents, to co-create our futures? Here we work with history as a living current, with ancestors as a living lineage. What are the practices that allow us to be more deeply connected to the world and to the ant-fascist work required of us in 2020? This is a combative and alive ancestry practice that challenges DNA tests, commodification, ethnic essentialism and history as it has been taught to us.

This class is for anyone who wants to understand, engage with, recognize some of the ways nationalism, fascism, and white supremacy affect the work of european ancestry and folk practices. You do not need to have any particular ancestry to join. I imagine this work being most applicable and useful to people living in settler colonial states.

Classes are by zoom, and are a combination of lecture and discussion with occasional small break out groups. There is also an extensive reading and resource list for you to engage with as much or as little as you like.

Mondays at 4pm PST

6 weeks starting November 16th and ending December 21st

Please note, due to chronic illness flare ups, sometimes individual classes are rescheduled. Refunds are not offered for rescheduled classes.

$250

Ungovernable Bodies

A 4 week exploration of the history of ableism, capitalism and productive worth, woven with the mysticism, knowledges, and poetics of illness, madness and disability. The themes throughout - anti-capitalism, productivity, usefulness, interdependence, mysticism and the unknown.

❤️ Getting to the roots. Where does ableism come from? A radical history of bodies, labor, regulation, and ideas of usefulness and uselessness. Who is allowed to survive? What makes us worthy of having our needs met?

❤️ Holy wells, the fisher king, and the wasteland. The history of the enclosure of the land and of bodies - considering trauma, extraction, control, and narratives of worth and productivity.  We will also consider consent and sovereignty (human and non human) through the lens of disenchantment and re-enchantment.

❤️ Mystic sickness - experiences that defy rationality and understandings of reason and usefulness, both in our ancestors and in our bodies now. Mysticism, unknowns, and different ways of knowing.

❤️ Unlearning meritocracy - investigating how shame and internalized ableism live in the body, and in the communal body. Our relationships, worthiness, needs, access, care etc. Destabilizing ideas of individual coping, resilience, and strength. Exploring collective vulnerability, creativity and care.

Classes will be held on zoom and will be part teaching, and part facilitated group discussion for collective meaning making. Together we will consider the material presented and draw connections and weave new cosmologies. Here we engage in collective thinking, storytelling, and imagining.

Details: Coming soon!!!