Transcripts For CSPAN3 M.E. 20240703

Im very excited tonight to welcome emmy obrien to discuss her new book family, abolition capitalism and the coming rising of care. M e obrien writes on gender and communist theory. She coedited two magazines pinko on gay and praxis. And so on. Psychoanalytic theory and politics. She previously coauthored the novel everything for everyone, an oral history on the new york commune 2052 to 2072. In conversation tonight, i will be lara sheehi and assistant professor of clinical psychology, the George Washington university, where she is the founding faculty director of the psychoanalysis us and the arab world lab. She is a coauthor with stephen. She home of psychoanalysis under occupation practicing resistance in palestine, which won the middle east 2022 palestine book award for best academic. Also in conversation tonight will be helen devinney a member of the core faculty at George Washington University Side program. She has written and presented on the intersections of psychoanalysis and issues of gender, sexuality race and ability. Helen has private practice in washington, dc, where she works with folks to explore psych socio political factors alongside individual so that suffering is understood in the context of the white so set ableist imperialist patriarchy and not an individual alone. So without further ado, please welcome me in joining to politics and prose m e obrien lara sheehi and helen devinney. Hi folks. How are you . You are in for a treat. My name is laura and i so excited to be in conversation with michelle. Im not going to talk for very long, but i just want to let you that theres you know, theres these books that you read and, your mind just breaks, right . And just like keeps expanding through it. And theres this way in which sometimes it leads to a certain place and then sometimes it fails to do that. This is one of those books that has the feel of leading you to a certain place and has to me, you will know how much it means to me a phenomenon sort of unreal in clarity about it. So im so excited for you all to be here to hear it directly from michelles mouth. And then helen and i will be in conversation. What about this book . Sort of stood out to us. But im just going to pass it along to you. Im just excited. You all are here and get to hear her speak because thats what all i want to do, i thank you for that very generous introduction. Laura and. Thank you to you both for being here. I appreciate your support and, hearing your own thoughts and insights. And i have lot of familiar faces in the audience. I live in new york, so its very exciting to be down here in d. C. And everyone who helped set up this and the workers here at the bookstore. So im going to just read you the six pages. Someone cant hear you im going to read to you the first six pages of my book. So i will try to do so audibly. And then were here from the other panelists and then hopefully have a little of time for questions and discussion. In june 2000, six, 3000 Police Officers attacked teachers protest in the mexican city of oaxaca. The teachers been on strike for a month, occupying the Central Square of the city. The police and teachers battled for hours the course of the day, leading to over 100 hospitals. Patients in the aftermath of the confrontation, hundreds of social Movement Organizations gathered to form the assembly, a popular. They lost pueblos. They were haka. The apo, an organization that became the central coordinating body of hundreds of protests and occupations over the coming seven months. In august, insurgent women seized control of multiple radio stations, going on to use them as communication for the movement. At the end of, one radio broadcast of an occupied station, the newscaster concluded, transmitting from the oaxaca commune. Insurgents took up the name, referencing the Paris Commune of 1871. The militant of the oaxaca commune erected hundreds of barricades throughout the city. The use the barricades to defend their neighborhoods against nightly attacks by police and paramilitary areas. Many workers were strike living full time at the barricades. Many not on strike went to their jobs during the day and the night on the barricades when their days work was done. Insurgents communicated with each other from one barricade to the next using radio, and began to identify themselves by the name their barricade. These barricades became sites of what i call insurgent social reproduction. The transformation of the daily tasks of Household Labor into means sustaining militant protest, baruch capella writes. The barricades were places where the people of oaxaca slept, cooked and food had sex shared news and came together at the end of the day. Women on, the barricades redistributed, seized goods conducted educational workshops, gathered supplies together and shared life. Peller goes on. People to the commune simply because they took part in this reproduction daily life from cooking at the barricades, carrying coffee to the barricades, homes or businesses, carrying between barricades to make molotov barricades, stacking rocks or simply sharing stories. The women of the oaxaca commune were engaged. A moment of family abolition. They were rebelling against both abuse of husbands and racist and antiworker state forces. They were challenging the social role to. They were relegated as women. As wives as mothers. Upending the norms of gender and sexuality. Their collective rebellion in their collective labor. Made rebellion. Possible. Rather than the atomized isolation of private households during rebellion. People lived collectively the barricades. What had been womens work in the home became daily practice of reproducing the insurrection through the barricades. The women. The hakka commune created a new collective life that overcame the divisions between public and private. They were fuzing the private as a link in the circuits of racial capitalism. For these women rejecting, men of the family was not a move towards isolation or a band of caretaking relationships. They brought their children with them to the barricades. They were not simply rejecting the maternal caretaking, but radically transforming it. They were expanding care, labor of their private homes into mass in subjection, Free Movement for the transfer of society as a whole, and creating the collective life. The barricades. They were constituting a new basis for shared social reproduction and shared intimacy. They were transforming the isolation of domestic life into a means of communal survival. The daily life of the barricades and the citys other occupations became a site of escalating struggle. Many husbands frustrated their wives at the barricades were no longer serving them in their home, forced their wives to abandon the occupation. A participant recounts. They were comrades, complained that since august 1st, my doesnt serve me. There are many women who suffered Domestic Violence for being at the occupations and marches. Sometimes their husbands attempted to divorce or separate the husbands. They didnt take well. The idea of women abandoning the housework to participate politically. They didnt help in the sense of doing the housework. Such as taking care of kids or washing clothes so that women could continue being at the station. Quote, the reassertion of the family as a system of private dominated households contributed to the defeat of the hakka commune. The women could not act both frontline militants and obedient wives. The family was a tool of counterinsurgency. The women of the hakka rebelled against a System Private households, male dominated kinship arrangements, and the gendered of labor. All these or dimensions of the family form characterize most peoples lives under racial capitalism, families typically exist as private households and segmented isolation from each other. Divided by architecture, resources, Public Policy and custom. Each family works separately, helping to reproduce capitalist society from one generation to the next. Families raised, children and offer them their first socialization and heteronormative norms and labor market discipline through maintaining a stable family, individuals may gain legitimacy social acceptance and respectability. Peoples arrangements and households are judged by the extent to which they manage to an ideal of the family, rooted in a long history of White Supremacy and capitalism. Through the hakka commune, women sought to overcome the family form. Their efforts, in turn, made the scale of the mobilization possible. Many rebellions share this quality when large numbers of working class people move into open rebellion. The boundaries of the family begin. Break down. The private gives way to the collective life of shared insurgent social reproduction and those subjugated within the private family seize. The opportunities of new ways of and living together rather rigid gender roles. People may begin to care for each other as comrade, replacing the private family kitchens or take out from local. People may gather protest kitchens can and group meals care for children. The injured and others unable to work becomes a shared concern of collective projects of survival. Family abolition. A horizon of human freedom one briefly visible. The barricades of the oaxaca commune. The family is a limit to human emancipate and the familys horrors are vast. Its abuses widespread, its logic coercive. The family is a joy for some a necessity for most, and a nightmare for far too many. Behind its closed doors. The household is. A gamble. Children born into abusive households have no recourse from harmful parents. Those trapped in abusive couple relationships recedes there see means of escape gradually off by manipulative and controlling partners. Those working class adults who wish to be a part of a childs life are forced into degrees of economic precarity to keep their children fed and cared for, trapping poor parents further into awful jobs. Theyre seats right here in the front. If you want to come up the family, Police System targets black, indigent as poor and migrant families with forms of state violence in the name of protecting children, leaving the violence of the white propertied family untouched. The family is also a limit to our imagination. Many of us grow up in private and struggle to envision anything. We can barely conceive of real alternatives to the family shared households or a necessary survival strata for proletarians. Most working class families come under frequent pressure from labor market conditions. State policies or state violence. These pressures make it hard to form and hold together families, but even harder to maintain chosen. Nonnormative arrangements. Many imagine and pursue a household that is entirely too chosen and a radical alternative to the normative family. But attempts at holding such arrangements together often fall apart over decades of the stresses, trying to find and maintain work to pay rent, to deal with medical emergencies, or to face aging. Others fully shared. Households altogether, often to find isolation and loneliness, but some beyond, some variation on the private household. What could possibly provide the care that we all so desperately. Family abolition is a fraught right bring critics accuse proponents of family abolition of trying to destroy gender market relations and civilization. Progressive opponents of the idea suggested its an ultra left and fantasy likely to alienate people for closing the mass constituency for social democratic demands. Some astute skeptics of family abolition point out indigenous and people of color on family relations to survive the racist onslaught of the state. Many imagine family abolition calls for the acceleration the current neoliberal social forces that make having children finding a stable home, challenging so many people. These of family abolition reflect deep anxieties. Many people rely on their family when they are at their most vulnerable as newborns, children while sick or disabled, while aging and approaching death. For those lucky enough to have loving family members, such support can be a source of great solace. Even those with unsupportive families of origin may keep them close throughout their lives. Those who raise us have a profound impact on our emotional, physical and development. Parenting in turn, can be an extraordinary space. Selfgrowth and the experience of Long Term Care for another person. Unlike most relationship parts in capitalist society, families can offer what feels to be an uncanny addition an unconditional and unwavering form of love, at least some times. It is through the language of family. People often articulate their yearning for care, for affection, for the long term interweaving our lives. For those with cruel or harmful families, the idea of doing a better for healing chosen family can be profoundly compelling. Family abolition provokes listeners fears of being abandoned have been without support of left alone to face the violent power of the state or the cruelty of work. These are nearly universal fears an era of neoliberal decision on if social welfare supports increasing atomization of capitalist society, racist state violence and generalized instability. Many imagined family as the left robbing them of only means of solace and survival. In their imagination to abolish the family is to make the world unlivable. Human life depends on care. We are all inescapably interdependent in our society. Many forms of care are often concentrated in families. Everyone needs material, supports. For some, these are found through families to jobs or property. Safe housing, Financial Support during difficult times. Healthy food mobility or Quality Health care. But the basis of a rich human life also includes the emotional, interpersonal, physical support families provide. These are all basic human needs, and the family is where most likely to have found them. To those who fear family abolition, abolish the family system often involves eliminating access to care. The opposite is true. Family abolition. A commitment to making the care necessary for Human Flourishing freely available throughout society, rather than relying solely ones immediate personal relation. Access to care could built into the social fabric of our collective lives, family abolition is the vision that the basis of thrive should not depend on who. Your parents happen to be who you love or who you choose to live with family abolition is a horizon of sexual and gender freedom beyond the bigotry imposed by those on whom we depend. Family abolition is the expansion of care as a universal, unconditional good. Family abolition not just the positive assertion of, but also refusal the harm harmful relationships, domination that the family enables. Family is a belief that no child be trapped by cruel parents. No woman should be afraid of poverty or isolation and leaving her violent husband. No aging, disabled or person should be afraid of having depend on an indifferent and, uncaring family member. Family abolition is the recognition that no human being should ever own or entirely another person, even. No individual should have the means to coerce or labor from another. As current property relations enable family, abolish sin is the destruction of private households as systems of accumulating power and property at the cost others wellbeing, as well as overcoming the private. Family abolition is also the radical overturning and how society values particular family at the expense of others. A long history of white heteronormativity, capitalist property relations enshrined a particularly narrow version of the family as the basis of an orderly society. Certainly certain family are upheld and law enforced. State violence and defended popular culture. Family abolition is a call for embracing the many forms and care of loved. Through which people form rich and fulfilling lives. It is for the destruction overcoming of an ideal that treats some Family Structures as normal, while devaluing and destroying other care relations. In the spirit of the osaka commune, let us advance. You political. Thank you for that. A whole different experience of having somebody speak their own words. Right. So thank you for walking us through that. And of course, in terms of locating it within and struggle, that belongs to a sort of Brown Indigenous people. And i think thats where i also want to locate this. And also want to say a word about im not going to talk very long because i want this sort of be a collaborative process, but i also want a center. So where im coming from, when i think about abolition, so i borrow here, of course from abolition as to our currently very active and central in the movement. So Ruth Wilson Gilmore being primary to my thinking when she teaches us that abolition not about destruction its about right its not about absence its about having presence. And so i think this goes throughout your book and i think thats my entry point to the book of when we think about abolition. Yes, it is about abolishing prisons, which can be a symbol of violence, but more than that, its about abolishing the conditions that create the potential for exploitation and domination. And relationships are the centerpiece of that. And so thats what flows to book for me and where i find the pulse of the book really bring us back to constantly every time theres a sort of fault line that we might feel like we stray. Michelle you sort of bring us right back and you also talk about capitalism and imperialism and colonialism and settler colonialism as those those are the ones that sort allow or might hide the modes of domination and exploitation that all of us might think are normative fixtures of our world. Right. That we just go about as an arab woman. I think, for example, to say, right, theres these things that become normative fixtures our everyday life. But you sort of bring us back to saying what are the that have constructed these relational processes that rely on domination and exploitation. And so thats the entry point from my own work. The other thing that i find really fascinating because i do psychometric around liberation struggles, conditions of freedom and sort liberating oneself, being a part of that is a call from the book to divest psychically also from the central city of these modes of relating being the only way to relate. And so when i was thinking about that always draw maybe this is the clinician in me or just how i think i always draw from sort of everyday experience says because it sort of brings it right back and concretize it. And so one of the i dont live in washington dc and so one of the best parts about living in ville is that you to just see these examples every single day and a reminder every single day how to disrupt normativity, right is sort of just Walking Around a sort of how do i engage in practice of abolition, making present thing, even just sort of taking in our world and not anything as a fixture that hasnt constructed by settler colonialism, imperialism, picture and racism, right . So the example that i was thinking about out of this is reading the book is in our neighborhoods. You know, theres a myth of sort of the White Nuclear family as being the individual family, right . And they do things so well that they dont have to rely on anybody else. And its our sort of brown and indigenous and black families that have extended families and we live together or chosen families and. When my partner and i sort of walk our dog, we happen walk at a time when there are bus stops, right. And you sort of sit and and fortunately the space i live in is not very diverse terms of race or queerness. So but what i do see is something that disrupts that myth and has us divest from that, because what you would believe is of a very sort of white vanilla. These are two to hetero says parents sort of taking their kids is. Instead we see grandparents right pick up and drop off. We see extended family. We see neighbors. And that really struck me i mean, we were walking them just sort of like this myth is also what we need to be divesting from right. And your book, i think, is a way to sort of remind us of that, that this process of abolishing the family exists, but to whom does it exist . A normative process and what are the ways in which that normative process like somehow thats just white being successful, right . And or a hetero couple being like we both work and therefore we bring our our parents to sort of take care of our children rather than actually these are practices that hide in plain sight and they become standards in our psychic fantasy about like these are families that are sort of nuclear that can take care of their children alone and without right and labor and do all of that and sort of thats all a lie. Its a myth. So i sort of walk around and see examples of a psychic divestment from that because i get surprised as an immigrant, as an arab woman, a brown arab woman of a queer woman, sort of like i get surprised because i grew up on the myth that sort of like what a white family look like. And instead you see this over and over again. But it is your book sort took me over and over and over again about even confronting our own processes is of fixtures within us and normative that we need to divest from. Right. Ill, ill leave it at. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you michelle for the opportunity to join you here today in conversation. Im going to turn us a little bit and actually lara, the last thing you just said, normativity brings us to a couple of things. Id like to talk about as a clinician and someone who teaches as clinicians in training and we know that normative beauty and norms are a huge of psychology and those of you who may not be familiar with something that may or may not surprise you is in our field prides itself on its insularity and we are not really in conversation with other disciplines and so one of the things that i do im only second to being invited to be here overjoyed to see some students us tonight for that very exciting. One of the things i do when students come in the first semester to our program i they accident somehow i have allowed me to teach the diagnose this class and now that i have it apparently theres a rule where if you teach it for three years, its your class. So its my now. But a lot of what we do is try to approach diagnosis from a non traditional point of view right to first examine that so much of what being asked to learn and to practice is harmful. It goes our ethical code, right . And so one of the ways that we do that is by engaging with other disciplines and trying to expose folks readings that teach them else to hold in their mind while. Also, you know, helping them to understand stand the language theyre to have to learn to be fluent and maneuver folks in our field. While i hope actually being useful to the folks are sitting. And so that was the first thing i thought about when i had the opportunity to read the book was just, wow, im immediately putting this on my gender syllabus. So if you havent taken it, we can look for it there. But also, you know just, its, its so refreshing. And for me, what came into mind was when we think about gender theory and sort of the presumption of what is natural all right, natural categories, these things exist. Therefore. And the family is one of those structures, right . We see it as natural. You dont question it. It as it should be. And the best we might get to as michelle indicated, is the chosen family right where we try to recreate the idealized family that has not worked out for any variety of reasons. These are all things that as a therapist. And so now im going to transition a little bit to sort of some of what comes into my mind in terms of sitting with folks. These are things that therapists are not really particularly trained to with. Right . And so its its its really troubling, certainly, as a as a queer person myself. But when im working with folks who who have sometimes seen lots therapists and to hear what they get back is pretty consistent with what we train and pretty damaged seeing and foreclosing and, reinforcing of the fault lines you were highlighting, laura, right. Im just thinking about two very quick associations. I had reading the book thinking, gosh, i would have loved to have had this in my mind and now i do since i still work with her. But someone works in a mutual i lives works in a mutual aid encampment. Right. And has been talking these issues right. And looking for language. How do i talk about this how can i explain this to other people or how can i move from this camp that im a part of and be part of a larger collective movement, the country. So these are the kinds of conversations that i think we need be having within our field. And i really thank you for the opportunity when youre for those who are just presentations. Thank you very much. I we have about 15 minutes before were going to open it up for audience and were trying to ask each other some questions and respond, im to say a few words about some of whats interesting to me. This particular formation here and a little bit about my own trajectory in the later stages of writing the book. So i did i spent a lot of years organizing and working in Hiv Aids Services and with trans people through my twenties and was in various kinds of was involved in prison abolition for a few years in critical resistance. I was an anarchist and various kinds of communist skills. And then i got a ph. D. On in marxist and it was i a lot, and it was fairly narrowly, right . It was like the nuts and of social movements is what i wrote and that was very helpful. I thinking clarifying and grounding my thinking. But this book is is an effort to sort of all of that to make a contribution to trying to think what it will take to overcome society. Right. It a it is a work of communist theory. Its like if we want to escape from a society ruled over by the terms and this tyrannical violence of capital. What will take to do that and recognize in the family as a link to that that that you know there are a lot of radicals who know that eventually were going to have to take over and destroy the state. There are a lot of radicals that know eventually we will have to take over and destroy corporations and transform our workplaces in radical, incredible ways and recognizing that that however were going to get there and there are a lot of debates about how to get there and i engaged some of those in my book that that will have to transform how we live with each other or have to transform the dynamics of care in our households. But as i wrote this i finished a ph. D. Program, job market. I was getting really, really into psychoanalysis, and i got a job as a therapist because i have a social work degree from forever ago and started training and then three years and now and really loving it and met laura through that and and got involved in para praxis the left psychoanalytic magazine that i edit and so as the book finishing i was starting to ask all these questions about the family and and psychoanalysis is in very much a sort of field the family about families effect on our psychic formation and and none of that unfortunately made them into the book but i did is edit issue one a pair of praxis about was about the family problem and was a kind of dialog between some of the black feminist theories i in here some of the communist theories engage in here trans studies with psychoanalysis. Right and and its a very interesting issue. I think and through that got to know laura better and better and we organized a seminar and you spoke about fanon and we read the family and that essay by thats an incredible essay about witnessing how how as young people were joining the revolutionary armed anticolonial struggle in algeria and how that was shifting dynamics amongst. Algerian muslim arab families. So you know theres i think that colonial situation algeria you know fanon draws a lot of attention to how stark it is. And in some ways, it provided a really helpful way of parsing some of the complexity of the racial dynamics of family abolition, where there are calling, there are white, french living in algeria trying to it a Little France and inflict tremendous violence in doing it. And the condition that enables families to live that way needs to be destroyed. It needs to be eradicated out. Algeria, right . Fanon knows they might stay in algeria, but they would stay in conditions that would be unrecognizable. But what happens to the algerian family . Right. And ricky knows and the anticolonial struggle isnt against the algerian family primarily. It kind of is against settler family in a way. But it has to transform the arab muslim family in the process of informing that. The struggle itself has to challenge and come up against a Father Authority within these colonized families because the children, including young women, are like becoming revolutionaries and what it will become is not really clear. Its not about destroying and eradicating like the colonial situation already trying to do that on some but that the struggle itself begins to shift transforms things and whats in your presentation to para praxis seminar that those pieces kind of came together for me and became a structuring in the book . That was very helpful for my thinking, yeah, im very oh, so is this is the only im doing a tour this is only panel that includes psychologists therapists, psychoanalysis, people. And its a wonderful, fascinating about its clinical relevance that i havent really begun think through very much but although there are more than two of us that are radical. I dont know how much more it but there are i so appreciate that and the history of that thats in a down colonialism fanons book that that michel referencing and i think whats lovely about that and i think finds its way through your book is sometimes when these conversations to happen theres a way in which indigenous and people of the global hold all the sort of evils of patriarchy like were somehow much worse. Right like muslim families are that much worse are muslim fathers are that much worse . And i think fanon actually does away with that right. Hes like in this transformation in, this sort of colonial transformation, that there is a pressure patriarchy, right. That says, wait a second, you actually have a decision here to make like youre going to be, you know, out and youre people under your domination. Right. And we know that, by the way, patriarchy is not just entire says all of us. Right. And so it its theres also the way in which your book of threads that consistently and i really appreciate that because again as somebody from the global south in which families mean maybe Something Different than a settler colonial condition like the United States or its not through the prism White Supremacy there is this way in which some of us go, wait a second. And you name that. Right . And you name and you say and you have a conversation. And i think is deepening the conversation of what does it mean to use slogans, what does it to be militant about what our actual end game is here. Right. And theres something very useful about that militant to say we are here, abolish all the ways in which domination. Exploitation happened. The family being one of them and ill say and also you dont forget to say hey theres way in which White Supremacy or liberal humanism has sort of dominated this conversation, or maybe the people who have these or allowed space to have these conversations because their families not under attack in the same ways as black, indigenous or queer families or trans families are in this country that end up looking a particular way that might make some leftists, or especially from the global south, say this might not be part what im want to be a part of. If we look at the logic of domination and fanon as the entry point to that of, the global south or anticolonial or, you know, non Colonial Movement and liberation struggles, thats the like i know that logic. I that logic and i think you i appreciate so much that you did that because theres a way in which patriarchy is a system of oppression cuts across everything and doesnt belong to brown black and indigenous people. Helen do you want to say a little bit more about how you potentially see thinking about the family is playing in radical clinical work . Yes. So as i was sort of talking about, you know, i try in my practice to see folks often arent finding a fit clinically from a more lens and one of the things i think that weve already talked about here and that you about in the book is sort of the atomization that occurs. Right. And so in meeting with folks trying to i mean, in general, i would say therapy reinforce that idea, right. That this happening in me but by having a therapy thats circumscribed in more sociopolitical structure and helping folks to think about something, family abolition. Right it becomes not only about joining with folks who are fighting their particular battle, but joining with folks who are in the battle. Right. And i think that psychologically, we know that when we feel held in that way when we feel there are comrades out there, there there that were not looking for others to cordon off with again. Were actually trying to expand. And theres theres relief. Theres something in there that we hold on to right. And so thats one of the things that ive been trying to work on myself in, my practice. But i think actually the book gives tangible sorts of examples that folks can also talk about we can talk about together. Right. And we can try to explore how to find those connections locally. Thank you to other if you have any other questions or comments before we turn to the audience, i just want to name something into the room and we we got you, right . Because this is a space with whats wonderful about spaces like this is that this is a invivo sort of process of caring each other. And i think having these sorts of vents under these political this Political Climate for me also sort of burst through that. And this is what presenting means, right . Like we know our communities are under attack right. And i see some familiar faces from a busboys and poets event here as well. It is not outside, but they come into these spaces and try to intimidate and silence these conversations. So i just want to name that. Thats here, too. And also to say that your book is a beautiful reminder of that is saying like these sources oppression whether it comes from the state or fascists or, racists or zionists or whomever, that part of it is concretized and part of it is speaking it part of it is coming together saying, look how many people are here to actually come together in a gathering and uplift micheles work, uplift this type of thinking support each other, have each others back, and say no. Were going to be up here with were going be having this conversation and those these are logics that repeat themselves all the time but our our presence strong and were in locked arms. You think. So we have about 15 minutes and theres a mic set here and its being recorded for book. So if you are able to physically please come up to the mic and and if you can then i will try to repeat your question and we welcome anything. Please. Hi. I would just like to ask a question of. Family situation dealing with elderly parents that you have to put in a nursing home and do you have is that part of any of your practices and you know know its a really difficult situation to accept when you have to do that and probably most times in most situations that probably accelerates the persons decline. Yeah. So thats im im just to hear a little bit if you have experience with that and i would just say absolute thank you so much so yes i have some thoughts about this question about elder care. I did some solidaire do you support organizing for caring across generations and organizing project that some people in new york affiliated with Domestic Workers struggles and one of the things that they were fighting for was Long Term Care insurance, universal a Long Term Care insurance. So individuals we face these terrible bonds, right . Like if were in relation with our our parents, if lucky, well live long enough to become disabled or, have dementia or not be able to live on their own, independently. And many, many people most people prefer to stay at home Nursing Homes are actually usually pretty terrible situations are really under resourced theres a high level of abuse. There know there there is a huge for profit nursing home infrastructure in in the United States which is evil and the terrible terrible. And there are efforts to improve to reform resource nursing home systems and ways that could be done. But the argument of caring generations in conjunction with the Domestic Workers united is that what would help a lot is if every Single Person had automatic that when you become disabled or old or are unable to care for yourself, Domestic Workers, nurse aides and others come to your home to help care for and the alternative that is it falls on children. It falls on family members to. Do what become increasingly impossible, really, really hard tasks. And this is an example. Think of what of the vision of Long Term Care insurance is a reform have a chapter on reform. I call them progressive anti family reform and people they could also be called profamily in a way, but i you know, im trying to draw attention to the fact that were like this that express end the availability of care that currently within families and expanding access to that outside of families which then increases peoples independence the choices they can make about their relationships increases. The possibility of people able to spend time together, enjoy each others company, and not to either on the terrible choice of trying to care for your parent when you cant, when its really, really hard, or sending them to a place they dont want to go that that we need better alternatives. That and we can necessarily get those alternatives for not independently wealthy we cant get those alternatives alone they have to be built collectively they have to be a shared project and that that is a part of what justice could mean right now reforms that we should be implementing and that should be very part of how we think about what a society is. And what folks are asking. Yeah, okay. More questions so. I had one. Do you want me to go . Yes, please do come up to the mike because of the. I had a question about the new cuban family code. You brought up a algeria. You brought up. Okay. I dont know if it was too recent for book or anything, so i just wondered if you had to. Its in its in there. Sold. So you got one . Yeah. So the cuban code, is that a step towards family abolition in your view . Thanks. Yeah. So cuban family code, they were running an article in pasco, the cuban family code from someone actually very cynical about the states initial motivations for doing it. But a lot of queer people and feminists and others on the ground, the cuban got very, very involved in the extensive deliberation process that unfolded and ended up becoming something much more radical than that left wing but limited state agents who had set up the process and the cuban family code turned out to become the most progressive and radical family law available in world right now. And there are a lot of really beautiful components it of redefining what family to finding certain parameters and rights and i have a paragraph about it and i think its a very powerful and beautiful example of what i call progressive antifamily reforms. Yes i should find the paragraph. It should be in the index hold on. Its going over when i read sections of the book, i hope its not in the index. I did a terrible job indexing. Index. It is so hard they recommend you dont index own book which i totally did. But okay page 73 just as this book was being edited september 20, 22, cuba passed a copper of reform to its national family, incorporating months of thousands of neighborhood based discussions. The National Referendum legalized sex marriage and adoption, redefined parenthood as rather than custody of children, banned corporal punishment, expanded rights to selfdetermination for elderly and disabled people, and extended labor rights. All those who care for children. In its Opening Statement of principles, the code defines family as relationships based on dignity. The principles equality quote equality and nondiscrimination, plural quality, individual and shared, responsible liberty, solidarity and the seeking happiness, end quote. A of twitter commentators linked new family code to family abolition critique. Cubas family code is a powerful of the kinds of reforms could support nontraditional household formation and undo the normative valorization of some family forms at the expense of other care relations. The next question as someone thank you for the presentation earlier and as someone who has chosen not to have children and a community of friends who are also not having children, we always joke about having commune someday when we get old and taking care of each. Interestingly, that same conversation has happened with some of my friends in appalachia who i interact with, right . So this is not just an urban conversation. And so i was wondering, you know, were a bit of an echo chamber cities talking about these topics. Are there any themes that would unify conversations in more Rural Communities, like living together in a commune . Right. If you dont have are there any themes your book that sort of or arguments that would us and you can have the same with someone when i go talk to them in appalachia im just sort of curious you know, thank you. So your question touches on an urban rural that i am not an expert in. I could speculate and make a few comments about growing up in a place, a lot of Rural Communities and theyre sort of interactions with cities. I will say that one of the things that i engage in the book is about the limitations of deliberate communal living under racial capitalism that i think the fact that we the people put so much work into forming them is has some tremendous beauty to it it reflects a desire beyond the normative family reflexive desire community for mutual care, for all these things that i take very seriously in the book and sometimes there are some really beautiful examples that come out of but i grew up in a place that a lot of people, including my parents, moved to as hippies in the 1960s and established communes. My mom dropped out of high school to move to a commune. And what ended up happening in those communes. Was really pretty mixed. Some became cold, just fell apart. But some of them, when they came under pressure, some people ended up turning them into Business Owners and other people did or went to prison. Right. And their class position, their access to capital became a huge and the survival of these comments in part depends on the same thing that the stability of the private family on which is property wealth income right so if well property people want to live together in a different living arrangement like thats great, they should do that. And theres a desire here there thats very powerful. But what we need are alternative living arrangement that are actually accessible and available to all the people who are going to be able to buy property. And there is a whole history around collective squatting and things like that but the less the and when people intrude into it dont have resources dont have state legitimacy arent recognized as legitimate by the state that brings them more and more to conflict with Real Estate Developers and, police and all sorts of others. And we this in some rural struggles. Im very interested obviously in protest camps and things like that. And i have a lot of respect for people trying to make communes work but wrecking lives in that under the conditions of racial capitalism people dont just form families theyre ideologically invested them they form families households that function together as strategies in the violence of racial capitalism. And if we want to enable to form other kinds of living arrangements, we have struggle to alter the collective materi or conditions that structure how property is organized, how is organized, and how resources organized, and that that we can sort of try to do that together. But that also really we have to come up against the state. We to come up against capital and, we have to begin transforming how property work and that catch happen in a single commune like a single commune in order reproduce itself has more and more and more take on the characteristics of a private household and that puts all sorts of internal pressure that happened in families around inequality between who has access to a job and who doesnt, who owns the property and who does and who can access it and who can . Can i actually read a piece, your book that exactly this is that speaks that because i think one of the things that i love about your book is that you really highlight how disavowal and denial is a part of these things persist and so its an act of sort of disrupting that disavowal. So on page 188, you talk about socialists, which might, might or might not be part of, but these are communes so you said utopian socialist depended on the colonial dispossession of the settler frontier to secure land necessary for their experiments. So its also saying when think about communes particularly in settler colonial conditions like United States that depends on indigenous extraction. Right. So this includes owens new harmony, indiana and 28 forest communes across the United States in the 1840s to this list would add the israeli kibbutz movement. Socialist values depended on settler colonial and state backed genocidal dispossession and to secure necessary resources without any intention to overthrow capitalist society by violently seizing land and the means of production, utopian socialist relied on the endorse amount of racial capitalism available through settler colonialism. Yeah, just concept. Okay. There are only three more minutes. Do you have any other before we can . Well, no. Go ahead. Our last question, please. No pressure. I wanted to say first. Congratulations, michel. Its such a serious accomplishment. And second, i really appreciated the notes on like clinical practice that guys were talking about. So i wanted to ask more about where you guys see strategy for at the point of reproduction like you, what do we do with our clinics, our hospitals, schools, the Nursing Homes in which we work . Like, what do we do with those institutions in the interim . Thank you. Thank you for the question. And i invite both of you to also add your thoughts to it. But i think to the point that michel, just highlighting, you know, we really have to be we have to be doing things. Actually, i think we had this conversation interestingly in a panel that was on at division 39 earlier this year. But, you know, i would say twofold. So one is we have to work to actually disrupt and dismantle our system as know it, you know, our dsm five is dangerous. It hurts people. And as long as peoples depend on learning it, were going to just keep reproducing harm right now . Then there becomes this dilemma of, well, then what do you do . Do you do you renounce your license, do you keep your license . Which i think is a little bit where your question lives. So i think for those of us who care in this way, like were fighting a battle thats like we have, this has to be overthrown, right . This is something thats meant to work in a particular of way. Absolutely. Under racial capitalism. But while you have a license and you are potentially in an institution you know, i think as much as you can as i said early earlier psychology is an insular discipline. We have to expand the you know, i hesitate to say this as a white person myself, but we have to give them the mic to other people. You know, quite literally, many of the things that we focus on in psychology have already been talked about by other folks, right . Which we just extrapolate and take and say, oh, heres this new idea with this new friendly white, you know, usually them presenting face on the front saying these that are so great. So you know i think we have to work to really overthrow the whole structure. Use your license, bring other folks, other disciplines, other really try to to shine a light on those. The last thing i was i would say i think you really have to work differently. I mean my i think if i could have imagined what my work would look like when i was in training, i had no idea and the work i do is so, so much more gratifying. Im in conversations. Im learning, right . Im trying to help people understand that what theyre experiencing is totally normal given the conditions under which we live. Right. Im happy to be in conversation about it. Im happy to hold space. Im happy to try to understand to to have that connection. And but i think part of it is, the work of our patients to go out and tell other people, which i if i may say that one thing about myself, i have patients who do that now. Theyll say, i told a friend, you have to get a new therapist. There are other there are other therapists out there who are willing to talk about these things with. You and thats how you do it, right is is spreading the word of mouth. It doesnt have to be this way. Actually, theres a different way of thinking. Its really nice. All right. So thank you, everyone. Ill be sticking around and signing books. And i encourage people to actually get your books signed. Its kind of cool. And a lot of my friends are like too cool to get their books right, but its i got my book, so yeah, stick around. Chat with each by my book my novels also for sale by last book and yeah stay awesome thank you thank