The Brooklyn Rail

“Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or species the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstance sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species willingly or unwillingly to abandon it are doomed to decay…”

~ Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid¹

Unicorn Philosophy

Unicorn Philosophy is no philosophy at all →It is an anarchism → A form of anarchy→ un-hierarchical configuration of social relations→ social processes → (the non-governable) → What some call chaos→ Or: communism → But Unicornism isn’t just communism because, because it is more far reaching than that → as philosopher Catherine Malabou persuasively argues, “Anarchism is first and foremost a fight against mechanisms of domination, which exceed the sphere of the state strictly speaking and affect all domains of life- public, private, collective, individual.”² →

Instead, Unicorn-icity is more like mutual aid → Unicorns asks, why does mutual aid only seem acceptable in times of crisis? → when your town has been destroyed → when water has swept loved ones away → when snow has collapsed your roof→ when fire leaves only the chimney behind → we help each other without question→ it’s the most obvious thing to do →but somehow when the storm passes → competition resumes→ kill or be killed → Turns out: survival of the fittest is really just surviving the fittest→

Unicorn Philosophy proposes something different → not inter-sectionality →we won’t be stopped at the intersection → we won’t idle in our cars → we leave the imaginary of cars behind → We slough off our Auto-Identity→ because cars are destroying the planet → Cars are a cancer in your soul → Hey! here’s an idea: let’s decline the phrase “Carbon Footprint” → now and evermore → because: Your footprint is an actual carbon footprint →Big Auto and Big Oil and Big Industry use it as a euphemism→ a propaganda term coined by British Petroleum © for Pollution, which was already a euphemism for poison→ Cars are killing us → we dare you to think of one war where your car isn’t involved→ Poison →

No intersections → open fields → Hecate out with the animals →

Not “The Animal That Therefore I Am” → No, the animal, that is there → Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida missed the opportunity to really talk about his cat → instead, a self-portrait → cat eyes as a mirror → we [unicorn philosophy] are out in the field running with the animals and all the children who know animals are magic → MAGIC→ in the deep ancient sense of the word → Hecate whispers in the moonlight → the children are correct → There is wisdom in their infectious affinity with animals→ all those issues of Ranger Rick → that is where intelligence really resides → look into an animal’s eye → brow to brow → love the animals → love them and you will throw away your car → we have choices → think about the world the car has wrought → road kill → a vulgar abstraction → We are all road kill now! → Nothing but life for industry to run over→ The bond between children’s imagination and animals stands in contrast— and in defiance— to the Road Killing Abstraction of Industry →This is what the child’s love of animals is telling us → another world is possible → another existence → Mutual existence → Not mutually assured destruction → Mutual existence as a form of wonder → The wonder of being in this world together →

Mutual Aid → Not only for emergency → Instead = a way to build society → Anarchy→ Not [Sidc] vicious anarchy → Not British revolt against British Royal-archy → Not “sun never setting” but → moonlight → vast moonlight → Darkness → Dreams → Not Freud’s dream → but Freud’s dream→ Dreaming without Freud → without psychoanalysis →Dreams without psychotics → Dreams without anti-psychotics → Archeology without time and without shovels → Digging in the future → Only sand and nothing → Leaderless movement together → Not this world, but that → Death and philosophy → Death and love and wisdom and unicorns → Unicorn footsteps in the mountain → The mountain with rivers and snow → And all heavy with fog → Der Wanderer →Streams of conciseness → Leading every which where → You have wandered off the trail→ it’s getting late → the sun has gone down over the other side of the hill → it’s beginning to snow → gently → You in shadows in a stand of pine trees → Maybe nine feet tall → The snow you have wandered into has gotten deeper → almost waist deep → light crests one last time in the valley → orange → luminous orange → striking the ice crystals just so → your breath and the trees → everything glows vividly as the snow continues its gentle descent → not a sound →

I miss you all my dead ones → All you that are dead to me → That have cut me out and discarded me → You are unwanted and unwelcome here! → Get behind me Satan! → Back me up → Be my advocate → My champion → I choose you Satan → Burning angel in the night sky → Save me from the pain of the gods → The moralists of all time → Riding equine into oblivion → All the pretty horsemen → Oh Satan! → Deliver me from my long suffering → Unicorn devil → Take your revenge on all my enemies →Drag their imagined innards through the street → let them catch on the light poles and make a slingshot to send me into outer space where we all have always already been →

Martin Heidegger, the Nazi-philosopher failed to see this: our home was already out there, in here →He tried to impress us with stating the obvious about hammers→ As if we didn’t know: a hammer is only a hammer when we use it → [while we are speaking of Martin Heidegger, why isn’t this dude long since canceled?] → unrepentant Nazi → raging anti-Semite →betrayer of friends→ it is all there in his philosophy → his ideas are weak → time to retire him from the conversation → PLEASE → if you must talk about him or (for god knows why) champion his ideas → please, please refer to him as the Nazi Philosopher Martin Heidegger →you know, like we do for the Nazi Jurist Carl Schmitt →

Sound your idols → as the small intestines of your enemies becomes a net of gems → all realities pass through them → And I pass through you and in you and I die and I die and die and I die again in you and through you but you don’t know → you don’t even see me in my dreams I am nothing → I am only a unicorn on a Saturday morning cartoon→ filled with sugar and anxiety→ I am only a cartoon in the waiting room full of ether → laughing gas → passing out and losing my organs while the colonoscopy slips through my intestines and wakes me up from their induced twilight → and find all my friends are dead → but I’m “good for ten years”→ I leave the table → the instruments still inside me, trailing like a tail → and a bug from Ridley Scott’s movie that sucks my face→ Then I fall and lose a piece of my nose → the blood is everywhere and your head is ringing like a bell→ not a bell, but a bell struck in hell → Who am I ? → I can’t stand up → I drag my blood across the floor → seeing stars →This is not a philosophy → this is mutual aid→ Pick each other up off the floor → Steady me → My friend→ My Brother→ Sister → comrade→

Chicago → One snowy day walking the Midway Plaisance→ after teaching our class →The late theorist, Lauren Berlant, exclaimed →There has to be another way! → The most desperate declaration I had heard→ Men and women → all people → Lauren: There has to be! → A place beyond trauma → where we can meet each other→ in the moonlight→ There has to be a place in the moonlight → For mutual aid→

Dark and cool streams of finding each other the Delaware River and its tributaries on NY Route 17 when all our cars have broken down and a bear emerges from the woods in the winter snow and the diners are closed and the bear steps closer and we have to find each other somehow as the bear gets closer And we are nowhere and without no one And only death can save us reaching his hand out from the eye of the unicorn as we swirl in the cosmic dust his hand emerging from the eye of the unicorn and the bear and the snow and death and all the broken cars and all the broken roads and there where we are no one and nowhere at the end of the ocean the sea and the beach and we start changing we keep changing and you grow fins and I grow fins and Noah is drowned and I grow fins and you grow fins and we swim with Noah and all the animals in the ocean in the ocean is its own philosophy and we keep changing and we all grow fins and a tail and the bear is swimming and it grows a tail and the sea ice and the ice pack and we all are in the tide with sea the bear and the hand of death reaching through the eye of the unicorn to pull us through time and narwhals start speaking in tongues and we all are a philosophy and the broken cars are buried beneath our dreams and our dreams are an ocean that spreads out into tomorrow when we awake with the calm the calm of the sea and the salt air →

We will find ourselves there →

Together

P.S. My sincerest gratitude to my friend and editor of this issue, Dr. Omar Kholeif, for including me. Omar, knowing my friendship with the late artist Pope.L invited me to share my thoughts about him in this essay. This has been difficult. I want to honor Omar’s kind invitation to remember Pope.L in some way. Most of what I have to say about Pope.L’s art (what I can muster at this point) I already wrote before he passed. So I offer the following: you can read my interviews with Pope.L at Artforum.com and Portable Gray; my essays, “Immigrational Aesthetics/ Pope.L and The Power of Horror,” in Pope.L: Campaign edited by Dieter Roelstraete and Hospital Art for Chicago Artist Writers. He has long been an influence on my work, a fact I acknowledged in my novel, The Black Flame of Paradise.