The document discusses interpretive labor and structural violence. It argues that interpretive labor, such as caring for and understanding other people, is often relegated to those at the bottom of social hierarchies. While victims of structural violence, such as women and workers, spend significant time imagining the perspectives of those above them, the reverse is rarely true. This imbalance in interpretive labor helps preserve unequal social relations.

2. note: deck quotes in brown via David Graeber‘s revolution in reverse. and a few from his utopia of rules
mostly shared in reverse/chaotic/stigmergic/et-al order.. perhaps to model/invite interpretive labor.
and perhaps suggesting we embrace idiosyncratic jargon ness.. rather than demanding we conform/compromise all our
sharing/living/art...

3. Insofar as a clear distinction can be made here, it’s
the care, energy, and labor
directed at human beings
that should be considered fundamental.

4. for example, for most of what we usually think of as women’s work, as labor at all.
To my mind it would probably be better to recognize it
as the primary form of labor.

5. No doubt all this makes it easier to see the two as fundamentally different sorts
of activity, making it hard for us to recognize
interpretive labor,

6. The things we care most about — our loves, passions, rivalries, obsessions —
are always other people; and in most societies that are not capitalist, it’s taken
for granted that the manufacture of material goods is a subordinate moment in a
larger process of
f a s h i o n i n g p e o p l e .
In fact, I would argue that one of the most alienating aspects of capitalism is
the fact that it forces us to pretend that it is the other way around, and
that societies exist primarily to increase their output of things.

7. In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All
these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a
day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but
the final saturation with absence.
— Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life
rev of everyday life

8. Creativity and desire — what we often reduce, in political economy terms, to “production” and
“consumption” — are essentially vehicles of the imagination. Structures of inequality and
domination, structural violence if you will, tend to skew the imagination. They might
create situations where laborers are relegated to mind-numbing, boring, mechanical jobs and
only a small elite is allowed to indulge in imaginative labor, leading to the feeling, on the
part of the workers, that they are alienated from their own labor, that their very deeds belong to
someone else.

9. It might also create social
situations where kings, politicians, celebrities or CEOs
prance about oblivious to almost everything around them
while their wives, servants, staff, and handlers spend all
their time engaged in the imaginative work of maintaining
them in their fantasies.
on hold ness…

10. .…. Political economy tends to see work in capitalist societies as divided between two
spheres: wage labor, for which the paradigm is always factories, and domestic labor —
housework, childcare — relegated mainly to women. The first is seen primarily as a matter
of creating and maintaining physical objects. The second is probably best seen as a
matter of creating and maintaining people and social relations. The distinction is
obviously a bit of a caricature: there has never been a society, not even Engels’ Manchester
or Victor Hugo’s Paris, where most men were factory workers or most women worked
exclusively as housewives. Still, it is a useful starting point, since it reveals an interesting
divergence. In the sphere of industry, it is generally those on top that relegate to themselves
the more imaginative tasks (i.e., that design the products and organize production), whereas
when inequalities emerge in the sphere of social production,
it’s those on the bottom who end up expected to do the major
imaginative work (for example, the bulk of what I’ve called the
‘labor of interpretation’ that keeps life running).

12. Women’s (*and/or suppressed/oppressed/hidden men’s) logic was always being treated
as alien and incomprehensible. One never had the impression, on the other hand, that women
had much trouble understanding the men. That’s because the women had no choice but to
understand men: this was the heyday of the American patriarchal family, and women with no
access to their own income or resources had little choice but to spend a fair amount of time
and energy understanding what the relevant men thought was going on. Actually, this sort
of rhetoric about the mysteries of womankind is a perennial feature of patriarchal families:
structures that can, indeed, be considered forms of structural violence insofar as the power of
men over women within them is, as generations of feminists have pointed out, ultimately backed
up, if often in indirect and hidden ways, by all sorts of coercive force. But generations of female
novelists — Virginia Woolf comes immediately to mind — have also documented the other side of
this: the constant work women perform in managing, maintaining, and adjusting the egos of
apparently oblivious men — involving an endless work of imaginative identification and what I’ve
called interpretive labor.
*my add

13. The result is that while those on the bottom spend a great deal of time imagining the
perspectives of, and actually caring about, those on the top, but it almost never
happens the other way around. That is my real point. Whatever the mechanisms, something
like this always seems to occur: whether one is dealing with masters and servants, men and
women, bosses and workers, rich and poor.
Structural inequality — structural violence — invariably
creates the same lopsided structures of the imagination. And
since, as Smith correctly observed, imagination tends to bring with it sympathy, the victims of
structural violence tend to care about its beneficiaries, or at least, to care far more about them
than those beneficiaries care about them. In fact, this might well be (aside from the violence
itself) the single most powerful force preserving such relations.
It’s not that interpretive work isn’t carried out. Society, in any recognizable form, could not
operate without it. Rather, the overwhelming burden of the labor is relegated to its
victims.

14. what if we all have this in us..
what if this is what we’re wired for..
but from all the manufacturing consent and pluralistic ignorance ..
that perpetuate broken feedback loops..
most of us are not us.. enough..
so that interpretive labor seems isolated to ie: women..
what if the violence.. [discrimination, judgment, …]
all stems from this suffocating of (a naturally inclined) interpretive labor..
keeping us from
l i s t e n i n g
deeply enough
to selves and each other

15. perhaps
will allow each of us
the luxury
of being
f u l l y
f i t t i n g l y
ourselves.

19. from David (when asked if he would distinguish interpretive labor from *empathy..via
twitter)..I think of empathy as more spontaneous
*empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

20. in all our *silly worry about losing jobs..
what if this is the work we need most..
what if this is the work that frees us all..
*

21. on my take of David's take on *Jo Freeman from structurelessness page
As activists sometimes put it: in most circumstances, if you bring together a crowd of people, that crowd
will, as a group, behave less intelligently, and less creatively, than any single member of the crowd is
likely to do if on their own. Activist decision-making process is, instead, designed to make that crowd
smarter and more imaginative than any individual participant.
It is indeed possible to do this, but it takes a lot of work.
And the larger the group, the more formal mechanisms have to be put in place. The
single most important essay in this whole activist tradition is called “The Tyranny
of Structurelessness,”170 written in the 1970s by Jo Freeman,
a lot of work.. &/or a lot of
d i s e n g a g e ing

22. The community refers to an entity, mainly to a homogeneous group of people, whereas the idea of the public puts an
emphasis on the relation between different communities. The public realm can be considered as the actual or virtual
space where strangers and different people or groups with diverging forms of life can meet. – Stavros Starvides

23. about organizational crises that occurred in early feminist consciousness-raising circles when those
groups began to attain a certain size. Freeman observed that such groups always started out with a
kind of rough-and-ready anarchism, an assumption that there was no need for any formal,
parliamentary rules-of-order type mechanisms at all. People would just sit down in a sisterly manner
and work things out. And this was, indeed, what happened at first. However, as soon as the
groups grew to over, say, twenty people, informal cliques invariably
began to emerge, and small groups of friends or allies began
controlling information, setting agendas, and wielding power in all
sorts of subtle ways.
Freeman proposed a number of different formal mechanisms that might be employed to counteract this
effect, but for present purposes, the specifics don’t really matter. Suffice it to say that what is now
referred to as “formal consensus process” largely emerges from the crisis Freeman described, and the
debate her intervention set off.
the need to redefine decision making.. ie: disengage from consensus ness
perhaps public can't have consensus w/o oppression ...

24. What I do want to bring attention to is that almost everyone who is not emerging from an
explicitly anti-authoritarian position—and no insignificant number even of those who are—
completely misread Freeman’s essay, and
interpret it not as a plea for formal
mechanisms to ensure equality, but as a
plea for more transparent hierarchy.

25. ..Leninists are notorious for this sort of thing, but Liberals are just as bad. I can’t tell you how many
arguments I’ve had about this. They always go exactly the same way. First, Freeman’s
argument about the formation of cliques and invisible power structures is taken as
an argument that any group of over twenty people will always have to have cliques,
power structures, and people in authority. The next step is to insist that if you want
to minimize the power of such cliques, or any deleterious effects those power
structures might have, the only way to do so is to institutionalize them: to take the
de facto cabal and turn them into a central committee (or, since that term now has a bad
history, usually they say a coordinating committee, or a steering committee, or something of that sort.)
One needs to get power out of the shadows—to formalize the process, make up rules, hold elections,
specify exactly what the cabal is allowed to do and what it’s not. In this way, at least, power will be made
transparent and “accountable.”
the need to redefine decision making.. ie: disengage from consensus ness….. p e r h a p s
public can't have consensus w/o oppression ...

26. huge questioning of .. freeman/male-female/interpretation/timing-of-
imagination ness..
perhaps that was our interpretation (ie: obsession w consensus).. but we
were missing that it begged to be..
..more a consensus of 7 billion people with their
gut.. not a consensus of 7 bill people with each
other..
the daily gut check being the true north.. rather than some political mech
for decision making.. to get us all to waggle/consent on one idea/person..

27. The resulting outpouring of *new forms of consensus process constitutes the most
important contribution to revolutionary practice in decades.
*most important contribution?.. perhaps.. but i'd suggest.. rather.. worst
damage.. because like shaw's take on communication.. we assumed
it/interpretation had been done.. and quit questioning the whole premise of
decision/consensus making..
brown quotes now back to rev in reverse for rest of deck

28. perhaps an even more unrealistic sounding notion would be this consensus w/in each gut
and that.. we still haven't gone deep enough... ie: to no consensus on an idea... rather
regrouping people (freeman small enough ness).. to the like idea... so their
work/interpretive-let's-just-call-it-art....isn't compromised.. by having to buy-in/sell-out to a
diff mindset on their art...messing with the..
one ness
..of the dance we're missing

29. which begs we quit saying man/woman/feminism ness.. rather just call us human..,
and too.. today... in a nother way to live...call us humans that listen deeper.. humans that
act/see us (all of us or it won't work... www ness) as one..
this has potential/capability of freeing all the time we spend on labeling... and section ing off into
groupings...(that are never authentically separate.. thinking e langer's.. prej decreases as
discrimination increases.. and thinking all our current separations ie: blm;lgbt; refugee; et al)..
and then spending our days justifying our justifying of them..
like bucky's inspectors of inspectors... being too much

30. taking away our time/energy/luxury/quiet/still/imagination
we spinach or rock our way thru life (ie: leave or remain; man or woman; black or
white... ie: separate rooms at idea/idec retreat.. where many didn't know which to
choose.. main fear.. making some in each room mad if picked the other)
binary ness is keeping us from us.., and killing/suffocating us
let's take what i hear you saying about freeman...
and rather than say... see large doesn't work...
create that mech she referenced.. that can keep
us small... ginormously small

31. Rather than abandon the search for consensus in decision-making, many began trying to develop more
formal versions on the same principles
perhaps mech simple enough wasn't yet imagined... to fit in mind/rationale/practicality of
interpretive labor.... but now it is... now we can... which means we don't have to continue
compromising/misunderstanding/misconceiving.. smaller-size/intent issues because of
larger-size/agenda issues
more formal versions on same principles ... always compromises the all-of-us ness.. ie: if
their is public consensus.. someone(s) is being oppressed
going large has to remain... antifragile/stigmergic/rhizomatic/et-al..
that we can do. that tech can do.

32. much though, again, such spontaneous creations always seems to end being subsumed within
some new form of violent bureaucracy. However, as I’ve noted, this is more or less inevitable
since bureaucracy, however much it serves as the immediate organizer of situations of power
and structural blindness, does not create them. Mainly, it simply evolves to manage them.
This is one reason direct action proceeds in the opposite direction. Probably a majority of the
participants are drawn from *subcultures that are all about reinventing everyday life.
well.. especially true if we see *subculture as individual.. and if we believe we are
each hard wired toward revinventing everyday life.. (yr to be 5)
listen - a simple message ness

33. Even if not, actions begin with the creation of new forms of collective decision-making: councils, assemblies, the
endless attention to ‘process’ — ……...They serve more as something almost along the lines of momentary
advertisements — or better, foretastes, experiences of visionary inspiration — for a much slower,
painstaking struggle of creating alternative institutions.
don't give into assuming the state...ness... be/cause then we start w us/it not being truly
humanbeing ness.. and then have to spend our days hoping to incremental ourselves back
out of a broken feedback loop.. to us
there’s a nother way.. for (blank)'s sake

34. One of the most important contributions of feminism, it seems to me, has been to constantly remind everyone
that “situations” do not create themselves. There is usually a great deal of work involved. For much
of human history, what has been taken as politics has consisted essentially of a series of dramatic
performances carried out upon theatrical stages. One of the great gifts of feminism to political
thought has been to continually remind us of the people is in fact making and preparing
and cleaning those stages, and even more, maintaining the invisible structures that
make them possible — people who have, overwhelmingly, been women.
invisibility ness.. indeed.. (little prince - most important invisible to the eye ness)
perhaps problem here however.. is that this work has been a clean up mode work.. rather
than an art/commons work.. so we have people/women/whoever..
interpreting/cleaning/prepping for toxic people/men/situations.. rather than people
doing/being their art.. rather than what we are now capable of ..ie: eudaimoniative
surplus.. for everyone..
has to be everyone or won't work.. www ness

35. from *one of most important contributions of feminism.. consensus.. but comes from a lot of work
so maybe this isn’t r in r .. not a lot of prep...work... but rather... a human/ multitudinal leap...
meaning... mech has to be for everyone... no bias... no labels... no prep.. so... can't be about
measuring/credential ing…
begs a hosting life bits ness l e a p
for (blank)’s sake

36. The normal process of politics of course is to make such people disappear. Indeed one of the
chief functions of women’s work is to make itself disappear. One might say that the political
ideal within direct action circles has become to efface the difference; or, to put it another
way, that action is seen as genuinely revolutionary when the process of production of
situations is experienced as just as liberating as the situations themselves.
It is an experiment one might say in the realignment of imagination, of
creating truly non-alienated forms of experience.
...efface the difference..... the invisibility becomes the liberation..
on things that matter being invisible to the eye.. or perhaps.. just invisible to
the eye as we’re currently using it.. (ie: to measure/validate/judge/compete.)
let’s try.. a nother way.. where the whole idea of seen/unseen work is
irrelevant/disengageable..

37. the huge/100%/whole ness acknowledges the reliability oriented thinking of most people
in the world.. [ie: bemoaning that..here we go again.. w tragedy of the commons ness; w
tragedy of the structureless ness; et al…] but have we honestly ever given it/us a fair
shot.. have we ever honestly trusted people.. enough.. along with.. a mech to facilitate
alive trusted people..?
i think not.
i think that's why this is so huge/diff.
key is - nationality: human

38. when we play any binary card.. we've lost/compromised from the get go. we have to help
ourselves out of this mess by constantly reminding ourselves.. of the stories going on in each
head .. the every actor has a reason ness.. the danger of a single story ness..
ie: men vs women…
on assumed group we call men - and their condition today.. toxic... because we all
placed on them the responsibility of: finances - owning/measuring/valuing money;
wars- killing other humans to keep us from killing humans; work - bring home money
from jobs they don't love
and to show how intoxicated that has made us all.. in regard to the assumed feminist
movement ness.. remnants include women wanting responsibility for assumed
honorable/desirable men's responsibilities: finances - wanting pic on bills; wars -
wanting to help kill in order to keep us from killing; work - wanting to spend hours of
our day doing things we don't necessarily/always love for money

39. from *one reason direct action proceeds in opp direction… majority drawn from subcultures .. of
reinventing everyday life
perhaps... huge... majorities today aren't drawn from subculture of reinventing everyday life....
i'd even say... today... that subculture only lies deeply buried w/in each soul... turtle-shell-less ness..
we have to leap... so not reverse... but.. l e a p ... *(no real visible process in between)
parseing out my *(no visible process in between)
what if mech to facilitate rev in reverse..is designed.. not for rev nor reverse.. (as that might be similar to David's ambivalence w
multitude)
what if it's designed for a leap (no visible prep..training..work...and visible /actual...only by a few...like cleaning house..for others to
leap. .not because lazy...but because..then dance will never dance..sync matters in a global do over)
so designed for uncertainty/unframability/antifragility. ..

40. let's let our combined/unified true north (for decision making/consensus/et-al).. be
found/heard/seen w/in each gut/heart/soul everyday.. that's a foundation we
haven't yet tried
ie: hosting life bits where the data we focus on is self-talk .. but within a
completely diff/nother way to live..

41. so perhaps formal ish mech.. (that Jo and/or others haven't yet seen).. would be one that's
simple enough for all of us.. one that focuses on self-talk as data... so that the small can remain
ginorm small no matter how many people.. even beyond 7 bill..
ie: each voice spoken.. matters.. heard by speaker/self..
t r u s t ing that dance

42. interpreting that there is never/always labor.. that never-nothing-going-on ness..
this silence/invisibility.. makes us pay closer attention.. to life.. to free/dom
lack of evidence/measurement/visible-labor/visible-interpretation.. doesn’t mean
no labor..doesn’t mean no interpretation..
perhaps it just begs us to quit looking for validity with numbers/eyes.. spend
energy instead on l i s t e n i n g deeper with heart - to self/others

43. redefineschool.com/interpretive-labor/
all of us.. doing/being/sharing/hearing/seeing..invisible