It seems to be a summer of camps in Europe. On top of the No Border camp
in Strasburg, there is another camp in Cottbus, Germany, 3-11 august. The
manifest below describes what the organisation group has in mind, and how
this camp differs from anything I ever heard about.
Herman van Wietmarschen
Werkplaats Linkse Analyse Biopolitiek www.biopolitiek.nl
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Manifesto of the Crossover Summer Camp Project
What we want:
Our starting point is the conviction that all the different relations of
power and domination are inseparably bound up with one another,
permeating and often stabilizing each other. We want to develop a
practice that
reflects this.
Our aim is to contribute to the construction of a new constellation of
political tendencies.
A "new constellation" would be one where, finally, anti-sexist
positions would not have to be fought through by (pro-)feminists against
the passive or active resistance of the majority anymore, but be a matter
of course; and where, finally, men would, of their own accord, become
active in the field of pro feminist politics.
We want an end to the dominance of a heterosexual culture within the
radical left, for which gays are good for adding color and entertainment
to the serious business of politics, in which lesbians are nearly
invisible and for which hermaphrodites and transgender people are, at the
most, objects of scientific curiosity.
Such a new constellation would be one where the presence of migrant and
jewish people, people of color…(no matter where they've grown up) would
be a matter of course; where the manners and the language of the majority
would not constitute the norm and where white antiracists would deal with
their
own racisms and make their own motives transparent, instead of only
speaking for and about the "oppressed".
Last but not least, we want an alliance where middle class ways of
talking and behaving are not the normal and taken-for-granted standard.
This is not about idealizing or demonising any group, it's about
questioning norms.
We don't believe we can change social structures simply by making some
individual behavior changes. But becoming conscious of our ways of acting
and speaking, and working on changing them is an important first step. We
want to get together people who want to change themselves AND external
conditions; we aim to not only attack networks of power but strengthen
networks of resistance and construct new ones.
Who we are: The preparation group of the summer camp project was
re-founded at the crossover conference, which took place in January in
the northern German city Bremen. There are people in our network who
joined at the conference, and also some people from the "old"
summer camp project, who had originally planned an "anti-racist
anti-sexist camp" for the summer of 2001 and later co-organized the
crossover conference. Many of us know each other from radical left and
feminist circles in Germany. Most of us possess a German passport. At the
moment about 90% of us are womenlesbians. We are from different
"political generations"; there are also differences among us
regarding our social origins and current class position. But we are still
not as mixed as we would like to be. "Crossover" - the new name
of the summer camp project: At the conference in Bremen we agreed that
the original name of the project ("antiracist antisexist summer
camp") does not express what we want so well, because it names only
two relations of domination. With the new name "crossover summer
camp project" we want to emphasize that relations of power and
domination (patriarchy, capitalism…) can never be understood separately,
but are closely linked. We prefer a positive and content-related
definition of what we want, and a description of our strategies, to terms
of pure rejection (all those "antis"). For example, we prefer
the positive concept of (pro) feminism to the term anti-sexism. How we
organize: The old project, which started in august 2000, met about every
month, in different locations, mostly in Berlin and Bremen and once in
Warsaw. In this new phase of the project, with participants in the
network spread out across Europe from Spain to Poland, we rely more on
local meetings and e-mail communication. We are open to the idea of a
separate, coordinated organization of migrants/people of colour within
the project network; we are just as open to closer cooperation.
That womenlesbians can organize separately in the project and at the camp
also goes without saying. How we treat each other is an important issue,
we think, and we definitely want something other than the activist-macho
posturing so familiar to us from our experience in many left circles. We
must hasten to add that this is not the only type of male dominance - or
dominance of any kind - that we see as a problem. We are not so naïve to
think we've found "the answer" to this; that is to say, we are
open to new ideas and ways of dealing with one another. Language: We are
aware that language can be the cause of distance and exclusion. We want
to use language that is understandable for as many people as possible, to
reduce difficulties of
communication and to avoid language-related hierarchies of knowledge and
power. That's why we feel it is really important to create an atmosphere
where it is easy to ask questions, comment and criticize.
Transnationality: Language understandable for as many people as possible
means that we would like to have many workshops at the summer camp in
English and that we want to organize translations for all languages
represented. Age and "special needs": We want a mixed age
structure. That could
mean, for example, providing workshops "for beginners", and
trying to find a place for the camp where other accommodation besides
tents are available, for those who can't or don't want to sleep in tents
for whatever reason. Best would be a seminar house with a big field or
meadow next to it. What is it going to be about? We are striving for a
great diversity in the issues addressed. For us, this means dealing with
nation, patriarchy, antisemitism, heterosexism, capitalism and racism,
among other issues.
We think it's essential to draw structural links between different
relations of power and domination from the very beginning. For example,
by bringing the intrinsic interrelatedness of masculinity, heterosexism
and whiteness into focus. Which ones of the countless possible
interconnections we will focus on at the camp crucially depends on your
input. What all these catchwords refer to - in our understanding - is
simply impossible to unfold in a short text such as this one. But we
intend to put together a kind of reader with different types of texts. We
don't want a summer university, nor a purely action-oriented camp,
but a crossover between 'theory' and 'practice' - after all, in the long
run, our aim is the abolition of the distinction between intellectual and
manual labor. We want a combinition of theory and practice of all kinds:
from dance, self-defence training/wendo and creative writing to direct
action.
Camp Culture?!?
We hope the summercamp will be a venue for performances (film, music,
acrobatics, for example), subversive culture and cultural subversion. Not
just because it's fun - which would be reason enough - but because we see
culture as a space in which society, in many different ways, some fraught
with conflict, (re)produces its stocks of knowledge, its norms and
values, its structures of thought and feeling. Therefore, part of radical
resistance is engaging in one's own cultural production - that the
dominant modes of seeing, hearing and feeling may be
subverted! By now at the very latest, some will say that our program is
definitely not realizable. We agree with this assessment insofar as we
don't assume at all we will be able to realize everything we envision at
the first summer camp already. We understand our undertaking to be a
long-term project requiring some staying power, ample capacity to
tolerate frustration and great persistence. Up to now, though, it's been
fun, too. What does it mean to be part of the preparation network?
Stress, hard work, providing services for participants who are just
consumers…? We are not workaholics and that's not what we want to become,
either. We want what we do to be satisfying for us. We will share the
work according to our different areas of interest
and time capacities. Self organisation: At the camp we will count on the
self-responsibility and self-organisation of the participants. That means
that we (the preparation group) will disband on the second day of the
camp. From then on we will turn the organisational work in as many areas
as possible over into the hands of the participants. We will support the
new groups who take over the organisational tasks at the camp with our
knowledge and experience. All of us will shape the camp and contribute to
its success. Participate in the preparation network! With our current
capacities we will only be able to realise a fraction of what we want.
Also, we are still not as transnational and transethnic as we would wish.
So, we hope for lively
transnational radical participation in the camp preparations. (It's never
too late to join!) See you!
The organizers
PS: There is an e-mail discussion group in English, and an e-mail list
for those who just want to get the latest news and information about the
project. Send us an e-mail and we will subscribe you. Most of the minutes
of the meetings of the old project are accessible on our web site in
German and English. The address of our web site is:
www.summercamp.squat.net.
Our e-mail address is:
summercamp@squat.net. Our postal address is: summer camp c/o a6-laden,
Adalbertstrasse 6, 10999 Berlin
LINK 1 What do we mean when we say "radical left"? Here's our
provisional statement, a work in progress: (This link text under
construction)
LINK 2 What do we mean when we say "feminism"? Here's our
provisional statement, a work in progress: Our feminism is always linked
with a critique of domination, of the existing social relations
(capitalism, racism,… ), of oppression on the basis of skin color,
origin, appearance, age… It is neither possible nor is it our goal to
abolish only one form of oppression while leaving the totality of systems
of oppression intact. There are x different strands of feminism. What
unites them is the goal of getting rid ot the relations of domination
between genders. We think the abolition of just one relation of
domination wouldn't change the social conditions under which we are
living. The feminism we subscribe to doesn't raise one sex over an other
("women are better than men".) This would be only a kind of
reversal of current circumstances. It also doesn't want a assimilation of
women to so-called male standards. Sex and gender categories are socially
constructed. In the long run, they should be abolished. Because
patriarchal sex and gender categories have dominated the lives of humans
for a very long time, they can't be gotten rid of from one day to the
next. This is why we see "strategic affirmation" of gender
identity, in appropriate contexts, as important in making existing sexist
power structures visible and tangible, thus opening them to attack.
Radical changes of a (pro) feminist nature won't happen without groups
that make gender an issue, in gender-separated as well as in mixed
groups. LINK 3 What do we mean when we say "identity politics"?
Here's our provisional statement, a work in
progress: Just as there are different constructions of identity, there
are different politics of identity. That is why we distinguish
"essentialist" politics of identity, which, in most cases,
function to gain or retain privileges or come to an arrangement with the
given social conditions, from "strategic" politics of identity
that function to sabotage relations of power and domination. By
essentialist identity politics we mean politics that derive a common
identity from a shared essence, for example, being female (understood as
a "natural fact"). By strategic identity politics we mean
politics that conceptualize common identity in a pragmatic way, as a
constructed reality, as, for example, many women's/lesbian groups do. We
don't want to reduce the complex discussions around identity politics to
this distinction, though. At the summer camp, strategic identity politics
will be a major issue. Within this problematic, the question that
concerns us most is if and how it is possible to create political
alliances across major differences of experience. Finding this out is
first and foremost a social question. The question of whether it is
possible to bridge differences - bound up with relations of power and
domination - in thinking, physicality, feeling and acting only gets
answered in actual encounters: Is it possible to establish a truly
respectful and equitable way of dealing with one another (which requires
a lot of sensitivity for different experiences, realities and
vulnerabilities) or not?
crossover summer camp
cottbus, germany , 03.-11. august 2002
the program of the camp will include direct action,
performances, discussions, theory workshops, cutting veggies, dancing,
music, cleaning up and much more.
issues of the camp:
- orientalism, racism and sexism
- genderkiller: queer, transgender and intersex issues
- gender, work and migration
- eastern and western europe
- antisemitism
- anticapitalism and globalisation
- internationalism and solidarity
- feminist movements and histories
- power, domination, violence and the law
- pornography and representation
- critiques of science, technology and reason
- body norms and body politics
- the social nature of nature
- reproductive technologies and population politics
one basic idea of our project is that all relations of power and
domination are interconnected and that the struggle against them needs
new alliances and new forms.
the crossover camp strives to break the dominance of white, heterosexist
culture within the radical left.
through international profeminist alliances, we wish to to subvert the
norms of majority society, and to build up and strengthen networks of
resistance.
the crossover camp will take place in cottbus.
there will be womenlesbian, womenlesbiantransinter and other areas, as
well as groups offering assistance for disabled people, childcare and
translations.
good food - vegan and vegetarian - will be provided by a camp kitchen.
the preparation group will disband at the beginning of the camp.
from day two on, it will be your turn to organize all necessary work
self-responsibly.
costs: 2 € (superconcession price) to 5 € (solidarity price) per day, 20
€ (superconcession price) to 50 € (solidarity price) for the whole camp.
no one turned away for lack of funds.