September Books

1. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives by Phyllis Trible.
This is one of those books you read about in a lot of places and so, coming across it in a friend’s library this last week, I thought I would give it a read.  For those who know the literature around OT scholarship or feminist-critical readings of the B.I.B.L.E. there probably isn’t that much new here — so many people have picked up and ran with what Trible wrote since this book was published that a lot of people have probably pretty much read this book already.
However, that doesn’t take away from any of its significance.  More than most I know, Texts of Terror is the sustained work of exegesis that absolutely damns any superficial understanding of the Bible as the plain and simple, divinely inspired Word of God.  In exploring the stories of four women — Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed raped, murdered and dismembered concubine of a Levite, and the daughter of Jephthah — Trible demonstrates not only the atrocities and violence performed by the human characters within the stories but also of the narrators and of God as God is portrayed in those stories.  Any acritical approach to the the biblical stories is pretty much impossible after one encounters Trible’s text.  And thank God for that.
2. Time Regained (Vol 6 of “In Search of Lost Time”) by Marcel Proust.
I’ve gotta say that, after Vols 4 & 5, I was pretty nervous to get into the conclusion of In Search of Lost Time.  Those contributions were so disappointing that I was worried the story would continue its downward slide and end in disappointment.  Thankfully, however, this volume really does rise up to meet the expectations set by the first two (maybe three) volumes.  Once again, the sort of insight Proust demonstrated earlier surfaces and some of his descriptive moments put into words things that we take for granted but perhaps would never know how to actually express (here Proust lives up to the role of the writer as he describes it in this volume: “The function and the task of a writer are those of a translator”).
I very much enjoyed this volume and, all in all, am glad that I undertook the reading of this story. I very much enjoyed Proust’s reflections not just on time but on the ways in which people move through time, the ways in which people construct their identities, and the ways in which each individual person is, in fact, a whole host of beings — (each one a multitude that signals: “I am legion” to borrow from Hardt and Negri’s borrowing from the Gospels).  Thus, we are, all of us, constantly in the process of creating and recreating ourselves and others and, at any given moment, who we are is rather different depending on who describes us (and who is to say whether one person’s description of us is more accurate than any other person’s description or our own?  Are we not, rather, all at once, everything we are taken to be?).  To share simply one quote from this volume in this regard:

As I made my way home, I reflected upon the speed with which conscience ceases to be a partner in our habits, which she allows to develop freely without bothering herself about them, and upon the astonishing picture which may consequently present itself to us if we observe simply from without, and in the belief that they engage the whole of the individual, the actions of men whose moral or intellectual virtues may at the same time be developing independently in an entirely different direction.

Consequently, Proust sets out to explore the “notion of Time embodied, of years past but not separate from us.”  In this regard, memory is also an ongoing theme throughout the book as, for example, demonstrated in this passage:

I understood that the reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, on the evidence not of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life–and therefore we judge it disparagingly.  At most I noticed cursorily that the differences which exist between every one of our real impressions–differences which explain why a uniform depiction of life cannot bear much resemblance to the reality–derive probably from the following cause: the slightest word that we have said, the most insignificant action that we have performed at any one epoch of our life was surrounded by, and coloured by the reflexion of, things which logically had no connexion with it and which later have been separated from it by our intellect which could make nothing of them for its own rational purposes, things, however, in the midst of which… the simplest act or gesture remains immured as within a thousand sealed vessels, each one of them filled with things of a colour,k a scent, a temperature that are absolutely different one from another, vessels, moreover, which being disposed over the whole range of our years, during which we have never ceased to change if only in our dreams and our thoughts, are situated at the most various moral altitudes and give us the sensation of extraordinarily diverse atmospheres.

To close things out, here are a few final references and quotations.
First, of all, on a somewhat interesting trivia note, I found it interesting that Proust refers to the air battles fought over Paris during WWI with several references to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”  Of course, Francis Ford Coppola ended up using that same piece of music for what might be the most famous scene in Apocalypse Now–when the American helicopters fly in and assault a Vietnamese village.  The parallels are pretty striking and I reckon he must have borrowed this from Proust.
Secondly, in this volume, characters reflect in more than one instance about the role that media plays in the formation of perceptions that people than internalize and take to be their own.  To quote M. de Charlus: “”What is astonishing,” he said, “is that this public which judges the men and events of the war solely from the newspaper, is persuaded that it forms its own opinion.”  I reckon the same is true of people today, although the nature of the media has changed — instead of newspapers, people rely on sources like twitter, facebook, and wikipedia in order to discover their own opinions.
M. de Charlus also as some good things to say about war:

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all, you said, it is, of necessity taking place every day… ‘Now that Germany has determined on war, the die is cast,’ the truth is that every morning war is declared afresh.  And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.

Something that we should keep in mind today both as we sustain old wars and create new ones (pardon the overlap with our contemporary context but, as Proust also observes in this volume: “In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self.  The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself”).
Moving on to a related theme, I also enjoyed the following passage on love, wherein Proust quotes Jean de La Bruyère:  “Men often want to love where they cannot hope to succeed; they seek their own undoing without being able to compass it, and, if I may put it thus, they are forced against their will to remain free.”  Although, some pages later, Proust slightly alters what this may mean in his own reflections on love: “to the woman whom we have loved most in our life we are not so faithful as we are to ourself, and sooner or alter we forget her in order… to be able to begin to love again.”  This, quite a bit later, leads to further reflections upon love in relation to the ways in which we construct our selves:

In the past the fear of being no longer myself was something that had terrified me, and this had made me dread the end of each new love that I had experienced (for Gilberte, for Albertine), because I could not bear the idea that the “I” who loved them would one day cease to exist, since this in itself would be a kind of death.  But by dint of repetition this fear had gradually been transformed into a calm confidence.  So that if in those early days, as we have seen, the idea of death had cast a shadow over my loves, for a long time now the remembrance of love had helped me not to fear death.  For I realised that dying was not something new, but that on the contrary since my childhood I had died many times.

So, anyway, I hope that you all get a glimpse of Proust’s ability to write well and also see the ways in which he anticipates many of the themes that arise in twentieth-century social theory, philosophy, and hermeneutics.  Really it is quite incredible and I am glad that I undertook the task of reading this book.
3. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton.
Not that long ago, I read an essay by Žižek reflecting on this story by Chesterton.  So, seeing it sitting on a friend’s shelf, I sat down and read it the other day.  I can’t say I found it all that exciting.  In fact, I found it mostly mildly annoying.
On the meta- level, Chesterton is reflecting upon questions about good and evil and how such things can exist in the company of a God who is both powerful and loving.  He does this by writing a story about secret police officers (who belong to the special “thought police” section of the force) who are on the tail of an international anarchist conspiracy.  Neither level of the story plays out all that well.  In relation to matters of evil, this isn’t entirely Chesterton’s fault.  As far as I can tell, nobody can offer a satisfactory answer to that issue.  Chesterton’s proposal is that when we focus in on evil and suffering and pain, we are basically seeing the back of God — or of the world — which appears monstrous, but our encounter with the face of God makes everything seem beautiful and playful and makes the monstrous stuff appear as some sort of joke just awaiting its final revelation.  So, for those who are desperate for some sort of romantic ideological overcoding of life, I suppose this might sound nice… but, for myself, it just sounds like the sort of story told by people who don’t want much to do with suffering.
Moving to the details of the story, Chesterton shows (a) an obvious love of law-and-order and (b) a total lack of comprehension about anything related to anarchism as a political philosophy or as something that has inspired people to try and act on behalf of life-giving change in the world.  Really, he ends up sounding like one of the “good old boys” who seems to think that British imperialism is essentially a benevolent force for good in the world (speaking of being a good old boy, Chesterton’s story also lacks any significant female presence — just one woman shows up for a few pages at the start and then is mentioned again at the very end — all the other main characters and speaking parts are male; plus, a lot of the story seems like a school boy’s fantasy about running around saving the world from bad guys [like “anarchists”] and wearing flashy clothes and carrying a sword will sitting on a throne or a horse… yippee).
Of course, Chesterton realizes that just doing what you’re told to do seems less flashy and exciting than being involved in some sort of revolutionary action, and so that’s why the God in his story goes around creating a plot that adds a whole lot more excitement to the lives of those who both follow and enforce the laws of society.  “I was just following orders… and, boy, was it exciting!”  Unfortunately for Chesterton, this line of thinking is about as accurate as R. R. Reno’s recent assertion that the true way to demonstrate a preferential option for the poor is to wear a tie and not watch trashy TV.
Not really recommended reading.  Also not really something that makes me interested in reading much of anything else Chesterton wrote.
4. Soldier X by Don Wulffson.
This book is the story of a German soldier who fought on the Russian front during WWII.  I enjoyed it quite a bit because it brings a human face to people — German soldiers/Nazis — who are generally treated as animals or as those who deserved to die, in our more culturally dominant reflections upon that war.  This story is written as fiction, but the author claims that what occurred accurately reflects the experiences of two people.  I don’t want to say too much about the plot because there are some very interesting twists that make this story a little different than other war memoirs I have read… and because the book is so small that you could sit down and read it in a few hours to find out for yourself what it says.  All I can say is that war is fucking hell, I have no ability to imagine what it is like to live through something like that, and I hope I never find out.
5. Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland.
Coupland tends to have a bit of a cult following up here in Canada and Hey Nostradamus! has probably become his most highly praised novel (prior to that, I think it was Life After God).  Some of my friends really love this guy and can offer pretty captivating readings of his books, but I’ve always had a bit of trouble connecting with Coupland’s writing.  This book wasn’t really that different than his others in terms of the impact I felt from it.  It was… good… not great or stunning.  There were moments when it began to verge on something more exciting and the writing started to feel like it was rising to another level, but those came and went quickly and mostly it remained in the realm of… good.  Enough to keep you turning the pages and feel interested, but that’s about it (the story, by the way, centres upon a high-school shooting that occurs in the ’80s and the impact that has upon four related characters over the years).

A Response to Craig Carter

[Craig Carter wrote a response to the recent events at Tyndale that ended up resulting in the apparent cancellation of a fund-raiser involving George W. Bush.  It’s pretty much on par with every other post on his blog (check it out and draw your own conclusions about that).  In the past, I have found Craig to be impossible to engage in dialogue because of his refusal to engage with the substance of what people say and his preference for simply repeating what was already said or writing in response to something that was not said.  However, I decided to write a comment in reply to him and thought I would cross-post it here, in case he decided to delete what I said.  I did not include links to our website on his post because he said that he did not want to link to our site but I have added them here.]
For the sake of others who read this post, it may be worth correcting a few of the more blatant errors in Craig’s post.
(1) You state that we hate “George Bush because he is not a socialist. That is the fundamental reason they attack him.” First, of all, I don’t “hate” Bush, nor do I know others involved in this campaign who “hate” him (more on that later). Secondly, this is an absurd statement. I am not a socialist, nor do I know anybody else involved in this process who is. Why, then, would we want Bush to be a socialist?
In actuality, the reasons why we oppose Bush are very clearly stated on our website (cf. the post on the practices of Bush vs. the values of Tyndale). You ignore this altogether.
(2) Nobody on our website has said anything to praise Obama. In fact, in a note in one of my posts, I suggest that he is just as bad or worse than Bush. However, Obama is not discussed because he was not the one invited to speak. Had he been, I would have opposed him coming just as strongly (would you still be talking about “the noble Western tradition of free speech and open debate” if that were the case?)
(3) There has been no forgetting that Bush is a human being and a human being who should be loved. However, as I address in my post about love, this does not mean we refuse to hold Bush accountable. Instead of just trotting out lines that contradict the evidence on our website, you could try writing a substantial refutation of my argument about why what we are doing is a way of loving Bush. As my post makes clear, I am very NOT turning Bush into “the devil incarnate.”
Ya know, Craig, you say “let’s have a debate” but I posted more than one substantial post (take the one on Bush’s practices vs. Tyndale’s values or the one on love within the context of oppression) and you are pretending they don’t exist.
(4) As for your remarks about Bush’s assistance in relation to AIDS in Africa, well, you may want to balance the picture:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/30/usa.aids
Refusing to provide funding for condoms or those who distributed condoms actually made the crisis worse.
(5) You write that “[y]ou can believe the president of Tyndale did not handle this well but we all should remember that we lack knowledge that might put his actions in a different light” but it is worth remembering that the only reason why we lack this knowledge is because the President, or any other official representative or authority, have steadfastly refused to respond to any queries or questions about this matter (as you state earlier in your post).
Anyway, Craig, you’re been around the academy for awhile. If you want to debate (as you say you do) then engage the substance of what was written. Don’t just make things up or pretend nothing was said. That other faculty members, Masson and Davis — folks who also should be able to engage things in an academic manner — have affirmed this post makes me wonder what in the world passes as academic endeavours at Tyndale these days.

Sensitive Soldiers and Good Cops

I recently watched the following fourteen minute film, which was taken from deleted scenes from the longer and (from what I’ve heard) excellent documentary, entitled “Occupation Has No Future.”  Here’s the video, and I suggest you watch it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpaO9DNlAF8&feature=player_embedded]
 
I was struck by the point made by former members of the IDF, regarding the ways in which sensitive and humanitarian people become incorporated into participating in the actions of a brutal and oppressive occupying force.  Thus, one fellow found himself thinking, “It’s better that I go, with my disapproval of the occupation and my humanitarian impulses, than somebody else go who is filled with hate and eager to have a gun in his hands.”  However, this fellow also goes through a further awakening: “Even if I’m giving out flowers to women at checkpoints, I’m still standing somewhere, with a gun, ready to kill people, in a place where I absolutely do not belong” (NB: these quotes are my paraphrases).
However, as a friend of mine pointed out, it is interesting to extend this way of thinking from the context of the military occupation of Palestine, to our own context.  Instead of thinking about soldiers, it is interesting to carry this trajectory of thought into our reflections upon the (increasingly militarized) police forces that operate in our own cities.  In many ways, the police are an occupying force who serve, not justice, but the interests of those who have the power to make laws.  Furthermore, just as much of the post-military service discourse in occupied Palestine focuses upon the good moral character and sensitivities of the IDF soldiers, so also much of the reflection upon police forces focuses upon the good moral character and sensitive humanitarian nature of some police officers.
I don’t mean to deny any of that (I personally know some very kind and moral people who went on to become cops), but that focus misses the broader point.  The police enforce oppressive social policies.  They (sometimes legally, sometimes illegally) act violently towards those who are marginalized within society and towards many of those who try to act in such a way as to bring about more just social arrangements.  So, sure, you can be sensitive and be a member of the IDF and, yeah, you can also be kind and be a member of the police.  The catch is that, at the end of the day, you are still a part of an occupying force that prioritizes the desires of the elite over the needs of the people.
This is part of the reason why it is fully appropriate to say “fuck the police” (without also meaning, “fuck you, Officer X”).

August Books

Finished off a number of books this month.  Mostly lighter stuff, as I’ve been writing again (Hello, Paul-and-kinship-honour-patronage-economics-and-power-chapter!  It’s nice to finally meet you!).  Too lazy to proof-read right now… will follow-up later.
1. Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” by Mother Teresa (ed. with commentary by Brian Kolodiejchuk).
Throughout her life, Mother Teresa made it a point of always submitting to the Roman Catholic hierarchy and chose to view her bosses as though they were Christ himself.  She would make her requests, plead her case, and then totally submit to their decisions — which they would make based upon criteria other than those Mother Teresa had chosen.
The publication of these private writings — letters, retreat notes, and so on — are a fine example of that sort of submission and authority.  Mother Teresa had begged her bosses to destroy these documents (she was always wishing for less and less of a focus upon herself as an object of any sort of interest) but they chose, instead, to publish them after she died.  They decided that the ways in which the writings would edify others trumped any thoughts Mother Teresa had about sharing her most intimate reflections.
Of course, like a vulture, I swooped in, disregarded what Mother Teresa requested, paid my money to the authorities who also disregarded her, and read the writings.  And, my goodness, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt as connected to a “religious” or “spiritual” text as I felt to this one.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I ain’t no Mother Teresa but, shoot, her reflections on godforsakenness absolutely capture what I have been experiencing the last three years.
Because this is what few people knew about Mother Teresa during her lifetime: ever since she founded the Missionaries of Charity at the end of the 1940s, she felt as though God had completely and utterly vanished from her life.  This feeling continued unabated until her death in the ’90s.  Part of what made that so devastating for her was that, prior to founding the Missionaries of Charity, she felt as though she was in constant intimate communion with God (and it was this communion, in their conversations, that drove her to founding the M.C.s).  This was the cornerstone of her life so when God vanished, she was left with a wound that never stopped hurting her.  Now, I won’t claim anything like what Mother Teresa experienced but, this is what I’ve been feeling as well.  The emptiness of the last three years has been hard, not just because they are empty, but precisely because I know what the alternative can be like — as she writes: “this darkness and emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God.”
Thus, she remains constantly on the edge of breaking — and speaks of no longer feeling any love or trust or faith — yet she persists with her labour, she continues to serve others, she tries to smile more and more… and for some reason those who come near to her feel as though they are closer to the presence of God.  A funny twist, no?
In thinking through the work Mother Teresa did and the changes she helped to create, it was startling to see how totally submissive she was to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church (which, we should recall, is just as death-dealing and corrupt as pretty much any other political or corporate hierarchy).  The catch is that it was (partly) be means of her submissive to this oppressive hierarchy that resulted in Mother Teresa being able to do what she did.  For those of us who want to more actively resist the death-dealing Powers this is a somewhat disconcerting observation…
Anyway, this is highly recommended reading.
2. The Twenty-Piece Shuffle: Why the Poor and Rich Need Each Other by Greg Paul.
A little while ago, somebody left a comment on my blog suggesting that the primary people saved by liberation theology are liberation theologians.  The theology they develop is ultimately their own road to salvation.  This comment came to mind while reading Greg Paul’s book — although full of many good stories, and obviously written with a lot of love for a lot of people — because it seems to me that the implicit theme of this book is really Greg’s defense of his own lifestyle in light of the work that he does.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with writing such self-reflective books (indeed, I think this is the implicit theme of a lot of writing — even outside of the realm of memoirs or autobiographies).  However, I do think Greg’s conclusions are problematical.  Before saying why, however, I should mention how much personal respect I have for Greg and the folks at Sanctuary — the place he helps to organize and run in Toronto.  I really to think Greg is a wonderful man and Sanctuary is one of two churches-that-call-themselves-churches that I think do an excellent job of actually being the way that churches should be (the other being The Mosaic here in Vancouver… in comparison to these two churches, every other one that I have attended falls far short).
That said, Greg’s argument in this book is pretty bad.  He remains strictly at the personal level of analysis and never moves beyond that to anything structural.  In fact, by writing in this way, Greg’s argument fits easily into the perpetuation of oppressive social structures.  This happens because Greg thinks that the poor and the rich need each other.  He shares stories about the brokenness of people on both sides of that divide, and he shares stories about how people have their lives enriched on both sides when they cross that divide and get to know others from different socioeconomic backgrounds.  Hence, their need for one another.
What Greg never does is challenge wealth and poverty, what creates it, what maintains it, in any sort of thoughtful manner.  In fact, his focus on the personal level of things, his assertion that the poor and the rich need each other, leads pretty straightforwardly to the conclusion that we need to live in a world (or in local communities) where there is always wealth and poverty.  According to this argument, there is no point in challenging that, no point in looking at moving beyond wealth and poverty to a community wherein there is neither poverty nor riches but enough for everybody (the sort of community that was to exist in Israel according to the Law and the Prophets, that was developed by Jesus in Palestine, and that Paul tried to expand into the Roman Empire).  Such a suggestion seems totally foreign to what Greg writes in this book.  Instead, Greg focuses on life stories, the personal divorced from the structural, and — despite many of his more “radical” stances — ends up writing a basic defense of the forms of charity that make a difference in the lives of individuals but end up perpetuating and strengthening the death-dealing status quo.
Finally, on a personal note, it’s interesting to observe how different it is for me to read stories like these now, compared to how I used to read them ten years ago.  When I was first getting involved with homeless folks, I read a number of journals or memoirs written by folks associated with this population.  Truth be told, at that time, a lot of the stories struck me as romantic, exotic, wonderful, and exciting.  Adventures dripping with pathos, ruptured by the in-breakings of Death or Life.  It’s a bit shameful to admit this (if I ever felt shame anymore…), since I was actively engaging in a process of Othering, dehumanizing and exploiting an already oppressed and vulnerable population by reading in this way.  Thankfully, I realized that I no longer read stories like those Greg offers in this way.  Having moved more and more into the context of the street-involved (in both “personal” and “professional” ways), the romance and exoticism have disappeared.  That’s probably a good thing, since what remains, more and more, is just people.  Peoples is peoples, to quote a character from one of the Muppet movies.
3. The Diaries of Louis Riel by Louis Riel (ed. by Thomas Flanagan).
So, given that I’ve been exploring more about the history of Canada’s First Nations’ people, the topic of the Northwest rebellion has always lingered around, and I stumbled onto Riel’s diaries in a bookshop and picked up a copy (I’d already read Chester Brown’s pretty fascinating graphic novel about Riel).  It comes through quite clearly in Riel’s diaries is that he was obviously very much committed to his religion (which began as Roman Catholicism, morphed into something of his own creation, and then kinda sorta returned to Catholicism in the end when he was trying to avoid execution).  The other thing that comes through pretty clearly is that Riel was a self-absorbed prick who thought he had some sort of divine calling that justified him in being a self-absorbed prick.  He speaks penitently and contritely about his “gluttony” or his drinking, but all this humility just masks (probably from Riel himself) that he seems to be largely motivated by a desire for wealth, status, and power.  God make me rich and smite my enemies!  Egad.  And all the time acting like he is on the side of the Natives, when really he only cares about the Métis (probably only because he is a Métis), and he has no vision of the Natives being present in the new nation he wishes to create.  Even then, despite all his revolutionary talk, he was still secretly writing letters to John A. MacDonald offering to sell-out the revolution.  Double egad.
It’s interesting to compare the diaries of Mother Teresa with those of Riel.  Some folks might be inclined to see them both as nuts based upon their visions, ecstatic experiences, voices or signs from God and so on.  Both also claimed to want to try and make a positive difference in the lives of people who were suffering and oppressed.  The major difference, is that Mother Teresa tried to abolish any sense of pride she had, whereas Riel was so in love with himself that he couldn’t even recognize how prideful he was.  I’m not saying that this is the only factor leading to the different end results they experienced (it’s not!), but I think it’s an interesting comparison.
4. Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times by Studs Terkel.
Studs Terkel is an historian who interviewed a good many of interesting people around America over the span of the twentieth century.  In this compilation — very roughly structured around the theme of hope — Terkel interviews everyone from politicians to priests, union organizers to veterans, activists to workers.  There are some big recognizable names who did big recognizable things, but there are also a good number of people who are unknown to the broader public who did just as big and exciting things.  It’s really a beautiful collection.  I often think there should be more work done to document and share the news of those who work in their own communities to create life-giving changes.  Personally, the section I think I found most interesting was when Terkel interviewed people — both students and (mostly illegal migrant) workers who became involved in in the movement for a living change for workers at Harvard, which occurred from around 1997-2001.  Like all major universities, Harvard (despite its billions of dollars in funding) employed migrant workers to do the cleaning and cooking and so forth.  These workers did not receive a living wage.  The students coordinated a number of efforts to try and change this policy and, after reviewing everything that was submitted the President of Harvard essentially said: “That’s an interesting idea but, no, we’re not going to give the workers a living wage.”  This prompted a moment of less-legal direct action, wherein about fifty students occupied some of the main admin space in the university for over twenty days.  The police tried unsuccessfully to remove them.  The President tried unsuccessfully to over to negotiate with them if they left (they refused — having already seen what happened with that kind of negotiation).
Along the way, and this is what I found so incredible about the story — the workers and the students united with each other.  Previously, the workers had been like an invisible non-human slave force to the students, and the workers had viewed the students as a bunch of rich assholes.  However, once students realized the humanity of the workers and once the workers realized the sincerity of the students, a wonderful community of creativity and resistance was born.  The end result?  A living wage for the workers.  And this caused a ripple effect throughout university campuses in the United States.  Wonderful stuff.  Now if only the students, or young activists, could be doing more in our time to be co-ordinating their efforts with the working classes and the poor…
5. Holocaust Poetry compiled by Hilda Schiff.
I’ve been trying to read a little more poetry lately, since falling in love with Rilke’s writings, and I figured it had been enough years since I touched this genre and, who knows, I might end up connecting with it more deeply than I have in the past.  Anyway, I don’t know if this collection was the best place to turn — it’s terribly sad and it feels almost sacrilegious to read and even more sacrilegious to review… so instead I’ll just post one poem from the collection, written by Lily Brett.  I think I was drawn to it because it circles around the unspeakable, without quite speaking it but, by doing so, thereby communicating something of it.  It’s called “My Mother’s Friend”:
my mother
had a schoolfriend
she shared the war with
my mother
looked after her friend
in the ghetto
she laid her out
as though she was dead
and the Gestapo overlooked her
in Auschwitz
she fed her friend snow
when she was burning with typhoid
and when
the Nazis
emptied Stuthof
they threw
the inmates
onto boats in the Baltic
and tried
to drown
as many as they could
my mother
and her friend
survived
in
Bayreuth
after the war
my mother’s friend
patted my cheeks
and curled my curls
and hurled herself
from the top
of a bank.
6. Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago.
I enjoyed reading Blindness awhile ago, and so I was feeling like a change of pace and tone (what with working through Proust) and so I thought I would pick up Saramago again.  I can’t say that I enjoyed this story all that much.  There were some moments when it felt like it had potential (especially early on) but nothing ever really materialized… it almost felt like Saramago didn’t really know where he was going with the story and so was just having fun rambling on with his descriptions, and lists, and names, and so forth.  I would suggest giving this one a pass.
7. Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Speaking of Rilke, I decided I would reread the Duino Elegies.  I think they just get more rich and breath-taking with every reading.  There’s no point in even making little marks in the margins — the pages would just fill up.  I’ve decided that this is probably the closest thing to a perfect piece of writing that I have ever read.  Stunningly good.
8. Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs.
A friend recommended this autobiographical series of sketches to me.  It’s in the same sad/comedic vein as some if the things written by David Sedaris.  Although I didn’t laugh a ton (when do I ever, right?), there were definitely parts that made me chuckle and Burroughs does a pretty decent job of entwining the painful or sorrowful with laughter and courage.  I liked it enough that I decided I would read his more famous book — Running With Scissors.  My wife told me to read it years ago, so I’ll see how that goes.

July Books

1. St. Paul Among the Philosophers edited by John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff.
This is a good collection of essays based upon the papers presented at a conference by a series of heavy hitters — from Badiou and Žižek to Dale Martin and Ed Sanders.  It was fun to read philosophical appropriations of Paul engaged explicitly by historical appropriations of Paul.  Especially interesting, were the moments of exchange tcaptured in the roundtable discussion that is recorded as the final chapter of this volume.  This collection of essays seems to stand above others in this genre (like the one edited by Douglas Harink).  It’s clarity is admirable and the contributors don’t feel like they are constantly stretching to create connections, nor do they feel like they are simply having a bit of fun showing how smart they are and how capable they are of playing around with conceptual short circuits.  I felt that Dale Martin’s contribution was the strongest (perhaps because I think he demonstrates the greatest knowledge of the discussion or perhaps because his understanding of things seems similar to mine?).  All in all, a decent read.
2. A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System — 1879 to 1986 by John Milloy.
This is the sort of book that not only should be required reading for every person who lives within the imagined borders of something called “Canada,” it is also a book that should be read by any member of the Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, and United Churches.  It is a damning report on the history of the death-dealing practices of colonialism as those practices found expression in this nation, by means of the State and the Church working together to “solve the Indian problem” (although the business community was and remains part of the motive and means by which this is addressed today, that community was not very involved in residential schools so I will leave them aside for now).
For those who don’t know, the indigenous people of Canada were subjected to ongoing and sustained campaigns that intended to destroy their cultures, their identities, their family structures and (if all else failed or if it was more convenient) their lives, in order to assimilate them into white, Christian society and ensure that they were contributing productively to Canadian economic development.
One of the ways this occurred was through the development of residential schools.  Indigenous parents were legally required to surrender their kids to residential schools that were far removed from their family homes.  These schools intended to “kill the Indian in the child” and so the children were not permitted to dress, eat, wear their hair, or speak as they desired.  Their hair was cut.  Their clothes were changed.  They were fed proper white food in proper white settings.  They were taught Christian doctrines.  They were taught in English or French.  They were taught white ways of owning property and working as wage labourers or farmers.
However, the schools were never properly staffed, funded or managed and so even this (horrendous) colonial goal of assimilation was never accomplished.  Instead, the schools became the stuff of nightmares.  The buildings were run down and not heated or ventilated properly.  The clothing provided was inadequate.  There was never enough food and the food provided was often of a despicable quality.  “Discipline” was harsh.  Children were regularly beaten, locked alone in dark places, whipped, and so on and so forth.  Sexual abuse was also rampant.  Studies suggest that 100% of children at some school were sexually abused.  It was not uncommon for children to die because they tried to run away and find their way home… in the middle of winter… with no jackets on their backs or boots on their feet.  And these were not the only kids who died.  The studies reveal that anywhere between 30-65% of the children who attended residential schools died while there due to the mixture of these conditions and other things like TB or influenza outbreaks.  In British Columbia, it is estimated that over 80% of the kids died.  Not to mention the people who later went on to die due to substance use, at their own hands, or at the hands of others, because of the scars left be this experience.  Not to mention the ways in which this abuse and trauma has then been based on to the children of survivors.
In other words, what Milloy documents is a fucking Holocaust, one that still impacts people today, one which has never been properly addressed and, indeed, one which is sustained today by other means.  Anybody who proudly claims the titles “Canadian” or “Christian” should pause and think again after reading this history.  This is a must read.  Not only that, but it should prompt action.
3. Broken Circle — The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools: A Memoir by Theodore Fontaine.
Moving from academic reflections upon the historical records of Canada’s history of residential schools for indigenous children, I thought I would also read some of the personal memoirs written by survivors and victors.  Fontaine’s story exemplifies some of the common threads found in the stories that have gained publicity — experiences of violence, sexual assaults (one of the priests would regularly wash the genitals of the younger boys because, he said, they did not know how to properly clean themselves), experiences of being torn away from family and having that rupture manipulated in such a way so that the children would blame their parents or siblings and not the priests, nuns, or school administrators.  However, unlike many others, Fontaine was able to gain the right to attend school without residing there — he ran away twice, the second time after having his face seriously bloodied, and when his dad took him back to the school and spoke with the head priest, it was arranged that Fontaine would no longer live at the school.  I suspect that this is part of the reason why Fontaine was able to heal more than some others.
In reading some of the reviews on the back cover of this book, and in the front pages, it is interesting to note how the commentators are quick to praise Fontaine for writing about his experiences but for doing so without being vindictive or overly angry.  I’m curious why people feel that this is praiseworthy and what the expression of this sort of praise communicates to the public and to others who have stories to tell.  Personally, I feel that it would be fully appropriate for Fontaine to be vindictive, if he chose to be that way.  Others should not be denied the space to speak or act in this way.  Given the atrocities committed, liberal Settler society need to suck it up and move beyond the flowery language of “reconciliation” and admit that restitution and vindication may be more appropriate avenues towards a better future.  Thus, by praising Fontaine’s account for lacking a vindictiveness, I feel that stories of residential school experiences simply end up being twisted to meet the interests of the ongoing oppressive system of power and exploitation that continues to exist in Canada in relation to the indigenous people.
4. Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred.
Speaking of the ongoing oppression and exploitation of the indigenous people of Canada, Taiaiake Alfred — a member of the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) people — turns to exploring ways in which this people can resist oppression and, moving beyond resistance (or submission) to resurgence and new life.  The title, Wasáse, refers to the warrior dance of unity, strength, and commitment to action, and much of what Alfred writes comes out of his reflections upon what it means to be a warrior in today’s world.  There is a great deal of depth and richness in Alfred’s text.
Really, this book deserves it’s own post… and I’m actually hoping to post an interview with the author.  For now, I will say that this is very highly recommended reading.
5. In the Garden of Men by John Kupferschmidt.
This book was actually written by the brother of a friend whom I love and respect a great deal.  It was the winning submission of the three day novel contest a few years back.  And it’s a really good book.  The author tackles some pretty grand themes — good and evil, submission and resistance, beauty and meaning — and wraps them together in a wonderful tale about a paper-pushing somewhat embittered nobody working under the Communist party in Czechoslovakia.  Recommended reading (and quick reading, too!).
6. The Captive and The Fugitive by Marcel Proust.
Shoot, this bit of “In Search of Lost Time,” was easily the worst part yet.  I know I’m dealing with sections that Proust had not fully edited before he died, but I’m not bothered simply by the incompleteness and the lack of those beautifully polished sections and sentences that Proust used to produce with more frequency in earlier volumes.  Beyond those details, its the subject matter itself that I found dull and unattractive.  Hundreds of pages of reflection about jealousy, revealing the protagonists pettiness, insecurity, mommy-issues, and so on (and on and on and on).  I’m actually kinda nervous to now read the final volume.  After starting so strongly, this story has taken a major downward turn in the last two installments and I’m wondering if that slide continues or if Proust pulls it together and pulls off the sort of conclusion that the first three volumes deserve.
7. Paying For It: a comic strip memoir about being a john by Chester Brown.
In my life and work, I have encountered a lot of different voices speaking about the morality and legality of sex work — I’ve gotten to know a number of sex workers over the years, I’ve known some who worked independently but most of them were pimped (and I’ve known a fair number of pimps).  I’ve also read some of the feminist literature on the subject, and have heard opinions of ex-sex workers, supports, advocates, social workers and that of other members of the community with some concern or interest related to the subject (seems like everybody has something to say about sex work… actually everybody seems to have something to say about everything…).  However, what I have not encountered a lot is the voices of johns — those who pay to have sex with others.  Of course, I have known johns (both through my work and in my personal life… I suspect that they might be far more common than most people think) but they don’t seem to be as involved in the public conversation about the matter of sex work.
Therefore, when I stumbled onto this autobiographical graphic novel by Chester Brown (who gained fame previously for the biographical graphic novel he created about Louis Riel), I picked it up with some interest.  I’m glad I did.  Brown is, in many ways, a model john (although I suppose that some will say that is an oxymoron).  He has also spent a lot more time thinking and reading about sex work and the legal and moral issues involved.  For the most part, I actually agree with his conclusions regarding decriminalizing (but not regulating) sex work in Canada.  I also agree with a lot of the conclusions that he draws related to the morality of paying people money for sex (i.e. that, in an ideal situation, it isn’t a big deal).
However, Brown still ends up being somewhat naive and a little self-serving in some of his arguments.  I don’t think he takes seriously enough the issues of pimping, human trafficking, and exploiting those who have been traumatized and have fallen into sex work from a very young age — for example, fourteen is the average age of entry into the trade in Vancouver (forty is the average age of death) — and for less than ideal reasons.  In the world that Brown imagines exists, everybody is a fully developed, fully rational, and fully willing participant in the exchange of sex for money.  This is simply not the case and, here is my biggest issue with Brown’s narrative, for the most part the john has no way of ascertaining what is or has gone on with the sex worker.  Based on his stories, I strongly suspect there were times when he visited women who were being pimped, and quite possibly women who had been trafficked (although he finds ways of drawing conclusions different than mine, despite the evidence… although he likely lacks the eyes to discern what sort of evidence builds a compelling argument in this regard).
It is also these issues that makes me think that decriminalization is a more complicated matter than Brown makes it out to be.  Law-makers should be cognizant of the ways in which laws impact the most vulnerable members of a community and while decriminalization may be of immediate benefit to a minority of sex workers (women who work independently and make quite good money for what they do) a good many other women and may find that this makes it that much more difficult for them to break free from pimps or traffickers.  Thus, while I do favour decriminalization, the process must be done with this in mind.
Anyway, there is quite a lot more I could say about this book but instead I’ll just recommend it to the reader.  At times it can be repetitive, but it is a quick read that should spark a lot of thought and discussion.  I think it would be especially appropriate for reading groups.

A Daughter

A week ago, Ruby Violet Beloved was born.  Like her brother, Charlie, she was born at home, but unlike Charlie the labour was relatively short and Ruby was born in the water (also unlike Charlie, she actually sleeps, only cries when she is hungry, and is pretty much the perfect baby).  All is well with my wife and our daughter.
The other day, I think she looked me in the eye, gave me the finger, and pissed her pants all at the same time.  This could get interesting if that sort of thing continues into her teenage years…

(I will now return to my regular irregular blogging routine.)

June Books

Well, I was hoping that Reno might write back regarding my response to his article about “the preferential option for the poor,” since I emailed him a copy of what I wrote and invited him to dialogue.  Unfortunately, he has not responded (despite the fact that my article now appears twice on the first page of google search results for “r.r. reno”).  Regardless, when I did my May book reviews, I promised to do two posts before writing more reviews and those are now completed.  Here, then, are the books I read in June.
1.  Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman.
In many ways, this was a a groundbreaking book when it was first published almost one hundred years ago.  In it, Berkman, who was imprisoned for shooting a (literally) murderous corporate boss bent on busting the organization of labour in the United States, reveals the extent of the abuse and corruption found within American prisons while also speaking about other forbidden subjects like homosexuality within the context of prison.
Initially, Berkman isn’t a very likeable character.  Because he views himself as something of a martyr and political prisoner who laid down his life for a cause on behalf of “the people,” he looks down on other criminals as leeches on society.  When other labourers disagree with his actions, he wonders if they deserve the death penalty.  When some speak of homosexuality, he considers such practices disgusting and inhuman.  And, although he says he is acting in solidarity with the working class, when working class people wish to speak with him (like on the train when he is on the way to shoot Frick), he would rather pretend to read than have any actual interactions.
It is interesting, then, to see how his positions on all these issues change and mature during the years he spends in prison.  He learns true solidarity.  He learns to empathize with other inmates and realizes criminals are not the problem but that social structures (and prisons) are the problem, and he develops some truly deep feelings for other inmates (he even shocks himself to discover that he would be thrilled to have the opportunity to kiss one particular fellow).  It was good to see Berkman’s character develop, although I can’t say he ends up being completely likeable… he still comes across as something of a pompous ass… the sort of fellow you don’t really want representing movements for life-giving change…
Still, I found this book to be a fascinating study and I would consider it to be recommended reading.  Furthermore, lest anybody think that Berkman’s prison experience is far different than the experiences of contemporary inmates — abusive authorities, the pimping of prison workers as cheap labour for corporate interests and so on — one only need to read something like this article to recall that things aren’t much different today.
2. The State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben.
One hears a lot of talk about the notion of “the state of exception” due largely (as for as I can tell) to a resurgence of interest in the writing of Carl Schmitt.  Given the ways  in which it is frequently employed, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to get from this book by Agamben, but I’m very glad I read it.  For some time I’ve been thinking that the next piece of writing I want to do is a more detailed study of Paul, the Law, and the anarchy of grace (continuing the trend of those who read Paul’s references to “the Law” as including reference to the Laws of society and not just some sort of Jewish religious Law) and texts like this one are very relevant.
One of the things I found interesting as I was reading this book is thinking about the ways in which anarchism differs from the Law.  Of course, anarchists are in/famous for rejecting the Law but, given that the Law itself is based upon the state of exception, I was wondering if it is the anarchists who are actually the true legalists.  This may be so in some ways…
Anyway, this is recommended reading.
3. Zettel by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
I should confess that I often find Wittgenstein more difficult to understand than other philosophers.  Perhaps this is because I’m reading truncated pieces from journals that were never published in his lifetime, perhaps it’s because he really is harder to understand (although I wonder about that since I’m working through Being and Time write now and feel that I understand it better than this collection…), perhaps it’s because he really isn’t going on about anything all that fascinating in this text.  I’m undecided.  I do believe that Wittgenstein has played a significant role in my own development — in my understanding of language and in my own thoughts on meaning — but I can’t say that this particular text moved me very much.
4. The Laxdaela Saga.
Well, I continue to chip away at the Icelandic sagas.  I can’t say I enjoyed this one as much as the previous ones.  It felt a bit more choppy and haphazard in parts, although the last half that developed around a prophecy related to one woman and the four husbands she would have in the course of her life was pretty good. Regardless, I continue to find it fun reading literature from worlds that died a long, long time ago.  It also makes me grateful for modern amenities… indoor plumbing, central heating, anesthetics, antibiotics… life ain’t so bad these days.  Back in the day, those were some tough mothafuckas.  Men and women (and that’s one of the things I like about the Icelandic sagas — the female characters are just as strong as the male characters).

5. A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body by Lauren Weedman.
I stumbled into this book one day when my wife was going through some of the thing she had in storage.  I didn’t even notice the title — just picked it up and started reading (which made her ask me if I was going through “another lesbian feminist phase” when she noticed what I was reading… long story).  Anyway, Weedman is highly praised as a comic — she worked on The Daily Show, a reviewer calls her the next David Sedaris only better, and so on — but I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the book.  I suppose I’ve worked with too many people with personality disorders to find it funny to read about somebody who strikes me as displaying characteristics of being borderline.

On Hockey Riots and Anarchism

During his reign, Augustus Caesar attempted to push through a number of legal moral reforms in order to try and restore traditional Roman values related to sexual purity, family values, modesty, and piety.  Some of these reforms met with some success.  Others, especially those related to trying to restore traditional family values, were less successful.  In fact, some of the laws created by Augustus were so universally disregarded that they were abandoned or annulled by his immediate successors.
When reading Roman reflections upon these things — the imperial push for traditional moral practices and the widespread disregard of these laws and the ongoing presence of vices that were (officially) despised by Roman traditionalism — one discovers an interesting bit of counsel offered to the Emperors (I can’t remember if I came across this in the writings of Tacitus or the essays of Seneca).  Essentially, the Emperors are advised to practice a great deal of mercy and not focus too much upon those who break lesser laws.  The reason for this is the fear that overly rigorous efforts to prosecute immoral people will actually reveal to the public that the immoral and the law-breakers actually far outnumber the moral and law-abiding.  If this was revealed, it was feared that a state of total imperial collapse would result and that the majority would over power the minority.  Hence, the need for caution and clemency.
I was thinking about this the other day, when reflecting upon the hockey riots that occurred in my city last week (I’m sure most people have seen the images but this will give you an idea of what went on).  Immediately afterward, the Mayor of Vancouver along with the Chief of Police rushed to blame “anarchists and thugs” for instigating the riots and for engaging in the worst acts of property destruction (see this article for example).  Apparently, this anarchist activity caught the city off guard.  As the Mayor stated: “Both during the G-20 [leaders’ summit in Toronto] and the 2010 Olympics these thugs were well known to be organizing and preparing to take action and criminal activities on the streets. There were no indications of that leading into last night.”
Of course, the real reason why the police were unable to gain intelligence on “these thugs,” is because the anarchists weren’t the ones rioting or instigating the riot or running around setting cop cars on fire or looting from stores.  The truth is that the rioters and the instigators were all just regular everyday people.  Mostly young and middle class (for a better reading of the riots see this article by Andrew Potter and this one by Frank Moher).  This has become abundantly clear given the ways in which people have been employing current technology in order to police one another (a scary enough development in social media, but people are then also punishing one another — people are being threatened, expelled from school, fired from work and even forced to move from their home).  As the identities of participants have been revealed online, one has learned that they are pretty much all not thugs or criminals or anarchists, but are children of doctors, or elite athletes, or students at the University who volunteer for charities.  Thus, as of today, the police have modified their statement about blaming the anarchists.
However, it is worth asking why the police chose to blame the anarchists and why a lot of people were so easily duped by the lie (sadly, a lot of people will remain duped as the accusation was made at a focal moment, whereas the modification to the statement — a retraction without being a retraction… which is about the most you’ll ever get from the police — came much later and did not receive nearly as much attention).  This is why I thought of the parallel to the law and order maintained by the Roman Emperors.  When attempting to maintain “law and order” (i.e. when attempting to maintain socioeconomic divisions and imbalances by maintaining a sacred belief in  “private property” and ensuring that the profits of the wealthy are protected at all times), it is far better to encourage the public to believe that those who violate these laws are a small minority of black-hearted “anarchists and thugs.”  It is far more terrifying, to the powerful and those who have bought into their ideology, to be forced to admit that any one of us, any average old do-goodin’ suburban kid, might be willing to violate those laws and morals at any time.  After all, once everybody knows that pretty much everybody is willing to disregard laws about profits and property then people might get it into their heads that they could do something like this again.  That would be disastrous and so the myth of a small group of instigators composed of “anarchists and thugs” is spread.
Of course, even the police knew from the beginning that this was a lie.  This is why they admit that their intelligence gathering let them down this time.  The truth is that their surveillance did not let them down.  The truth is that it was not anarchists instigating the riots after the hockey game and both the police (and the anarchists) know this, but the value of the lie for maintaining the death-dealing status quo of law and order is what was crucial in the message fed to the media (who quickly and generally unquestioningly fed the official line to the public).
Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think there was anything great about the hockey riots.  Everybody knew they were going to happen (despite what the police said) and I did not support them nor did I participate in them (actively or passively).  In fact, I thought they were pretty stupid and I never like to see people getting hurt (or to hear about parents wandering around looking for their kids in that madness… fuck, that makes me ill).
I have, however, participated in other protests that were composed of a great deal of anarchists — such has the Heart Attack protest that occurred during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which contained a black bloc of about two hundred people.  The difference between that protest and between the hockey riots are numerous and significant, which is why anybody who knows about these things (police included) would know that the anarchists who were in the black bloc in 2010 would have no interest in rioting after the Stanley Cup finals in 2011.  Unfortunately, the general public is incapable of telling the difference — in part because they have been fed so much misinformation about anarchism by the police and by the corporate media — so it is worth highlighting some of these.
First of all, while some anarchists sometimes engage in the destruction of property they generally do so to accomplish one of two things: in order to attain an immediate and urgent goal (e.g. blowing up logging machinery to prevent the destruction of an old growth forest) or in order to try and communicate a political message (e.g. smashing the windows of The Hudson Bay Company in order to draw attention to their rapacious and ongoing history of colonialism, imperialism, and theft).  Violence is generally only employed as a tactic when the feeling is that it may be effective in accomplish one or both of these goals.  Violence is never practiced simply for the sake of being violent.
The whole idea that “anarchy equals chaos,” or “anarchy equals destruction” is an illusion, mostly spread by those who are afraid that people might actually learn what anarchism is.  A more accurate statement is that “anarchy is order” (to quote Proudhon).  It is simply that anarchists believe that people should be able to sit down and agree amongst themselves what sort of order they wish to live within (as opposed to simply accepting the kind of “law and order” that permits a few to devour the lives of many).  This, for those who don’t already know, is what the most famous anarchist symbol represents.
For this reason, when anarchists do gather in protests, one does not generally see random acts of violence, but deliberate acts that target corporations known for their rapacity (like The Hudson Bay Co. or Starbucks or international banks) but you do not see violence directed at people, at local small businesses, or at the property of individuals.  Consequently, when you compare the acts of violence that occurred at the Heart Attack protest in 2010 versus the acts of violence that occurred in the hockey riots in 2011 and the differences are obvious.  No individuals were attacked during the Heart Attack protest.  When a security guard attacked a participant within the black bloc, and when that participant responded by defending him- or herself, it was other bloc participants who stepped in immediately in order to ensure that nobody was hurt on either side.  When some other protesters wanted to get rowdy and do damage to parked cars during the Heart Attack protest, it was the bloc participants who convinced them not to do that.  Such acts of violence held no value in terms of the goals set for that protest and so they were not pursued.  Of course, in the hockey riots, those acts of violence — the random fights, the burning of cars, and so forth — had no real value either (they were neither effective in accomplishing an immediate goal, nor did they have any propaganda value) and that’s why you don’t see any anarchists there acting that way.
Secondly, it’s also worth pointing out that the few kids who showed up at the hockey riots wearing boots and black hoodies with black bandannas were acting in a way that showed no comprehension of the ways in which black bloc tactics are intended to be employed.  The purpose of a black bloc is to gather a critical number of people who appear the same, thereby providing people with anonymity so that some are freed to engage in less-legal actions without fear of repercussions (there are other reasons as well — as a show of strength against the police, for example — but this is the primary purpose).  Consequently, a small handful of people showing up in boots and black at the hockey riots would have exactly the opposite effect — rather than permitting people to vanish into the crowd, these people stood out like sore thumbs.  I am convinced that those who showed up dressed this way were simply suburban kids who saw protesters on TV and thought, “hey, I want to go and smash some shit and look like a mothafuckin’ ninja while I do that!”
Finally, the element of looting is worth highlighting when comparing the hockey riots with the Heart Attack protest.  During the Olympics, nobody was interested in stealing goods from the Hudson Bay Co., but it was looted during the hockey riots (as were some other large stores).  Here is the difference: the anarchists at the Heart Attack protest wanted nothing to do with the goods sold by The Bay.  They believed that those goods were stained with the blood of others and so were not interested in possessing those goods.  That is why the windows of the store was smashed but the goods were left in place.  The hockey rioters appeared to have no such moral qualms about the goods sold by The Bay.  They didn’t seem to care if the store was death-dealing or if those goods were blood-stained.  They just saw an opportunity to grab some free shit and so they did (and then later resold some of it).  Another action that points to the absence of any anarchists.
Of course, all this is not to say that there wasn’t one kid in the crowd calling himself an anarchist.  In fact, I ran into a few people that night who were calling for “ANARCHY!”  When I asked them what that meant they said it meant chaos and lawlessness.  When I asked them who they voted for in the recent federal election they said NDP and Conservative.  That’s an interesting kind of anarchism… not one represented in any of the communities I have known or any of the literature I have read.
(Other anarchist voices and allies from Vancouver respond here and here).