You new programs and publishing news and watch the archived programs any time at the tv. Org. Spending more than five years in south africa he was elected to the African National congress. During the transformation after apartheid mmr of exile of red, white, and black the stricture of us antagonism. The rating has been honored with the legacy award for nonfiction and an ea promotion. In his new book memoir and philosophy through and from one another and with the worldview with examples from his own life which in turn forms philosophy. All yours. This is the third time ive done Something Like this. It seems to every time. Thank you for coming out tonight and sharing your evening with me in the auditorium of the free library of philadelphia. Now we are together like this so now in this type of situation there would have been an auditorium. I dont know. I hope everyone is safe and healthy. I will share with you an episode for my book. Those of you who have seen the book or read from the other book know that there are two trains running. One is critical theory that will explain the structure of black suffering as something that cannot be reconciled such as oppressed women who are not black and the working class and postcolonial. But i want to reiterate and music of black people. And that constituent elements. There are a lot of questions Like High School or college debaters and graduate students and then with that cycle psychoanalysis and as professors and then that what is at stake with respect to the intervention. I would take up all the times that i have to share a story with you as well as to ask questions i cant go into that i hope that you would to note the people who are included in this. And those that are embedded as opposed to a critical theory because they have been embedded what you will find in the back of the book not with numbers but various parts of the body itself so if you are reading along and see the phrase the economy inside of a story that acts as a speedbump he dont know what that is so then you turn back and find that in bold that is a definition from my friend and colleague. So i want to say before i began the schematic overview of what the stakes are. This is from slavery and to my mind this is a book that is momentous to captivity and slavery as karl marx and that political economy 1869 and was slavery and social death he says the problem in the slaveholding society that it was necessary to introduce a person to the status of slaves and then goes on. For the workers to be hired elsewhere. With that problematic shift and instill in the same position. But then you could become employed later on but they were no longer a slave it was necessary continually to repeat the original violent act of free man into slave. Did you get that . Is important to repeat the original violent acts of transforming into slaves that was the that i found to be at that moment so one of the problems is the fact the structure and performance of violence cannot be reconciled with the structure of which the antiimmigrant violence there is a way in which there Something Different going on the act of violence constitutes the prehistory of all stratified society so to understand what that means 300 years ago we did not have a dynamic of capitalism so in order to produce that you need an ocean of violence to transform into proletariat and that is called the prehistory. So then says but it is determining the prehistory and the con current history of slavery. So that is a Golden Moment of terror and trauma because what it says is that inside the structure of capitalism once people have inculcated their role and with that gratuitous nature to continue on not to rule them through hegemony we only went to violence that created capitalism to rear its head with strikes but he says that with slavery the prehistory that constitutes the paradigm is also the con current history of the experience. That is epic because that means in the nonsensical violence that cannot be reconciled with the working class because the violence of the slave does not transform itself into hegemony when the slave acquiesces. So that is what is at stake to me and the project but let me shift now to the other mode of expression with a different kind of story and this resonates with what i just said even though i only read about six pages and its not clear but if you read the chapter starting on page 55, then you understand what im saying. Let me begin. So a few pages beginning on page 55 and if you have asked where i will start that is where i am starting. But at a certain point in time i will jump to the middle c will be able to follow me after a certain point so what you need to know if you have not read the book is that i am thankful to produce this beautifully constructed book the book came on sale april 7th and were in the first printing of the book so all the folks at ww norton did for me in the book really heavy paper literally. So you will have a book that is very special in terms of its value, the second printing is valuable as well that wouldnt have the heavy paper. He was that the year 1976 through 1980. I am between the ages of 20 and 24 so it jumps around the bed. In that particular time. In minneapolis minnesota for the most part. This is a story i have never told the for. Not to my brother or my sister not even the women i have partnered with and married. Thirty years came and went so i always thought i said in need to be elsewhere which is a natural response to a confession when i thought i could die. I believe when it was time and then to face the man from the new jersey turnpike. And the man that was shot in the chest if it ever became high enough that required my sacrifice i waited count that secret reservoir of courage from the age of 12 and then my junior high and High School Teacher from the descendents of the political trial of the chicago eight that happened to be one of those bubbles we were together ten years although we were never married i was 22 when we met. I thought it started when i met stella at the march in 19681 week after Dartmouth College that me home for being in a campaign of solidarity with the people who created that outside of town. The people from the appalachian trail that some Fraternity Brothers called hillbilly angry. This wd they had to take action. A third pointed out those that came back from New Hampshire skirting the mountains through the confederate flag. We drove past a and every fourth or fifth car was startled by the luck of hatred as we drove by. We are waiting and in the end though society devoted to the Civil Disobedience Campaign and to rescind its decree. During the campaign, i was arrested and jailed and he waited for me at the courthouse and handed me a twopage single page sheet. Your trouble just ended and i had just begun. Two years prior just before i turned 20, the fbi tracked me to trinidad and like most by the time they are declassified it is riddled with reductions. The name of the agent in the winter of 1976 the winter my sophomore year of college had been redacted. Nor did he or she seem interested. At the university of the west indies she studied caribbean theater and he did Field Research on a major family of law or spirits on the west african religion. His third course was an independent study he designed himself a thesis paper he wrote on his experience as a participant researcher of the communist party in trinidad. The fbi funneled none of this and the report went like this. He was in contact with the committee and promised he would attempt to make contact to obtain literature for it and to test the national aid. He claimed to be a member of a revolutionary group in the United States born april 11, 1956 in the United States as a student at Dartmouth College, passport number 2316717 and the Mailing Address 3983 Dartmouth College hanover New Hampshire 43755. This report was sent from caracas. The legal attache. According to the puppet and the fbi works with the agencies and host countries. The role of the legal attaches is one of coordination as they do not conduct of foreign intelligence gathering investigation. Once they have given why, they are running in trinidad to spy on an american student. The nature might be. The report began. It was mentioned in the memorandum the reductionist nearly two lines long. It continued requested to be informed has come to the attention in the political extremist activities in the United States. Then they are requested to advise the connection of the security activity. This however is not the story that hed never been able to tell. That story im going to tell you now that this was complicated it corrupts the links that helped me make sense of what they were subjected to four years after the return from trinidad in 1980. Two years after Dartmouth College in 1978 kicked me out for reading a Civil Disobedience Campaign on behalf of workers who were unrepentant. The fbi filed in the middle of the chapter and corrupted the causal logic of the events that make my hands quiver as i scratch these words might. Before it arrived, i thought at last i can chart the chain of events the offense left us no alternative but to send her to live with relatives for her own safety. The fbi came when i was finally steadfast in my conviction that what happened was it was her past, hers alone. In my studio apartment there were two men who wanted nothing of value, collateral heat for the lawsuit against the government. I was not yet driving a cab at that point. That would start when i moved in with stella. I did work as a waiter at williams cathay in minneapolis but the restaurant was slow one night and i was sent home early. My studio wa is on the ground fr of an old brownstone six blocks from lake of the aisle. The key worked before to my studio was changed from the inside. How could i have done that, i thought. It took a moment for me to realize i could not have done. Somebody else did that. I sprinted down the hall. The only light there was a silhouette. One leg curled up the window, then the other. He stumbled and almost fell before he ran his long hair moved up and down in the light and like a fool i chased them halfway down the aisle he and like an even bigger fool i called the cops. When the Police Arrived there was little space left. You have a wad of cash on you or you left it here when you went to work, but when i do think that to me, pointing to the money and the dish drainer, money that i carelessly left by the sink until i could go to the bank. I told them i had left it there. The cop by the sink was counting. 80, 85, 90, 95 in cash. The camera worth what, 300 worth of stuff just left here and you see someone two people i said. He said two people chained to the door from the inside and then played bridge and had a cup of coffee . You see how it looks from where we stand. I have a right to privacy. That is what they stole. They looked at me as though i said i have the right to shingles. The note i was writing was spent on the desk. Whoever did this, i said, knew my schedule. They thought they had the time. Time for what . You wont know unless you investigate. The cop by the sink nodded. Investigate, gotcha. Then he picked up two books from before and said how a murder went unpunished. Karl marx. He placed both books back neatly on the floor. Not surprisingly i soon moved in with stella and had a gun in the closet that he didnt know how to use. Thank you. Thank you so much for the reading. Before moving to some of the audience questions, i want to circle and allow you to put some things together began by asking you what you talk about the false arc of the redemptive narrative and how that applies to your . Was i ready to begin with was a small passage and one of the things i think this notion that hes bringing up gratuitous violence is a violence that has no coherent reason for it. In other words you cant say it is triggered by socalled bad behavior by indian native americans were, it isnt triggered by the need to discipline people to produce occupied land or surplus value and capitalism. So, if you live in a paradigm of contingent of violence then you can actually tell stories of redemption. I need redemption in a rather abstract way. I mean moving from plenitude or equilibrium which would be between 1492, before contact. Then moving to the art of conflict which would be the occupation by europeans and genocide. Adam then moving to the equilibrium restored plenitude restored or reimagined which would be if you look at the nativnative americans and for ee and working class, look at the stories of say the revolutionaries, the story doesnt have to end in the regaining of liberation but what it can do is end in a conceptual coherence of what it might look like. And the reason that can happen and this is one of the profound interventions of what has happened and there are many other people i can name, the interesting thing about this is that if there was no moment of plenitude in other words if the word black and the word africa noted the cartography are implicated in this structure of the african continent, in other words if there are people before that but they are not black, this Structural Condition is very much like the workers. Theres no such thing as a worker 500 years ago. Worker comes into being with capitalism. So, if you have a situation in which this word black is elaborated by this gratuitous violence, thats number one. Then what you dont have and not if you dont have a prior moment of living plenitude before slavery. Does that make sense so far . Host so far. Guest so then coming back to what patterson said about violence as necessary to create a paradigm you cant have this society if we are coming together and agreeing that there will be some people on top and some on the bottom. We need a structure to make that happen. But if they also say the artificial positions are the case if that is the case, and that a paradigm where there is no prior moment for this position, and the antagonist, not the worker, not a man, not the colonial, but humanity itself in other words your argument is that humanity needs to distinguish itself from what it is not then you are in something that disrupts the ark because you cant imagine what was before. And if youre in antagonist, its not a certain kind of economic system. Its not a certain kind of colonialism. Antagonist is a human race itself. Then what you have is a situation in which it is constructed and can be dealt with but you cannot write a sentence as to how to deal with it because it is limited and equilibrium is always embedded in the other narratives so what thewe have done is to blow the d off the concept by suggesting it is not any more universal than the words human, that it requires a being Walking Around who can never be regained and we think the it is in the collective unconscious especially where people who say i dont see race. [laughter] on the character or the quality of the character what that means is they are not whining consciously but they are not tapped into their unconscious but they called primary [inaudible] it is the conscious mind saying theres something more essential. It is a phobic response that doesnt have a conceptual grounding. The unlike my anxiety for native americans or debating i cant say why i have that anxiety. What i said before i started writing is that it is symptomatic living in the structure of violence that cannot be reconciled because it goes on with its gratuitous nature even after people have encountered. But you cannot hear why did the cop shoot me if it is necessary to. Host okay now apply that to the end of your book which seemed to have a redemptive quality to me, or did i misread . Guest i used to tell graduates [inaudible] if you find a redemption, please tell me so i can excise it. [laughter] host its important to excise. Guest it has to do with a relationship with my mother and how the general reader could think that wait a minute now the first two books especially the middle path hes saying you cannot employ the narrative because slaves are implemented of other peoples needs even in the psyche of the imagination. This is what i think they argued very well in my second book. Then you have this book that ends and now having turned 64 about 20 days ago i can live with that because it isnt true but to see how it isnt true you have to read the critical theorist in conversation. I get it but now it is this marxist theory and we have the critique from the left. But the point of fact what he has done with his dialogue is there is a social life in spite of social graph and what the end of the does it doesnt actually say heres what im doing. There are a lot of people who are not going to get it for what it says is at the end of the day there is a political disagreement in an intramural way so youve got liberals in the country and radical communists and it looks like there is a rapprochement with because it i does something to e daytoday experience of a the others plantation it does something to the intramural experience that we would argue it is not for the liberation from the paradigm of this with the end of the book does is recognize this but there are important political differences that can never be reconciled. We are not going to fight about this for much more. They both suffer the same hydraulics even though the attitudes toward their country cannot be reconciled and i think that this is a good point people dont always get what they can get better. The great communist of hegemony can write this in prison notebooks and understand in the first 20 years of the century they are mortal enemies at the level of experience but in the pit of the debate a paradigm of fascists repressed by capitalists and the implement and the workers are pressed by capitalism and have ties to real against it. Thats important because it would be great to understand we need to be a part to destroy. The point of the matter is structurally if it never happened, those entities are the same so the end of the book doesnt make the argument because im trying to really speak to the people about how we are with each other and what i have to do through that is the apparatus of the critical theory if the person is curious, they will get it this is an episode of the social life, this is people on the plantation which we argued 21st Century America is the saying that they are going to be kinder to each other. Host host do you think