Derrick Jensen is a phenomenal writer. My friend Josh introduced me to him last year and I immediately fell headlong into his work. His authorship is the ultimate in rhetoric, using multiple methods of appealing to different audiences (something like W.E.B. Dubois’ Souls of Black Folk), displaying an incredible attention to detail and subjectivity. I am a huge fan not only of his work’s content but its style. Jensen’s talent lies in his ability to engage, enrage, and incite the compassion of the reader to be moved to produce a particular result. One of his degrees is in creative writing and it shows in his non-fiction, having developed a way to draw you in and push you back, as is needed to get his intended results: pro-feminist environmentalist activists ready to act for revolution. Jensen is quite radical and, at times, endorses violence in order to reduce the negative effects that humanity has on the planet. More on this in a bit.
As previously mentioned, I went with friends to see Derrick Jensen speak at Antioch this weekend. I didn’t “drive 3 1/2 hours to be entertained and then go bar hopping” (and yes, I do find this characterization disparaging, thankyouverymuch). I wanted a pleasant night out of town and to attend an interesting talk by one of my ideological idols with like-minded folks.
I got something a bit different, to my disappointment. In my eyes, Jensen slayed himself.
Jensen’s presentation was standard, one of two major speeches he gives relating directly to his works, that I have listened to at least three times apiece. When one is writing books and travelling it is difficult to come up with new material for audiences; however, the speech he gave us was a patent copy of the things I have seen and heard before, everything down to timing, jokes, dramatic pauses and repetitive phrases. I expected a bit of new stuff, my assumption that when one travels around the country for over a year giving the same two speeches that one might come up with a new bit here and there. But that wasn’t the case. Fine, okay, understandable, forgivable. Unfortunately, being the poor-sighted driver on the trip, I had developed a headache, and sitting in the warm, dark auditorium made me doze for a bit, right in front of Jensen. Oops.
I finally perked up when the Q&A started. Only four or so questions were asked in part because Jensen had gone far over his time slot. Two members or the audience went on their own tangents, one woman responding to another audience member’s question about how to foster liberalism in preschool students (I have a big, big problem with this), and the other a student doing absolutely no justice to Antioch’s infamous Sexual Offense Prevention Policy (proper analysis here). Jensen’s responses felt canned, probably because he likely gets these questions all the time.
Another student then asked him a question that required a bit more. What happens, she asked, if I, for example, blow up a sewage treatment plant? Sure, I save some salmon, but the people who come out fine are those that can afford to outsource water. She continued her question, asking about the effects of such actions on economic class, ones in which the rich are always better off than the poor despite the intended outcome of radical action.
This directly relates to Jensen’s work and how he disparages the rich for making victims of the world’s Others. But Jensen chose not to take her question seriously. He used an example of knocking down a cellular tower and painted a rather silly picture of her inquiry that didn’t do the initial question any justice. She interrupted him as he made fun of her premise, attempting to clarify her question, and he told her to stop. Stop? No, fuck that. He didn’t tell her to stop, he yelled at her as she interrupted his charade, as he made light of a pertinent question and had the gall to silence her. He then told her that “it was obvious that they had very different jobs to do.”
As in, he would write books for revolution and she wouldn’t bomb sewage treatment plants.
As in, he was recruiting an army for something which he has little guts to do on his own, all the while insisting that he would do “whatever it takes” to “save the salmon,” i.e. writing safely at his computer.
He then, very cleanly, moved along to the next question. Rather patriarchal for someone so anti-patriarchy.
One of Jensen’s images is repeated throughout his books and talks – he talks about the salmon of the Northwest, how they used to fill the rivers enough that residents miles away could hear their fins slapping against the water as they swam upstream to mate. This image illustrates an example of the devastation that urban sprawl, waste, and ecological disinterest has done to the environment, an example frequently used in his books and speeches.
I had a question of my own, and intended to speak to Jensen briefly about my question while he signed the books I brought with me. Because it was obvious that there was no lodging in town, because I began to anticipate the looming drive home, and because of my growing headache, I decided to see whether he would sign my books without us having to go to the reception. He did, but not without trying to rush us along. I told him I had a brief question I wanted him to address and he complied, albeit impatiently.
Daniel Quinn is an author of a similar vein, not quite as talented as Jensen and his authorship, but certainly a comparable author in content and intention. Quinn wrote Ishmael, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization, the last a book that details in short passages how one might stage their own revolution. Quinn’s suggestions are no less radical, but they are slower and non-violent, a method that I am already trying. Quinn suggests that we find alternative methods of living, eschewing grocery stores for our own home-grown food, leaving corporate stores behind for the local alternatives, finding means for subsistence that don’t involve wage slavery, doing what we can to, as Jensen advocates, “dismantle globally, rebuild locally.” (Read Quinn on your own to do it some justice.)
I was thinking of this poem by Nikki Giovanni:
Revolutionary Dreams
I used to dream militant dreams
of taking over america to show
these white folks
how it should be done
I used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away
with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis
I even used to think I’d be the one
to stop the riot and
negotiate the peace
then I awoke and dug
that if I dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she’s natural
I would have a revolution.
Giovanni illustrates the kind of revolution that not only Quinn, but early works of Jensen illustrates. A one person revolution is a revolution.
I took serious issue with his repetition of “fuck the rich” “fuck the rich” when one of his books lies completely in the premise that holocausts and hatred lie in the dismissal of individual subjectivity. Hypocritical, no? What kind of revolution is hypocritical at its very core? Apparently the rich are not subjective folks deserving of the same consideration that Jensen gives ferns, porn subjects, and sedimentary rock.
And, for that matter, Quinn’s revolution is one that doesn’t kill people, one that doesn’t kill children. Jensen, during his talk, said he didn’t want to even think about that premise – killing children who have a tertiary role in the destuction of the planet. But if you advocate blowing up public spaces, you have to think about the literal destruction of children, among other dismissable players in the dismantling of the ecosystem.
And that is exactly what I wanted to ask Jensen about, the role of subjective consideration that Jensen advocates when we address the unpopular. The answer of the evening was “fuck the unpopular, long live abstraction.”
I’m sure he’s heard the question before, but he didn’t even give me time to finish. When I brought up Quinn’s method and began to contrast it to his, Jensen silenced me. “But that won’t save the salmon.” He gave me a pointed look, as though this answered my query. But I, personally, was thinking of the little one in bed at his father’s house and what would happen if someone near my home decided to ruin our chances at our conscious survival. And hey, buddy, I’m with you.
And then, after interrupting me, he asked me to continue. What cajones. But I was done.
So, fine. If Jensen wanted to blow me off because he’s heard the timid ones like me question whether or not killing objectified bourgeois humans for the sake of subjectified salmons is an effective way of honoring the planet and all its inhabitants, so be it. But god forbid he acknowledge that I may not ask a new question, but I am a new audience. And, up until this point, an avid supporter. To have seen him silence an honest question by an audience member, and then to have him silence me before my question was even asked, both questions which entail significant consideration for worldwide consequence that doesn’t lie in the safe, safe realm of the abstract was too much for me.
After the talk my two travelmates and I went to dinner, all the while discussing the talk. Anne was pleased with the outcome and L hated all but the first half. When I aired my grievances with them, Anne pointed out that my answers were in his books. Well, of course. I read the books. More than once. But why give speeches and host question-and-answer sessions if one is only to answer honest questions with severely limited abstractions regurgitated from his books? Perhaps I was silly to assume that he may have more to say on these topics, you know, the implication in asking for clarification.
And I’m not even going to touch on the absurdity of sitting in an auditorium of an expensive private college with a bunch of other privileged folks discussing what a great favor we would do the rest of the oblivious world (to be reductive) by blowing it up.
This experience reminded me of the disappointment I felt in finding that bell hooks, despite her critical and authorial talent, has a martyrdom complex (read her memoirs).
Jensen is a talented writer who has had a significant impact on my view of the world, but I did find him to be a pretentious, arrogant poseur who is, as I said before, perfectly content to recruit a revolutionary army while suffering none of the consequences of his advocacy. Awfully convenient, isn’t it? Especially when he melodramatically declares that he will do “whatever it takes,” as he repeatedly stated, to “save the salmon,” whereas the rest of the subjective world becomes collateral damage while Jensen muses over the coolness of finally releasing a hardback book.
I’m ready for revolution, but not the kind advocated by a pusillanimous, if talented, author.