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Title: Choosing Marginality Author: Jane Meyerding Date: 1998 Language: en Topics: activism, anti-work, middle class Source: Retrieved on August 17, 2011 from http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SA/en/display/252 Notes: Published in Social Anarchism #26, 1998
In marginality, I have found freedom. There are many kinds of
marginality though and mine is a chosen marginality. I am a white,
mostly straight, college educated male from a middle class background
and could choose to be mainstream if I wanted. My marginality is far
different from that of a disrespected Native American elder on a
reservation, a homeless family forced to live in separate shelters, a
criminalized African-American youth in the ghetto, or a teenager kicked
out of her home for being a lesbian. Theirs is the marginality of the
oppressed. Mine is the marginality of the drop out. These are two very
different things.
My politics obviously make me marginal in some sense — it usually is not
a good idea to publicly refer to oneself as an anarchist as this is
liable to make a lot of people think you’re a terrorist. But I have
chosen to be further marginalized by temping for a living and not
working at a respectable, regular job. In my senior year in college,
while every one else was busily searching for a career, I quite
deliberately did not. I had gone to college because that’s what somebody
from my class background was just expected to do. While I don’t regret
my college years, I consciously decided not to continue operating on
middle class autopilot. I was going to be, rather to my parents’
distress, a fuck-up. No plans except that I wanted to be a grassroots
activist and a science-fiction writer; not exactly lucrative pursuits.
After a brief stint working at Barnes & Noble — a horribly
authoritarian, soul-killing place — I took up temping. In the
impermanence of temping I have found some degree of freedom. With
sufficient planning, I can take time off for my activism or my writing
whenever I want — I don’t have to go begging for vacation time. I find
temping also minimizes the stress of the work place. Our culture’s work
ethic, unfortunately, is still rather ingrained in my actions even
though I don’t believe in it (at least as far as capitalist enterprises
are concerned); being at a working place for only a brief time is a way
of keeping myself from getting caught up in trying too hard to do a good
job. Temping gives me an amount of control over my life I would not
otherwise have — my job does not dominate me, unlike all the permanent
office workers I see, stressed out, juggling a thousand meetings, and
putting in unpaid overtime. There are of course drawbacks to temping —
my income is unstable and I have only a pathetic excuse for health
insurance (and until recently had none at all) — but the trade off is
worth it to me.
I am not attempting to make myself out to be more radical or more
marginal than thou. There are people I know who live even more
marginally than I do — people who get jobs when they run out of money,
or who are nomads or squatters. I also know people whom I respect, who
work at permanent, respectable office jobs, who are also solid radicals
and whose values and activities outside of work make them marginal in
some sense, part of the anarchist milieu. The line between the
mainstream and the margins is not necessarily a clear one. It’s a matter
of the choices people make, the level of instability and possible
discomfort people want to put up with. I respect squatters, but I
couldn’t live like that. I respect radicals with a permanent office job,
but I couldn’t live like that either.
A few sentences back, what I actually should have said, “It’s a matter
of the choices some people get to make...” My ability to choose to be
marginal is itself a sign of privilege. Many of the people (although
certainly not all of them) in the anarchist drop out milieu could have
chosen and could still choose to live otherwise — to have regular,
mainstream lives with permanent, respectable jobs and all the rest of
the garbage that goes with that. I certainly fall into that category and
may actually take advantage of that privilege some day to go to grad
school, thereby demarginalizing myself.
For many people in America and across the world, these are not choices.
They are made marginal by the larger forces of society — capitalism,
racism, sexism, homophobia and other all too familiar evils. As I said,
I have pathetic health insurance and my income is unstable — by choice.
If I had children to support, I certainly would not make this choice.
Many people in America must, whether they want to or not, try to do the
best for themselves and their families without health insurance, without
a stable or adequate income, their poverty often exacerbated by the
racism and sexism of hiring practices and the welfare system. Too many
people have no choice.
There is some irony in my position. Even though I choose to live without
adequate healthcare, I believe it is horrible that so many must live
without any by force of economic circumstances. I voluntarily live a
life I would not wish on others. At this point in this essay, I feel
like I should say what this means, but I’m really not sure what it does
mean. My chosen marginality is certainly not some noble act of
solidarity with the oppressed. It is a rejection of the system, or at
least aspects of it — those aspects that bind the spirit; but it is not
a protest against those aspects that create material want. Arguably, by
not demanding better for myself, I am in some small way undermining
those who are organizing to demand at least the fulfillment of material
needs by our dominant social institutions, the state and corporations.
On the other hand, by living to some degree outside of the accepted
roles defined by the education and media systems controlled by the state
and corporations, I am in some small way working to undermine these
institutions, which are responsible for creating material want in the
first place.
But really, I’m a drop out because I like being one. The current system
is a dead end not only in terms of fulfilling people’s material needs
but spiritually as well, breeding ignorance, stupefaction, alienation,
and social fragmentation. The lives of the mainstream working and middle
classes are a rat race, devoid of what makes life worth living. My
rejection of this life is, in part, a search for authenticity, a life
that means something — as someone from a relatively affluent background,
I know affluence does not bring happiness and may well be a hindrance to
it. Yet I can’t blame the poor for seeking affluence for few people
enjoy material deprivation — and it is difficult to search for personal
fulfillment if you’re having trouble getting enough to eat.
The marginal lifestyle I choose to live (as opposed to the activism it
frees me up to do) ultimately makes little difference — as a solitary
choice. But others have chosen to jump ship too. Certainly not all
members of the anarchist drop out milieu would necessarily think of
themselves as seeking authenticity, but they have all rejected the
mainstream as a dead end lifestyle. We anarchist drop-outs do form some
sort of nebulous community with our own informal networks of mutual aid,
our own fragile institutions — radical bookstores, Food Not Bombs
groups, etc.
Although drop-out lifestyles alone certainly will not bring about
revolution, we need to remember that the personal is political. If large
numbers of people realized that what the dominant Anglo-American culture
defines as respectable — a mindless forty-hour a week job at an office,
with televisions, houses, cars and loads of stress as markers of success
— is a crock, that we could all potentially explore much more fulfilling
paths in life if society was otherwise organized, this could do much to
undermine capitalism. Chosen marginality without activism is not, on its
own, subversive. But if we on the margins (and if capitalism continues
of its present course, more and more people will be joining us out here
whether they want to or not) attempt to create a more fulfilling way of
life in conjunction with our activism, we will be that much stronger.