Being Numerous Read online

Attempts to attribute intent, or complete lack thereof, in suicide cases are understandable. Intent is dramatized in suicide narratives because the stakes are so very high. Grasping for understanding, we run the risk of ascribing complete and reasonable deliberation (such as in Maynard’s case), or a psychopathology in which any sort of intention is impossible. Suicide becomes the purview of either the mad or the meaningful, and nothing in between. Speaking from little more than personal experience, I suggest that it might not be so. Despite all the answers psychiatry and pharmacology have to offer, none of them can resolve the haunting self-knowledge that in some sense, I tried to die, both meaningfully and without really meaning it. An explanation within the discourse of mental illness feels necessary, but insufficient. And I tentatively conclude that this is okay. While impulsive self-manslaughter attempts can be explained, the feeling of having committed the act will persist like a haunting and threat, unsettling and unsettled. Maybe I just haven’t come to terms with it yet, but something tells me the terms might simply not be there. Like Hume, I find myself involved in the labyrinth of trying to locate an “I,” which maybe I cannot.

  Meanwhile, life continues. In the weeks following my last overdose, my days were surprisingly normal. I had scared myself, and I renewed commitments to better self-care; I did that the previous time, too. Surviving my own attempted manslaughter brought no revelation. On a few fleeting instances I have paused for something like sentimentality, or appreciation. My best friend was sick one night. I sat with her, stroked her hair and watched her fall asleep; I was pleased to watch her feel better, and was pleased to be alive to watch her feel better. My lover’s body was always warm, remarkably warm. He felt like energy, and once or twice in the weeks after I didn’t die, I pressed my face against his chest to appreciate heat and heartbeat. After writing that sentence, I rested two fingers against my throat to feel my own pulse.

  Index

  accidents, 3, 119

  ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 77

  Agamben, Giorgio

  “What Is an Apparatus?,” 115–116

  AIM (American Indian Movement), 58, 59

  Alexander, Keith, 110–111

  Alsip, Olivia, 45, 53

  alt-lite, 22

  alt-right, 12–13

  American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 77

  American Indian Movement (AIM), 58, 59

  Antifa, 9, 11, 13, 14, 21–22

  anti-fascism, 7–24

  anti-fascist violence, 22

  Anti-Oedipus (Deleuze and Guattari), 15

  anti-World Bank/anti-IMF demonstration, 49

  The Appearance of Black Lives Matter (Mirzoeff), 107–108

  Apple, 115

  Arendt, Hannah, 76

  The Argonauts (Nelson), 30

  AT&T, 110–111

  The Babadook (film), 30

  “bad protesters,” 74

  Bakken Formation, 57

  Baltimore, MD riots, 38, 43

  belief, webs of, 28–30

  Ben’s Chili Bowl, 52

  Berger, John, 72, 73

  Big Data, 120

  Bismarck, ND, 60, 61, 65, 69

  Bismarck Tribune, 68

  Black, Hannah, 106

  black bloc march, 47

  Black Liberation, 59

  black life, demonization and decimation of, 36

  Black Lives Matter, 18, 41, 42, 101, 107

  Bornstein, Aaron, 116–117

  Bowser, Muriel, 47

  Brecht, Bertolt, 14

  British Union of Fascists (BUF), 19

  Brooklyn’s East Flatbush riots (2013), 40

  Brown, Michael, 36, 37, 101, 103, 107

  BUF (British Union of Fascists), 19

  Bush, George W., 111

  Butler, Judith

  Frames of War, 103

  “The California Ideology,” 116

  Cameron, David, 35–36, 40, 100, 103

  Castile, Philando, 100

  centrist liberals, 12

  Charlottesville, VA, 10–11, 77–78

  Chief Red Cloud, 58

  Chu, Andrea Long, 84

  Clapper, James, 110–112

  Clark (personal friend of author), 1–2

  classism, 35

  Clinton, Hillary, 2

  collective fury, 39

  corpses, 99–108

  counterviolence, 22

  Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), 55, 57–59, 64

  Damiens, Robert-François, 104–105

  Damigos, Nathan, 22

  Dandelion Cloverdale, 61–62

  DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline), 55, 57–59, 64

  Davis, Angela, 43

  Dawkins, Richard, 28

  de Oliveira, Fabiano, 83

  Dead City Legal Posse, 51

  Deleuze, Gilles, 15

  Depardieu, Gérard, 82

  Derrida, Jacques, 31, 32

  desire, 87–97

  Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 104–105

  The Discoverie of Witchcraft (Scot), 37

  Disrupt J20, 45, 47, 50–53, 72–73, 75–76

  dragnet arrests, 46–49

  drug use, ghosts and, 27

  Duarte Square, 109–110

  duck/rabbit perception puzzle, 33

  Eco, Umberto, 23

  Egypt revolution (2011), 118–119

  Ellingson, Julie, 63–64

  Ellison, Bruce, 66

  Energy Transfer Partners, 64, 69

  Erickson, Ladd, 56, 65–66

  Facebook, 111, 115

  Fanon, Frantz

  Wretched of the Earth, 39

  fascism, as un-bannable, 17

  “fascist habit,” 16

  felony riot charges, 45–54

  Ferguson, MO riots, 36, 38–39, 43, 107

  First Amendment, 50, 71–72, 78

  Foley, James, 99–100

  43 Group, 19–21

  Foucault, Michel, 87, 89, 92

  Discipline and Punish, 104–105

  Frames of War (Butler), 103

  Free Speech, 76

  Freeman, Sandra, 55–59, 61, 63, 65–66, 69–70

  Freshet Collective, 58–59, 61–62, 67

  FuckTheory, 92

  Garner, Eric, 41, 107

  ghosts, 25–34

  Ghosts (play), 32

  Goebbels, Joseph, 105

  Goldsmith, Kenneth, 107

  Goldstone, Mark, 46, 50–51

  “good protesters,” 74

  Google, 110–111, 117

  government surveillance, 112

  Gray, Freddie, 38

  Gray, Kimani, 40

  Great Sioux Reservation, 57–58

  green card, 81–84

  Green Card (film), 82

  Green Revolution, 118–119

  Greenwald, Glenn, 77

  Guatarri, Félix, 15

  habitual police brutality, 35

  Hall, Evelyn Beatrice, 77

  hallucinations, ghosts and, 27

  Hamlet (play), 32

  Harris, Sam, 28

  hauntology, 31

  Hess, Rudolf, 17–19

  Heyer, Heather, 77

  Hintz, Jerry, 64

  Hitchens, Christopher, 28

  Hocquenghem, Guy

  The Screwball Asses, 93

  Homer, 30

  Horning, Rob, 113, 115

  Hume, David, 126–127

  “Of Suicide,” 127

  Treatise on Human Nature, 125–126

  Hyde, Edward, 126

  Ibsen, Henrik, 32

  Kauffman, L. A., 41

  Kerkhoff, Jennifer, 50

  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

  “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 11

  King, Rodney, 39–40

  Konopinski, Jules, 20

  Ku Klux Klan, 78

  Kurdi, Alan, 100, 108

  Lakota Tribe, 58, 66, 68

  “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (King, Jr.), 11

  liberal centrism, 4

  Logic (journal), 120

  London riots
(2011), 39–40

  looting, 39–40

  Los Angeles, CA riots (1992), 39–40

  Louis XV, King of France, 104–105

  love, 81–85

  manarchist, 91–92

  Mandan, ND, 60, 62, 65, 67

  Markus, Michael. See Rattler

  marriage, 81–85

  Marsh, Ian

  Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth, 125

  mass surveillance, 117

  The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Reich), 14

  Maynard, Brittany, 123, 127

  Mbembe, Achille

  Necropolitics, 102

  media, corpses and, 99–104

  Meltzer-Cohen, Moira, 67, 68

  #MeToo hashtag, 119

  micro-fascisms, 15, 23

  militancy, of 43 Group, 20–21

  Miller, Stephen, 83

  Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 107

  The Appearance of Black Lives Matter, 107–108

  Mosley, Oswald, 19, 20

  Murray, Charles, 22

  Nair, Yasmin

  “Your Sex Is Not Radical,” 95

  National Security Agency (NSA), 109–112

  The National Jury Project, 65

  Nausea (Sartre), 4

  Nazis.state ban on, 19

  Necropolitics (Mbembe), 102

  Nelson, Maggie

  The Argonauts, 30

  “neo-Antifa,” 14

  “neo-fascism,” 14

  Netanyahu, Benjamin, 105

  New Inquiry, 38–39

  New York Review of Books, 23

  Newsham, Peter, 47, 49

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 75

  NIMBYism, 21

  nonmonogamy, 91

  North Dakota, 72. See also

  Bismarck, ND; Mandan, ND

  North Dakota Stockmen’s Association, 63–64

  NSA (National Security Agency), 109–112

  Obama, Barack, 57, 83, 111

  Obama, Michelle, 12

  Obergefell v. Hodges, 84

  Occupy Wall Street, 41, 46

  Of Being Numerous (Oppen), 2, 114

  “Of Suicide” (Hume), 127

  ontologies, 31

  Open Casket (painting), 106

  Oppen, George, 118

  Of Being Numerous, 2, 114

  Osterweil, Vicky, 38–39, 40

  Othello (play), 37

  Parker, Alison, 99–100

  Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, 48

  Patriot Act (2001), 111

  Peltier, Leonard, 60–61, 66

  persistent looking, 107

  Pine Ridge Reservation, SD, 58, 69

  pornography, 93–97

  PRISM data collection and surveillance program, 110–111

  protester violence, 42

  Protevi, John, 16

  public viewings, of corpses, 105

  queer privilege, 92

  queering, 88

  Quine, Willard Van Orman, 28–30

  quotidian policing, 42–43

  Rankine, Claudia, 102

  Rattler, 55, 61, 65, 68–69

  reactionary state, 74

  Reich, Wilhelm

  insight of, 14–15

  The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 14

  Rice, Tamir, 100, 101

  rights, 71–79

  riots, 35–43

  Roberts, John, 78–79

  Roy, Arundhati

  Things that Can and Cannot Be Said, 74

  Sartre, Jean Paul

  Nausea, 4

  Sassoon, Vidal, 21

  Schmidt, Eric, 117

  Scot, Reginald

  The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 37

  The Screwball Asses (Hocquenghem), 93

  Sessions, Jeff, 77–78

  sex, 87–97

  Shakespeare, William, 37

  #ShutItDown hashtag, 41

  Shutz, Dana, 106, 107

  Siddiqi, Ayesha, 99, 103–104

  “slacktivism,” 119

  sleep paralysis, 27

  Smith, DeAndre, 40

  Snowden, Edward, 109–111, 113

  social contract

  about, 74

  romantic illusion of, 75

  socializing data, 120

  South Dakota, 69

  Southern Poverty Law Center, 12

  Spencer, Richard, 7, 9, 12, 13, 21, 22, 46, 52–53, 77–78

  Standing Rock (Sioux), 55–70, 64, 68, 76

  Sterling, Alton, 101

  structural racism, 35

  suicide, 123–128

  Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth (Marsh), 125

  surveillance, 110–117

  Tarnoff, Ben, 120–121

  techno-capitalism, surveillance through, 112

  technoscientific intelligence, 119–120

  Things that Can and Cannot Be Said (Roy), 74

  Third Reich, 18

  Tidal (journal), 109, 110

  TigerSwan, 64–65

  Till, Emmett, 105–106

  Till, Mamie, 105–108

  tortuous killing, 104–105

  Treatise on Human Nature (Hume), 125–126

  Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), 66

  Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), 58, 66

  Trump, Donald J.

  Dakota Access Pipeline and, 57

  election of, 1–2

  as a fascist or anti-fascist, 8–9

  immigration policies under, 81, 83, 103

  inauguration protests of, 45

  opposition to, 74

  rights under, 76, 77–78

  starting term as president, 7–8

  truth, types of, 29

  Tufekci, Zeynep, 96

  Tunisian revolution (2010–2011), 118–119

  Turtle Island, 61

  “Twitter revolutions,” 119

  Two Spirit Nation camp, 62

  Unite the Right, 77–78

  ur-fascist, 23–24

  US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 81–83

  USA Freedom Act (2015), 111

  USCIS (US Citizenship and

  Immigration Services), 81–83

  Verheyden-Hilliard, Mara, 48, 50

  violence

  corpses and, 99–105

  what constitutes, 21–22

  Virilio, Paul, 3, 113–114, 119

  Voltaire, 77

  Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC), 58, 60–63, 67

  webs of belief, 28–30

  West, Cornel, 21

  “What Is an Apparatus?” (Agamben), 115–116

  white supremacy

  African’s benefits from, 13

  deaths caused by violence of, 12

  rights of, 78

  tradition of reliance of black devil, 37

  violence and, 22–23, 42

  Whitney Biennial, 106, 107

  Williams, Bernard, 43

  Williams, Linda, 94

  Wilson, Darren, 36, 37

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 23–24, 33–34, 118

  Wizner, Ben, 112

  Women’s March, 52–53

  Wounded Knee, 58

  WPLC (Water Protector Legal Collective), 58, 60–63, 67

  Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 39

  Yiannopoulos, Milo, 12, 21, 46, 77–78

  Younge, Gary, 13

  “Your Sex Is Not Radical” (Nair), 95

  Youth Act, 51